As stated in our earlier publication “Why is Staff Augmentation Vital for US Companies Today?,” staff augmentation is the process of augmenting a company’s workforce using manhours and/or expertise hired from third-party service providers.
From an outsourcing perspective, this is generally perceived as body shopping in which a third-party service provider recruits and retains staff and contracts it out to companies in need of manpower.
However, the global pandemic in 2019 significantly changed the market dynamics and created a new array of challenges and opportunities for businesses worldwide.
The ability of a business to stay competitive in the post-pandemic era, thus, hinges largely upon its ability to decode “the new success factors.”
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Pandemic and Corporate Success
The pandemic ushered in the end of 2019 and with it came social distancing, travel bans, suspension of international trade, and supply chain disruptions. The aftereffects were obvious: WFH/remote or hybrid working, labor immobility, reduced trade, and supply chain bottlenecks that culminated in decelerated global economic growth manifesting in the form of rising inflation, reduced aggregate demand and tougher contest on the margins.
Statista suggests that global economic output fell by 4.5 percent due to the pandemic which in quantified terms scrolls to a staggering $2.96 trillion.
However, according to Yahoo Finance, this did not prevent several companies like Microsoft, Zoom, Amazon, Walmart, Shopify, PayPal, etc., from prospering even during the pandemic.
This implies that such companies realigned their business model and processes to achieve the standards of agility, corporate foresight, and innovativeness necessary to cruise successfully through the challenges posed by the pandemic. In other words, such companies unlocked the “new success factors.”
The New Success Factors
Findings from research into critical success factors for corporate success during and post-pandemic reveal a range of policy. People and process initiatives at an institutional and state level. For example, Ankur Kashyap and Juhi Raghuvanshi who conducted A preliminary study on exploring the critical success. Factors for developing COVID-19 preventive strategy with an economy centric approach found six critical success factors. “Effective communication, social distancing, adopting new technology, modify the rules and regulation at workplace, sealing the borders of the territory, and Strong leadership and government control.” Meanwhile, in their study titled, Issues and analysis of critical success factors for the sustainable initiatives in the supply chain during COVID- 19 pandemic outbreak in India: A case study, Sonu Rajaka et al. identified social distancing, emergency logistics systems, and emergency backup facilities as the three critical success factors for supply chain sustainability.
While the pandemic sent strong shockwaves to the global supply chains, it equally disrupted the labor mobility worldwide.
World Happiness Report 2021 quotes the International Labor Organization stating that the global working hours declined by 17.3 percent in the second quarter of 2020 and the cumulative working hours lost by the year-end were approximately four time more compared to the same loss in the Great Recession of 2009. The bar chart below from the same report shows the high levels of idle workforce in various parts of the world.
The pandemic led to mass layoffs and job quits in the US at historically unprecedented levels – a phenomenon that was eventually described as the Great Resignation in May 2021. However, according to PwC’s Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey in March 2022, the Great Resignation is far from over, and a fifth of workforce plans to quit even in 2022. The workforce continues to demand pay raise and workplace flexibility amid the corporate sector’s struggle to meet the labor deficit.
This means that the corporate sector’s challenge in meeting the labor deficit is two-pronged: a dearth of workforce availability and catering to growing demands for increased compensation and workplace flexibility. A problem this profound and complex requires an e, it is pertinent to note here that troubleshooting the labor deficit requires an equally innovative and agile troubleshooting approach that builds on some of the prominent critical success factors of the pandemic, i.e., communication, technology, and leadership which leads to creation of highly skilled, flexible, and dynamic, globally distributed teams.
Expertise Accelerated’s Service Methodology and “New Success Factors”
In a recent press release Former CFO Advises US CPG Industry Against Regionalized Approach To Talent Acquisition dated x/x, Expertise Accelerated (EA) CEO Haroon Jafree (CPA) described EA as his brainchild to help the US CPG companies realign competitively to the post-pandemic normal, highlighting global distribution, technology, onshore expertise, oversight and leadership, training & development, knowledge management, and remote talent acquisition as the key ingredients of its service methodology.
This clearly shows how EA’s service methodology builds on the best practices of the outsourcing and staff augmentation industry and an evolutionary and futuristic approach, tapping the New Success Factors, to fully cater to the needs of the volatile and turbulent business environment that today’s CPG industry operates in.
How EA Helps Companies Decodes “New Success Factors”
EA helps companies decode the New Success Factors through its high-quality outsourcing and staff augmentation solutions based on its unique service methodology that fundamentally involves leveraging the following resources in line with the business needs of the post-pandemic normal.
People
EA delivers handpicked high-quality remote accounting & finance and supply chain professionals to its US CPG clients. The onshore US CPA team at EA which boasts 25+ years of the US CPG industry experience, including 10+ years at a C-suite level, trains the chosen candidates for client-specific roles, to ensure they become strategic fits for the companies they serve. The onshore team maintains close oversight and supervision during the transition period, and once the EA-trained professionals settle into the target job role, they report solely to the company’s designated manager.
Processes
Before deploying professional resources, EA’s onshore US CPA team undertakes an examination of the company’s processes in place to identify any gaps and makes recommendations for bridging them. This provides a foundation for the identification of the professional resource and training requirements that EA subsequently feeds through its high-quality outsourcing and staff augmentation solutions.
Technology
As a service provider, EA is technology-agnostic. The recommendation and choice of technology to be used for addressing system or process gaps is based purely on the circumstances of the case.
Even though EA does not provide services for system implementation, it does help the management evaluate the technologies in use and provide recommendations for its modification or upgradation.
Leadership
A distinguishing feature of EA’s unique service methodology is leadership – which, in fact, sets it apart from the traditional outsourcing and staff augmentation agencies that are just body shops.
EA-remote staffers have not just leased out manhours, but intellectual assets duly trained and led by a highly accomplished team of US CPAs boasting over two decades of CPG industry experience.
EA as Service Provider
EA’s service methodology has earned immense recognition from within the US CPG diaspora, and its trained professionals have been commended by the clients for delivering high performance and cost savings.
EA has a proven track record of delivering significant payroll savings and process efficiencies to its US CPG clients through placement of highly trained and seasoned accounting & finance and supply chain professionals that come at just 40 percent of their US counterparts while being professional comparable or even superior.
The recognition and commendation that EA and its team has received by the clients serves to validate and authenticate its service methodology as being relevant, practical, and contemporary.