Grow Your Business with IT Staff Augmentation
It’s expensive to hire new employees, from both a time and money perspective. But when it comes to IT, you can’t afford to overburden your existing employees when demand for IT support grows.
IT staff augmentation offers an alternative approach to supporting your business’s technological needs and growth.
In this post, we’ll look at how IT staff augmentation differs from outsourcing, how it supports business growth without adding another salary to the payroll, and how to get started.
What Is IT Staff Augmentation?
IT staff augmentation is a strategy that businesses use to supplement their existing information technology team. Instead of hiring part- or full-time staff internally, companies bring in third-party IT professionals to assist with their needs and fill gaps.
Now, staff augmentation isn’t the same as outsourcing.
Outsourcing IT involves handing the full responsibility of your computer and network services (or a specific segment of it) to a third party. They work independently from your company. Managed IT services are a type of outsourcing.
Augmenting involves integrating the external team within your own. They might work off-site or on-site. Regardless, they use the same tools and follow the same processes as those of your team. And you maintain oversight. This is why we differentiate these types of services as IT staff augmentation.
Use Cases for IT Staff Augmentation
Companies don’t typically use augmented staff instead of hiring employees. There are certain occasions in which staff augmentation is the optimal choice. For example:
Assist with Short-term Projects
Any time a company makes a big transition technology-wise, it can create a major burden for the IT team. In addition to handling their normal tasks, they probably have to provide training on the new equipment or systems and also handle emergencies that rise up during implementation.
IT staff augmentation allows for a smoother and less disruptive transition.
Support Seasonal Demand
Say you run an ecommerce business. You anticipate higher-than-normal website traffic from mid-November until the end of the year. IT staff augmentation can provide you with the extra support needed to monitor server uptime, manage website updates, and handle customer support inquiries.
Offer Transition Support
If you have a team member or members that will be absent for an extended period of time (like maternity/paternity leave), IT staff augmentation helps you fill those gaps in a cost-effective manner.
You’ll get a specialist who prevents disruption to your IT services without having to deal with the time-consuming and costly process of hiring a new employee.
Provide Specialized Support
Let’s say your network has been attacked. Your existing IT team detected the security breach and are working to boot out the hackers. However, they’re already stretched pretty thin.
By augmenting your team with cybersecurity specialists, they can focus on the repair, cleanup, and recovery while your IT staff maintains everything else.
Provide Cost-effective Assistance
Some businesses can’t afford a full-time IT staff even though they need the support. With IT staff augmentation, they can bring in trained professionals to assist on a part-time and temporary basis.
While their salary might be equivalent to part-time employees, it doesn’t include the time spent to hire and onboard them or any part-time benefits either, making it a more cost-effective option in the interim.
Safely Scale Your Operation
When scaling a business, things don’t always go to plan. Let’s say you aim to reach a certain goal in terms of new customers and revenue by a certain date. If you miss that mark, it can be costly to pay for the new IT staff you hired until things get back on track.
IT staff augmentation offers a safer way to scale until your company’s growth stabilizes.
How to Get Started with IT Staff Augmentation
If you’ve decided that your organization would benefit from IT staff augmentation, here are your next steps:
- Define your business (or project) goals and the desired timeline to meet them.
- Identify what your IT team can reasonably support at the moment. Then figure out what gaps need to be filled.
- Contact your IT services partner if you have one. If not, start researching local IT companies that offer staff augmentation services.
- Schedule a meeting to get a feel for what they offer and if they can meet your specific needs. Request a quote.
- Prepare a contract. It should outline everything about the engagement, including location and access, start and end dates, hourly commitment, pay rate, and duties.
- Onboard the augmented staff just as you would a new team member. Make sure they’re set up with the same tools and processes.
- Provide clear guidance on what their scope of work or focus is as well as what you need from them day to day.
- Ensure that they’re integrated within your team. They should be involved in team meetings, Slack chats, and shout-outs.
While there is some work to do upfront to source and onboard augmented staff, this process saves you more time and money than the hiring of a new employee would. It also allows you to spend money only when it’s needed and when you’re sure your company can support a new IT employee.
Where Middle Tennessee Businesses Go for IT Staff Augmentation
If you’re struggling to justify the hiring of a new employee to get the IT support you need, here are some reasons why companies choose IT staff augmentation instead:
- Temporarily fill gaps in your team
- Cost-effectively build out your IT support capabilities
- Improve IT efficiency and support
- Get specialized support the moment you need it
- Adopt new technologies with minimal disruption
- Expand your team’s capacity only when there’s a need for it
- Empower company growth in a measured manner
To get started, you just need to find the right IT services partner for your business. If you’re located in middle Tennessee, consider Magnum Computer Services for all your IT staff augmentation needs. From providing an in-house help desk to offering project-based support, we’ll ensure that your IT team is able to meet all your employees’ and customers’ technological needs.
Interested in learning more? Request a custom quote.
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