Before explaining staff augmentation, it is important to discuss what business process outsourcing (BPO) is. BPO is essentially an alternative to the conventional hiring process, where instead of initiating the hiring process internally in the business, entrepreneurs opt to contract a third-party BPO service provider to handle the complete hiring process. The service provider presents the business with a variety of professionals to choose from. And not just professionals, outsourcing can also include an entire business function, such as accounting or IT. In fact, many businesses tend to outsource entire functions to remote outsourced professionals rather than hire individual employees.
Staff augmentation services can be called a sister process of business process outsourcing. Where BPO services act as a liaison between contracted professionals and contracting businesses, staff augmentation services instead facilitate direct communication between professionals and businesses. This means that entrepreneurs can treat their third-party resources as part of their in-house team and have no middleman to act as a messenger. In this way, staff augmentation provides a greater degree of control than regular outsourcing, and is thus rising in popularity as there are much fewer chances of irritating or even malicious interference by the service provider.
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Why is Staff Augmentation Important?
Staff augmentation services are slowly but surely growing in popularity around the globe and especially in economic centers like the US. With record-breaking inflation adversely affecting business budgets, businesses small and large have all begun to turn to alternative solutions like outsourcing and staff augmentation to compensate for the inability to hire in-house professionals.
While controlling costs is the primary reason why many businesses turn to staff augmentation, there are still a variety of business scenarios where staff augmentation can prove to be the optimal solution to particular problems. The typical perception of staff augmentation services is that they are a “last resort” to turn to when all the other options are unfeasible, and while this is by no means a popular sentiment, there is still an air of distrust surrounding staff augmentation and remote work still today.
Employee Augmentation: The Future of Hiring
What our experts at Expertise Accelerated can assure entrepreneurs is that staff augmentation services are the future of hiring in the business landscape for the foreseeable future. In-house professionals in developed countries are a pipe dream for many businesses in the US as of 2023, and if the economic projections by the Congressional Budget Office are anything to go by, things will get worse before they get better. Even giants like Google and Meta struggle with in-house hiring in 2023. In a historic development reported by investigative journalist Lee Fang, pressure has been exerted on the government to drastically increase the amount of H1-B foreign worker visas. This move aims to allow more foreign talent from places like Pakistan, India, and other parts of the developing world to fill the labor shortage.
With so much of the business landscape transitioning to staff augmentation services for their professional needs, staff augmentation is no longer anywhere close to a “last resort”. It is on its way to becoming the preferred mode of hiring. And this is precisely why entrepreneurs of all varieties need to seriously consider if their business could fare better by opting for staff augmentation services. This article will serve as your guide to figuring out whether it’s time you invested in staff augmentation services and began your counter-attack against the inflationary pressures threatening your business.
4 Signs That Your Business Needs to Leverage Staff Augmentation Services
The Business Needs to Control Costs
It cannot be stressed enough how effective staff augmentation services are for controlling your business costs. You need to only take a glance at any professional job’s median salary in the US at Salary.com, and that’s enough to take the proverbial wind out of any entrepreneur’s sails.
Staff augmentation services entirely subvert these exorbitant professional costs by bridging the gap between the US and offshore professionals. By allowing easy and affordable access to US businesses to some of the best-vetted professionals, sporting diverse skill sets, staff augmentation companies in the US solve the greatest crisis facing US businesses today.
The point has been sufficiently addressed, so I will leave it at that so as not to belabour it. The key takeaway from this is that if you need to bring costs down, staff augmentation services are the answer.
The Business Lacks Specific Skill Sets
One of the biggest hurdles to overcome these days is finding the right person for the job. Even in already very specialized fields like accounting, you have professionals further specializing in various aspects of accounting. Some are experts in taxation, while others are audit gurus, and others further are QuickBooks wizards. With so many specialized skills like these in almost every profession today, finding the right person to take care of your specific needs can be a serious roadblock to your growth.
Staff augmentation companies in the US address this problem quite soundly. It would not be wrong to say that solving this precise issue is the greatest strength of staff augmentation. Just think about it, right now as a business, if you need a particular skill urgently, your only choice is to start a rushed hiring cycle, hire someone on recommendation and pray they are what you need, or take your chances with a freelancer that you have no way to monitor.
The correct answer is the fourth choice: enlisting staff augmentation services to find you just what you need. Such firms have access to a much wider global talent pool, and regardless of the skill requirement, someone somewhere in the world can fulfill it, and staff augmentation services will find and connect them to you.
The Business is Rapidly Scaling and Needs More Staff Quickly
Growth is certainly excellent to see in business, but it brings along an entirely new set of challenges. One such challenge is the need for more staff to cope with the increased workload that comes with growth.
In the age of social media and web marketing, while gradual growth and expansion still happen, the most effective way to achieve growth is in big bursts. Typically, a single hit product, or maybe a glowing influencer review ends up far more effective at pushing the business forward than conventional means. And this precise trend of fast growth and the need for rapid scaling to keep up with the growth is why staff augmentation services have become so popular today.
The hiring process is extremely tedious. You have to advertise, spend time reviewing and interviewing candidates, debate which option is the best, and so forth. According to Lora Korpar in her LinkedIn Pulse article on the subject, the average hiring process takes around three to six weeks to complete. That is a very long time to go without much-needed help in the office. And for every spurt of growth and scaling that the business experiences, the same amount of time needs to be spent to catch up.
Take EA for example. EA’s staff augmentation services allow businesses to completely skip this ridiculously tedious hiring process and get right to the point. What happens is that an entrepreneur provides EA management with their required job description and qualifying criteria, and EA vets out and presents said client with several options for the position. Then all the client needs to do is pick who they like best and they are good to go. Simple, right?
By greatly reducing the time needed to adapt to rapid growth and scaling, staff augmentation companies in the US enable businesses to take full advantage of their growth almost instantly, rather than wait a month or two before they are ready.
The Business Needs Fresh Perspective
Another sign that you may want to turn to staff augmentation services is stagnancy and complacency in the business strategy department.
Think about it this way, after working with the same core group of people in the same way for months and years, the team’s business ideas and strategies start becoming very similar, and you also run into the problem of nobody wanting to disagree or provide differing opinions for fear of offending someone.
By bringing in a fresh perspective from someone completely outside of the team, this problem gets solved really quickly. Offshore, remote professionals are especially vaunted for this purpose, because they bring with them a whole new outlook on their area of expertise, as well as process methodology and strategy that your complacent team may never have even heard of. And when one team member starts introducing some new innovation to the business, other team members are naturally spurred to start speaking their minds and coming up with new ideas and strategies. And staff augmentation is how you procure this outside fresh perspective, at a reasonable cost with almost no downsides.
Expertise Accelerated: Your Link to the Global Talent Pool
Expertise Accelerated is a Connecticut-based staff augmentation services provider specializing in linking US businesses with off-shore, remote professionals. While EA specializes in accounting and supply chain-related talent, our services extend to business management, business process optimization, and project management.
At EA, we take great pride in our ability to tailor and mold our professional talents to fulfill our client’s needs. And all you need to do is just ask. As specialists, we have connections to the best remote off-shore talent money can buy and can vet and shortlist the best candidates to fit any business’ needs. And what’s more, EA takes full responsibility for its talent and ensures that our clients receive only the best available when it comes to specialized skill sets.