Today marketing, sales, and revenue operations increasingly rely on contract resources to add much-needed capability and capability fast.

This article is a primer on the what, why, and how.

Getting clear what staff augmentation is … and isn’t

Staff augmentation is nothing more than adding to in-house staff through a third-party provider.

This approach can help organizations access talent with the skills required to move the business forward. The company partners with a staffing provider, either a generalist or specialist organization, to fill positions. Often thse roles have specific project-based objectives.

Now let’s answer the question why it is necessary.

Staff augmentation is appealing for many reasons

Traditional approaches to finding, hiring, onboarding, training, and retaining key talent are time-consuming processes for many companies. Regardless of industry, more and more organizations are facing critical shortfalls when it comes to available talent.

Consider:

Talent shortages have more than tripled in the last 10 years.

Virtually every employer is struggling to fill open positions.

The old employee-employer relationship is shifting, accelerated by the pandemic.

Myth vs. reality: Common misconceptions of staff augmentation

Let’s debunk common misconceptions and why they could are wrong.

Myth #1. Staff augmentation is the same as technical support

This might seem silly to some, but it is a common misconception.

Staff augmentation adds talented people with the required expertise to the team. Tech support is designed to help users solve common problems related to a product or service. In other words, it works alongside in-house employees and fill on-demand roles for as long as a business needs.

Myth #2. Cost savings are not significant

Not true. In most cases, working with outsourced services is definitely more cost-efficient than sustaining large departments.

It lets businesses bypass much of the direct and indirect costs of in-house employees, such as recruiting, training, and retention, insurance and retirement benefits, workers’ compensation, and more.

Myth #3: It has no long-term benefit

Temporary teams do only what they were hired for and then become useless.

Great staffing partners often provide a choice for services that take place after their contributions come to an end. Similarly, in-house teams can learn a lot from outsourced teams and their expertise.

Myth #4: It’s difficult to manage outsourced teams.

Unless you are mystified by progress meetings and key performance indicators, this is false.

These teams are trained to acclimate to new environments in no time and mold themselves into the workflow and processes of the project or organization for which they are working. Working virtually is no longer limits productivity.

Myth #5. Staff augmentation is like business process outsourcing

Any similarities you can find are superficial only.

A skilled professional becomes part of your in-house team, even if they are not an official employee. With business process outsourcing, the entire business processes are outsourced to a team employed by a third party. Payroll is an example.

5 Scenarios when you should turn to staff augmentation

#1. When you need to scale your team quickly

Turning to an outsourcing company is a great way to expand your team quickly. Because the service adds expertise to your staff, you can ramp up your efforts fast and without delay.

#2. When you can’t find specific skill sets

There are many types of projects that call for specific skills or domain expertise. Staff augmentation works wonders in this type of scenario. Outsourcing companies are completely focused on finding the best talent around, including professionals who have in-demand skills.

#3. When you need to reduce costs

Hiring local talent can get expensive quickly. You need to spend a lot of time and effort finding the right professionals, offer competitive salaries to outbid other companies looking to hire the same talent and invest even more money on perks and infrastructure.

When you outsource, you can forget all this, and other indirect costs. The only thing you’ll need to pay for is the service itself.

#4. When you need to be more innovative

When an existing team has been working together for some time, all its members start to think alike. They may benefit productivity, but hurt your innovation.

Not true. Outsourcing to add to an established team, you bring fresh ideas and new ways of doing things.

#5. When you want to take your team to the next level

Perhaps your existing team can handle its current workload. Maybe it has the skills its needs.

Even in this scenario, adding new talent can provide the extra muscle you lack to work on new projects that might give you a competitive edge.

Working with staffing augmentation providers

When working with staffing augmentation providers, you save yourself the headache of hiring in-house, while still getting access to extra resources and specialized talent.

Now your in-house teams focus on mission-critical tasks, rather than more hiring and onboarding processes. The staff augmentation provider also handles time-consuming processes like training and upskilling, freeing you to focus on big-picture tasks and running the business.

Innovative team augmentation solutions

Staff augmentation can positively impact your business operation and improve your bottom line if you do it the right way. At RaaStr, we provide a broad range of fractional or full-time outsourced solutions in sales, marketing, and revenue operations.

Explore our offerings, from straightforward staff augmentation to turnkey managed services.

Make sure you choose the best provider when deciding to outsource.