Staff Augmentation vs Outsourcing vs Hybrid Approach: A Detailed Comparison

Author: Sourabh Nagar

IT companies must deliver projects on time with quality. However, the needs in software development are ever-changing. As a result, it becomes impossible for one company to possess all the skill sets needed to deliver challenging projects. This is where the three IT models become important, namely-

  • Staff augmentation

  • IT outsourcing services

  • Hybrid approach

Is one model better than the other? What motivates companies to choose one over the other? Let us discuss.

Staff Augmentation

Staff augmentation is when a company hires external personnel temporarily to augment its capacity. Such a company may hire people from other companies offering staff augmentation services for fulfilling its requirement.

Some common reasons why company choose augment staffing are:

  • Companies may need specialized skills such as brand and logo design technology or facilities.

  • Sudden spikes in customer demand, increased production, seasonal businesses, etc, lead to a higher demand for staffing.

  • As a bridge to hire capacity while they hire a permanent team for long- term needs.

  • A change in strategy in terms of core skills or projects with faster time to market leads to staff augmentation.

Benefits of Staff Augmentation

  • People, hired from staff augmentation services, can be easily blended into internal teams.

  • A good way to hire future long-term employees based on performance.

  • Staff can be hired based on per-project; saves cost and time

  • Companies can increase decrease staff based on their needs

Limitations of Staff Augmentation

  • Not recommended for projects that need a contextual or deep institutional knowledge

  • Augmentation is always third-party dependent

  • In case of long-term on ongoing projects, it may be not suitable

IT Outsourcing Services

When companies need to execute a whole IT project by using the resources of an IT outsource company, it’s called project outsourcing.

This is a more specialized form of cost-effective staffing because it limits the hiring to just getting the job done by a specialized set of professionals. You may focus on their core operations while hiring the skills or expertise of professionals hired through outsourcing.

When do companies need IT Outsourcing exactly?

  • When they want their in-house employees for other productive tasks

  • Sometimes, IT support outsourcing is needed to accelerate time-consuming business processes

  • When they want access to skills that are not available as per the need locally

  • When they want to give away the responsibility and related risks to a third-party vendor by delegating a part of non-focus functionality

Benefits of IT Outsourcing:

There are many benefits of IT outsourcing services. Some of them are:

  • Overall cost reduction and better ROI

  • An outsourced IT company saves time invested in recruiting and training in-house team member

  • Access to a global pool of talent

  • IT outsource services make way for onboarding new domains and clients.

Limitations of IT Outsourcing

  • An overseas IT outsourcing company may have significant time differences that may affect progress.

  • Language and cultural barriers

  • Different work habits

Hybrid Approach

Many times, IT staff augmentation and project outsourcing are blended in a way so as to meet the specific needs of the project within a company. A hybrid approach combines the benefits of IT staff augmentation and IT outsourcing.

Benefits of Hybrid Model

  • Access to a pool of global talent that can be increased or decreased depending on niche projects

  • Full predictability of recurring costs

  • Unlike offshore outsourcing, no need to extend office space

  • You get the best of both worlds in no extra cost

Limitations of Hybrid Model

  • May require an additional position of a project manager to manage all the teams

  • Costing may turn out to be fluctuating that may affect staffing budgets

Conclusion

Outsourcing in general has helped several businesses post-pandemic. Software and application development requires an updated talent pool - a factor that may not be possible with remote working. As a result, a combination of IT outsourcing and staff augmentation is the future.

If you are looking to adopt a hybrid model, or need staff augmentation services or IT outsourcing, feel free to contact us.