Hiring skilled IT staff is a major pain point - Glassdoor reports that US companies spend, on average, $4,000 just to recruit and onboard each new employee. More frustrating, significant time is required before new hires become fully productive. This represents substantial sunk costs and lost time for each new full-time addition.
But there is a better way.
Staff augmentation provides a flexible, cost-effective alternative to meet IT resourcing needs. The proof is in the exploding market growth - the US IT augmentation market is valued at $32.5 billion in 2021 and expected to reach $43.68 billion by 2027 with a 5.05% CAGR according to projections.
More and more smart companies are taking advantage of IT augmentation to access specialized expertise and accelerate delivery while optimizing costs.
The bottom line is clear - with the right strategy, IT staff augmentation can drive transformative ROI improvements for your business. Let’s dive in and unlock the full potential of IT staff augmentation to maximize your business’ ROI.
How Does an IT Staff Augmentation Team Help Improve ROI?
The strategic use of an augmented IT team provides multiple advantages that directly translate into increased ROI:
Cost Savings
One of the primary reasons to choose IT staff augmentation services is that it saves money over hiring full-time employees. With full-time hiring, you incur substantial recruitment, training, and benefit expenses for each new IT employee onboarding.
With an augmentation approach, you avoid most of these overhead costs by contracting technical talent on demand. You pay only for the specific skills needed, for the exact duration of a project engagement.
According to the Deloitte Global Outsourcing Survey 2022, 57% of executives use staff augmentation to ensure cost-effective software development and maintenance. The survey highlights the significant cost savings driving the adoption of IT augmentation strategies.
Flexibility
IT projects need to fluctuate depending on the stage of initiatives. Augmented staffing delivers agility to scale up or down based on demand. As business requirements change, you can adjust the size and composition of your augmented IT team.
Having an on-call augmented staff available on-demand also allows you to take on time-sensitive projects that your current team lacks the bandwidth to handle. The flexibility and elasticity of an augmentation model is perfect for dynamic IT environments.
Specialized Skills
Certain IT projects require very specific technical competencies that may be hard to recruit full-time. With IT augmentation, you access specialized talent like emerging programming languages, AI skills, cybersecurity, and more.
IT Staff Augmentation team members bring coveted expertise to immediately fill any skills gaps for special projects. They can also transfer niche knowledge to upskill your existing IT staff through collaboration.
By leveraging augmentation, your team taps into cross-industry best practices and the latest technology experience. Skills that may take months or years to develop internally can be deployed rapidly for maximum impact, then scaled back down just as quickly once no longer needed.
Faster Delivery
Lacking particular IT expertise can delay projects and hamper your time-to-market. Augmented staff can fast-track delivery with proven competencies in high-demand skills like cloud migrations, programming, data analytics etc.
They understand the importance of project work and can concentrate more completely than full-time employees who have competing priorities. You benefit from faster execution without the need for months of training or recruitment.
Risk Mitigation
IT staff augmentation also reduces project risk. Since augmented staff are already trained experts, they require less oversight and ramp-up time. Their experience lets them rapidly troubleshoot issues before they jeopardize deliverables.
Having an on-call bench of augmentees also allows you to swiftly assign replacement resources if any existing contractor leaves mid-project. This failsafe helps safeguard mission-critical initiatives.
Tips to Maximize the ROI of Your Business with IT Staff Augmentation
Organizations can significantly boost their return on investment from IT staff augmentation by following key tips and best practices. By focusing on the critical success factors, businesses can optimize their augmentation investment.
Here are 6 proven tips to maximize your ROI with IT staff augmentation:
Assessing and Prioritizing Tasks for Augmentation
Carefully evaluate your project pipeline and upcoming needs. Identify initiatives that require skills not sufficiently available in-house. These are ideal tasks to earmark for augmentation.
Prioritize mission-critical, time-sensitive, or strategically impactful projects. Assign your most experienced full-time staff to core activities and augment bandwidth for specialized needs.
Selecting the Right IT Staff Augmentation Partner/Vendor
Choosing the right IT staff augmentation services provider is crucial. Analyze their experience, reputation, recruitment process, retention rates, and satisfaction levels of past clients.
Opt for a partner that invests heavily in attracting and retaining top talent in innovative ways. Cultural alignment is also key for seamless collaboration.
Setting Clear Goals and Expectations
Define specific, measurable goals and expectations for each augmented IT team member. Provide continuous feedback and encouragement to keep them aligned.
Share organizational context and project objectives to motivate augmentees to put their best foot forward. Make them feel valued as part of a larger team.
Establishing Effective Communication Channels
Seamless communication between your full-time IT staff and augmented members is vital for optimal workflows. Institute procedures for status updates, collaboration tools, escalation processes, and more.
Promote team bonding and knowledge sharing through daily standups, social events, mentorship programs, and open dialogue.
Implementing Robust Project Management
Apply proven project management frameworks like Agile or Scrum methodologies in managing augmented and full-time staff.
Tools like Jira, Asana, and Trello can provide transparency on work plans, timelines, and blockers. Enable early issue resolution.
Monitoring and Optimizing Cost and Performance
Continuously track project progress against budgets and timelines. Measure team productivity and quality benchmarks.
If augmented resources are not meeting expectations, work with your vendor to provide additional training or swap in alternative candidates.
Common Mistakes to Avoid for Maximum IT Staff Augmentation ROI
While IT staff augmentation can optimize ROI, companies commonly make mistakes that diminish the return on their augmentation investment. By being aware of common pitfalls, organizations can proactively avoid mistakes and maximize their augmentation ROI.
Avoid these common IT staff augmentation mistakes:
Insufficient Project Planning
Failing to comprehensively plan the full scope, timelines, required skills, and costs will undermine results. Spend time thoroughly analyzing project needs and constraints up front. Clearly detail deliverables, milestones, and success metrics.
Understand interdependencies between tasks and proactively address potential bottlenecks. Inadequate planning leaves too many open variables.
Poor Vendor Selection
Not all IT staffing vendors are equal. Rigorously vet and screen potential partners to ensure they consistently provide trained, experienced, motivated talent with the precise skills needed.
Review portfolios and case studies. Speak to references. Evaluate retention rates. Visit offices. Assess recruiting, onboarding, management and reward processes. Choose a vendor invested in attracting and empowering top talent.
Inadequate Communication and Collaboration
Limiting interaction between full-time and augmented staff hinders seamless collaboration. Enable open channels for discussion, feedback and idea sharing. Promote team bonding through daily standups, social events, site visits etc.
Create a knowledge-sharing culture via wikis, internal forums etc. Provide context on business objectives, challenges and priorities to motivate augmentees. Make them feel truly valued.
Unclear Goals and Expectations
Ambiguous goals, undefined roles and inadequate direction will lead to misalignment. Clearly set objectives, KPIs, responsibilities and timelines for each augmented resource. Provide continuous performance feedback.
Reinforce contributions to instill ownership. When goals are fuzzy, augmented staff operate in a vacuum without purpose. Define and communicate desired outcomes.
Neglecting Monitoring and Optimization
Don't just "set and forget" augmented resources. Constantly monitor performance, budgets, timelines, risks and project health to enable proactive intervention when required.
Measure productivity benchmarks. Gauge team dynamics. Be ready to quickly provide additional training, adjust workloads or swap in alternative candidates if augmentees are not meeting expectations. Continuously optimize for maximum ROI.
Cultural Misfit
Overlooking team culture fit when selecting augmentation vendors can impair collaboration. Assess alignment of values, work styles, communication norms and motivations.
Friction arises when full-time staff perceive augmentees as outsiders. Stress cultural integration from the start.
Overall, IT staff augmentation delivers hard ROI through cost savings, specialized skills, speed, and risk reduction. Follow the tips covered to improve ROI with staff augmentation. Avoid common mistakes like poor planning and partner selection.
Why Choose ThinkODC as Your IT Staff Augmentation Partner?
When exploring an IT staff augmentation agency, choose a provider that offers the perfect blend of talent access, technical expertise, cultural alignment, and collaboration capabilities.
ThinkODC has a proven track record of delivering successful augmentation engagements for clients worldwide. Here's why you should hire dedicated developers from ThinkODC:
- Access the top 1% of global talent with expertise in the latest technologies
- Reduce costs by 30-60% compared to full-time hiring
- Accelerate time-to-market by 25-50% for strategic initiatives
- Scale teams up or down to match workloads, enhancing agility
- Mitigate project risks with our dedicated QA processes
- Enjoy seamless collaboration through robust communication practices
- Gain actionable insights via daily and weekly reporting
ThinkODC follows an ROI-focused approach, with every aspect of our augmentation engagement tailored to optimize your returns. Our clients consistently achieve the cost savings, faster delivery, and competitive advantage they seek from augmentation.
Request a consultation with our experts to learn more about partnering with ThinkODC for high-ROI staff augmentation.
