IT Staff Augmentation Vs. Managed Services

With the increase in the IT industry’s demands for specialized professionals, having an in-house employee takes more investment. Big businesses can afford to hire an in-house employee but it is a tough task for smaller businesses. Adding to it, with only in-house employees a company experiences stagnancy in talent and skills.

Comparatively, outsourcing is better in terms of monetary investment, time-saving, and amount of effort. It helps the company to explore and get expert minds at work. For outsourcing the work, there are two fundamental options. One is Staff Augmentation and another is Managed Services.

Here we will compare both of these options and understand Staff augmentation vs managed services. As one of the top bespoke IT services company, we will differentiate, compare and analyze the more suitable choice for Both IT Staff Augmentation and Managed Services.

Meaning of IT Staff Augmentation

It is an outsourcing strategy used for hiring skilled and expert tech professionals from external sources. These professionals cover the necessary positions in the team temporarily or permanently according to the work demands.

IT staff augmentation services allow a business to choose professionals that are entirely suitable for your requirements. In simpler terms, staff augmentation is an outsourcing service from an external provider.

In this model, resources are employed by the business, therefore, it eliminates the cost and liability of hiring full-time employees. This strategy works by determining existing staff capabilities and defining what more skills are required.

Meaning of Managed IT Services

Managed Services is the task of offloading general tasks to an expert for reducing costs, improving quality services, and getting industry experience. The Managed Services Model is handled by third-party agencies or vendors.

The third party is a managed service provider responsible for supervising the functionality of the services, equipment, and documents. These all processes are managed under Service Level Agreement, where the client pays for a monthly subscription.

Benefits of IT Staff Augmentation and Managed IT Services

As we have understood the meaning of both Staff Augmentation and Managed services, let’s have a look at their benefits. This list of benefits will give you potential reasons to choose one of them.

Here are 5 benefits of IT Staff Augmentation Services

Let’s first look at the benefits of IT Staff Augmentation Services to understand its strengths.

1. Experience and Competitive Edge

The model of IT Staff Augmentation Services helps in finding professionals who are experienced in their field and can give better expertise due to their sharpened skillset. The professionals don’t require any training or assistance like interns.

With experience, you get to have a competitive edge in the market with the help of the expertise and experience of the professionals. Due to its nature of being short-term, Staff augmentation services give more flexibility for hiring. The presence of external talent allows the firm to reach greater markets.

2. Efficiency and Effective skills

Staff augmented services help small and medium-sized businesses to save operational costs, and get a good return on investment. The costs of infrastructure and equipment are held responsible by the organization which supplies the professionals.

Professionals when working from their home, they are completely accountable for their working costs. Hence, staff augmentation services not only decrease the cost of hiring skilled IT experts but also minimizes investment size for operations.

3. Wider Exposure and more choices

This model allows you to have a flexible hiring system on a short-term basis without investing in a full-fledged workforce. Often there are risks of failure in hiring the workforce, although the roadblock can be jumped with the help of Staff Augmented Services.

When companies hire on a short-term basis focused on a project, they can check their acceptability in an ever-changing market and expand their firms. Adding to it, flexible hiring allows one to look for better skills and proficiencies.

4. Adapting to the ever-changing market

A company is owned by a single person, but it is run by employees working for it. These employees make the body of the company and create an image for the organization. Often a fixed employee group results in stagnation of ideas, expertise, and opinions.

A business that requires to go with the flow of trends requires a part of the workforce to completely suit the contemporary market demands. A firm requires unconventional and innovative solutions for everyday business demands.

5. Complete Project Control

With augmented staff services, the organization serves the business a complete project autonomy. The outsourcing company will keep in mind to determine the business requirements and guide the professionals to follow the directions.

This way staff augmentation will ensure your project is completed to your specifications.

Here are 5 Benefits of Managed IT Services

We have understood the pros of getting professionals from Staff Augmentation, now let’s have a look at why even Managed IT Services is a good choice.

1. Working with Concentration

The IT businesses experience extreme workload due to day to day increasing demands and technological updates. The IT team might be able to handle the workload, but they sometimes get burned out and get distracted from the core work.

Managed services come into a role that makes the employees free to focus on their specialized work and fills the gap where it is needed. It can help you in determining the level of services you require, be it a partial service or an entire IT department.

2. Lower and scalable Investment

Investment requirements in IT industries are very high. For IT industries, unexpected costs might come up at any time. These costs are generally included in the operational budget of Managed Service Providers.

Operational Costs cover the charges of repairing hardware breakdowns, and maintenance is included in the monthly budget. You can even surpass the costs of salaries, benefits, insurance, and infrastructural maintenance.

3. Quick Response with expertise

In the contemporary world, slow work is seen for any reason as a big downtime. Also, sometimes 24/7 support is required due to heavy traffic in demands and usage. Managed services to provide support to you and your customer regularly and quickly.

With quickness the managed IT services also bring into account the expertise of the specialized professionals. Through the Managed IT Services Model, you can onboard professionals with qualifications, training, and experience into the industry.

4. Monitoring, Issue Fixing, and Reducing the risk

A business in IT is vulnerable to various issues before they boost up into serious problems. Adding to it, Managed IT Services are quick to respond to a type of changes or fixing. It leverages minimal downtime and maximum scalability.

Managed IT services help in mitigating possible business risks of finances, changing technologies, legalities, and changing market demands. Managed IT services help you get experts who know the industry and get well with security concerns.

5. Data Compliance and Cyber Security Support

IT companies are one of the businesses that are required to meet strict standards and requirements. The standards spell out specific rules for privacy, retail establishments, security, financial services, and reporting. Managed services providers are adroit and experienced in all of these areas.

Drawbacks of IT Staff Augmentation and Managed IT Services

With benefits, it is crucial to understand the possible drawbacks and make a good choice between the two options. These drawbacks are even important for eliminating the possible risks by understanding which precautions to take.

Here are IT Staff Augmentation Drawbacks

1. Lack of Institutional Knowledge

Only the employees who have been working for a long time can have in-depth knowledge about the company. Often projects require this type of thorough knowledge. Someone new may be an expert and better at the work compared to the employees, but they need to be educated and ramped about the company.

2. High cost for long-term labor

As we have observed in advantages, the costs incurred in IT Staff Augmentation are lesser compared to the permanent staff. But, by the time the contractors charge more and the talent demands to be paid well.

However, the model is ideal for short-term work as the charges of hiring and costs of pre-work such as legalities can be offset with increased labor costs.

3. Additional Process

When someone new joins the company, it is crucial to introduce them to the company’s process and history of records. With onboarding, the team’s process and monitoring resources are used.

Here are Managed Services Drawbacks

1. Lesser On-the-spot availability

Professionals from managed services are quick in giving solutions but as they are not available physically, they may not be able to fix urgent issues. Also, on-site support is not available as the managed services providers don’t have a local office.

Although, there is a way to minimize this drawback’s effect. You can ensure that the managed service provider (MSP) serves on-site services and even if not then they will be ready with quick solutions for urgent requirements.

2. Lower Retention Rate

Like many other things, the knowledge retention rate is also crucial. While outsourcing the work, a company might result in lowering its capability of own processing and retaining the knowledge of records.

3. Reduced Scope of Complete work

The area for which MSP works is not complete, it is generally limited to a part of the institution or the project. The provider gives you a list on which the professionals will work. When a problem arrives that is out of their contract, a solution or help will be unlikely.

What to Choose, IT Staff Augmentation or Managed Services?

A good choice depends on a well-researched and analyzed the decision of choosing the option. After understanding the pros and cons it is important to consider the firm’s requirements. The model should be chosen that fits the firm’s goals in the best way possible.

While Choosing the best one, or saying it in a better way, selecting a suitable one, you have to consider three distinctive features of these two models. These factors differentiate them and help us in understanding which type of model will suit us better.

Here are the three fundamentally distinguishing factors:

1. Duration of the Work

Both models differ in services according to the term they serve. If a firm requires professionals on a temporal basis with a pre-defined time frame, then staff augmentation is a good choice.

However, unlike staff augmentation, managed IT services are not limited to any time frame. Therefore, if it is not defined clearly, then managed services are good to go with.

2. Costs and Budget template

Staff augmentation services are clear with their price model. The professionals charge on an hourly basis and their cost is comparatively predictable and scalable.

Although with Managed IT services it is difficult to produce the cost as their charges and process are quite complicated. Their charges don’t simply depend on the hours but to the scope of work and level of services to be delivered.

3. Responsibilities and Command

When talking about staff augmentation, allows the businesses to have control and supervision over staff hiring, operations, and processes. But the team isn’t responsible for the outcome, as the firm will have complete control.

Managed services will share the responsibility of creating a successful project. For the shared responsibility, the providers will have control of employment, workflows, operations, and project guidance.

Therefore, in this factor, you need to consider whether you want a shared responsibility where professionals are accountable for the project’s success or you want to have complete control over the operations and process while the professionals work for you.

Takeaway Note

Being an IT firm in this competitive market is quite difficult and requires complete strategical solutions and analytics. Therefore, IT Staff Augmentation and Managed IT Services come with the best solutions for using external professionals for work.

In several terms, hiring offshore professionals can help you in having a competitive edge, better market understanding, and more industrial adaptability.

Auxano Global Services is one of the best software development agency to provide accountability, and cutting-edge technology and employment solutions. We have experts selected from fine filters of industry experience and curiosity for new trends in technology. They adapt to the changing environment and work best as External Professionals in any firm they join.

If you want to have competitive solutions for External Professionals, then contact us now.