Staff augmentation and outsourcing are terms that are thought to be interchangeable, but there are actually some key differences between the two.

Both are excellent strategies for adding more manpower with just fewer resources dished out. They help deliver more projects in less time and expenses. It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved.

Staff Augmentation Adds More Staff

Augmentation does mean making something greater in size or number. Staff augmentation means you will be adding more to your current number of team members for an office or so.

Companies that offer staff augmentation will allow you to have more employees working remotely. You have the option of having more people working on projects without having the trouble of fitting them in small offices.  

Remote work also lessens any electrical or internet costs. It also minimizes the bandwidth for office networks which means that your current onsite team members will still be able to maximize what they have in the office.

Still, that does not mean that remote employees from staff augmentation will not be able to communicate with you or your team members directly. They should be able to respond to any message or questions you may have through instant messaging channels such as Skype or Slack.

With staff augmentation, you will be able to add more people to the mix without having to worry about space. Some companies even hire more than 10 remote employees to add to their manpower so they can take on more projects later on.

Regular Outsourcing Finishes More Projects

Outsourcing does not necessarily mean that you will be adding more employees to your office remotely. The employees do work remotely, but they only do so for just a project or two.

Some can even be outsourced just for small tasks. With that, they are considerably less expensive to hire too.

Outsourcing is great for meeting sudden deadlines or large tasks that cannot be handled by your core team members alone. After the project is done, you can choose to renew the contract or not which gives you the freedom to just look for more projects.

Some businesses even take on projects and services that they cannot really offer with their core staff. They outsource the projects to remote teams which gives them more revenue even without having the whole team onsite themselves.

Augmented Staff Can Help With Internal Projects

Since augmented staff are essentially part of your core team, they can also be tasked to do internal projects. They can work with your onsite employees to finish internal tasks without paying a premium.

Augmented staff can also use your internal processes to work more efficiently. They are considered to be part of the internal team who take on more crucial tasks.

For instance, augmented IT staff can help you build your own company website. They can also fix any security breach or even upgrade your servers. Your data will still be secured.

Some of the augmented staff can also be tasked to coordinate with outsourced teams for monitoring. This can all be done even if they are not physically present in your offices or base of operations.

Outsourcing Can Process More External Projects

Probably the best thing about outsourcing is that you can take on more projects even without disturbing the internal team. A whole outsourced team can take on a new project altogether and still give you the control and profit.

Your core team members can go on with more important tasks. No need to involve them in the external projects that will be handled by the outsourced team.

With more external projects, you will be able to rake in more revenue, This, in turn, can be used to take on more external projects through outsourcing or work on your staff augmentation even more.

Staff Augmentation Needs Training, Outsourcing Only Needs Briefing

Augmented staff do need training on internal and business processes that you may use for your company. This is to guarantee that they will be following company policies and guidelines too.

Training can be cost-effective if done properly. The challenging part is that staff augmentation demands remote training instead of having them on-site.

Outsourced teams do not necessarily need training because they will be working on separate projects. What they do need is proper briefing for the goals and the key performance indicators that they need to watch out for.

Flexisource IT’s commitment to excellence has created many long-time business relationships over the years and has continued to attract new customers across many different markets both locally and from abroad.