Making a Choice: Staff Augmentation vs Managed IT Services

    Enterprises usually struggle with staff augmentation and managed IT services. You should decide what outsourcing model your company needs based on the results of a detailed cost benefit analysis. 

    What is Staff Augmentation?

    Staff augmentation refers to the process of hiring experts in a certain field from a service provider in order to complement your team. It has various benefits. Here you can read about the benefits of outsourcing software development services. The following are some of the benefits of staff augmentation:

    • Most of the times these experts you hire are temporary. So, what’s the point of hiring full time employees? You don’t have to pay them full time wages. It is cost effective. 
    • With staff augmentation you can always scale the size of your team up and down. 
    • Companies, specifically software development companies find it hard to find permanent employees. The demand for IT services is increasing and more and more software engineers are getting ready to change their employer. Most custom software development companies cannot avoid this trend. But staff augmentation can help you make it less worrisome. 

    Staff augmentation is a useful but a short term solution. Some software development companies try to make it into a permanent one. But with staff augmentation the company is fully responsible for the management process, quality assurance and the end results. 

    What are Managed IT services?

    Managed services is the practice of outsourcing skills required by a company from a third party that can provide those skills. The service provider delivers what you have asked for while being bound by a contract. This contract specifies the service and quality metrics that must be met. Here you can read about what software development company will be able to help your business. 

    The following are the benefits of managed IT services. 

    • The cost of the services will depend on the demands of the customer. The vendors will tie the price to results. 
    • The service delivery is supported by an agreement. The time and scope of the services are documented. In short, they are incentivized to increase the value of their work.
    • Managed IT services are often bigger than staff augmentation companies. So, they offer you more skills, knowledge and solutions. This is what’s required for the changing requirements of customers. 

    Staff Augmentation vs Managed Services

    As we said earlier, one is not better than the other. Both of the outsourcing models have their pros and cons. You should perform cost benefit analysis and then make a decision. But still if your company requires services that your IT department lacks at a certain time then you should prefer staff augmentation. 

    But if you need continuous operating model that can provide you scalability on demand, predictive cost analysis with little to no delivery risks then go for managed IT services. 

    Conclusion

    Most of the times it is not possible for a company to find a single versatile approach for the development of the project sourcing. Sometime the requirements are better met with staff augmentation and other times managed IT services seems to be a good solution. Once in a while a combination of the two may also work for the project. 

    The final decision will depend on the company’s assessment of their time, needs, budget and other requirements.

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