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Staff Augmentation vs Consulting, Which Is Better For You?

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Author: Hania Saleem, Mar 17, 2023

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The competitive market is constantly changing its course of dynamics forcing businesses to expand their domain expertise to cause disruption and stay relevant.

Every day leading enterprises and small businesses recruit new resources in order to find the best-suited fit that comprehends their demands.

According to the research, 91% of employers said to favor applicants who have prior working experience. This validates that every talent acquisition department is in a constant hunt to acquire leading market-leading expertise.

However, the hiring process can be quite lengthy, time-consuming, and costly for companies. Due to this factor, companies leverage staff augmentation or consulting to find a cost-effective solution.

But what is the main reason difference in staff augmentation vs consulting and how do you choose which one is suited for your business?

Let us help you break down these two major types of talent acquisition support into what they are, when should businesses utilize them, and the advantages associated with each one of them.

What Is Staff Augmentation?

Staff augmentation in simple words is choosing a staffing partner to provide you with pre-vetted resources for their expertise, industry knowledge, and communication skills. It involves hiring additional employees, either on a temporary or permanent basis, to fill in the talent gaps within their existing team. Each resource is highly screened after passing through several phases of interviews and tests to ensure they acquire the right potential the talent-hunting company demands for their project.

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When Should Businesses Use Staff Augmentation?

Staff augmentation is appropriately applicable within diverse scenarios as per what your business demands, let us look into a few of the considerable situations when businesses should use staff augmentation.

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1.Managing Increased WorkLoad

When businesses are under the influence of a sudden immense workload, staff augmentation can help them temporarily hire resources at a quicker rate than indulging themselves in a lengthy and time-consuming hiring process. The augmented resources have the expertise to add value to the real-time need for solutions while generously handling the sudden increase in the workload previously unmanageable due to the insufficiency of staff.

2.Project-Based Work

Software development companies or other service providers who work on specific projects at a time can leverage form staff augmentation. Instead of opting for recruiting full-time resources, businesses can augment temporary resources to work within the contract for the duration of the project.

3.Low On Capital

When businesses are experiencing a downfall or an overall deduction in the amount of capital left, it is best suggested to invest wisely and smartly. Staff augmentation is a go-to practice when you need to save up on your cost. It allows businesses to hire resources from a staffing vendor while helping eliminate the recruitment, training, and benefits costs associated with the traditional hiring process.

Benefits Of Staff Augmentation

Staff augmentation helps to complement your team and cater to your business needs on both a short and long-term basis in several ways. Let us help you identify a few major benefits of staff augmentation that can help your organization in several ways.

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1.Flexibility

A major benefit of Staff augmentation is providing businesses with a community of professional experts who work all around the world at diverse time zones. This allows businesses to work in a highly flexible environment while upscaling and downscaling the workforce based on current business needs.

The limitations businesses have is omitted with staff augmentation as it provides the ability to easily control the size of the team you require to be working at the moment. This is because the staffing vendor company providing you with pre-vetted resources takes care of the additional cost and managerial responsibilities associated with permanent employees.

2.Access The Untapped Global Human Potential

Staff augmentation helps you tap into the global elite talent pool of undiscovered human capital while leveraging your business to smartly run its operation acquiring the best of the best. It eliminates any geographical barriers hindering your hiring process of acquiring quality talent.

Leveraging staff augmentation, businesses get to hire expert professionals high in demand or scarce in their local talent market. Each resource hired from anywhere around the world gets to bring diverse perspectives and innovative ideas to gain a competitive advantage all around the world.

3.Reduced Cost

As staff augmentation allows businesses to access the global network of talent, it allows businesses to deal with resources at their country’s respective labor rates. Countries with labor costs serve as an advantage to businesses seeking a cross-effective solution.

In addition, the vendor company ensures to bring in the resources who have the expertise your project demands in order to ensure the overall quality of your service or product is not compromised. This has multiple added benefits of reducing the overhead cost associated with maintaining an in-house team and the overall affiliated cost of the pricy hiring process.

4.Reduced Risk

When a company hires employees, it takes a leap of faith in the employee performing well. Upon dissatisfaction with the employee's performance, the company takes time to lay off the employee in order to keep a low employee retention rate associated with the image of the company.

Staff augmentation, however, eliminates the risks by rigorously screening the applicants prior, and upon the lack of standards being met a replacement is arranged, leveraging the company to be understaffed and overstaffed swiftly. Moreover, legal obligations such as tax compliance and other employee benefits associated with hiring a permanent resource are eliminated. All of these points result in a reduced risk of a bad hire, legal obligation, and other risks associated with your company.

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What Is Consulting?

Consulting is also known as project-based consulting which involves taking advice from experts into consideration in order to be closer to achieving your company objectives. Unlike hiring employees, these are professional consultants with expert opinions working externally with the company’s existing in-house team.

When Should Businesses Use Consulting?

Businesses should consider utilizing consulting in the cases of the following scenarios.

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1. Need For Strategic Development

When businesses find the need of using valuable strategic advice, consulting firms can serve as immense leverage. The advice can vary as per the customizable business needs covering areas of market research, competitor analysis, and analyzing potential growth opportunities.

2.Enhanced Processes

On the account of businesses experiencing a downfall in the achievement of desirable results while suffering from serious problems in business operations, consulting firms can be of use. They help by streamlining operations and increasing efficiency by integrating modern practices and new technologies.

3.Businesses Embracing Change

Businesses embracing a transition such as digitally transforming their industry, merging with another association, and much more. In such scenarios consulting can serve as a great help in navigating useful ways to deal with organizational challenges to the changes.

Benefits Of Consulting

Consulting hands-down is a proven and definite solution for many struggling businesses.Let us help you analyze whether you can take advantage of any benefits consulting brings. Following are major benefits of consulting your organization can leverage from.

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1.Efficiency

Consultants can advise companies to streamline their operations and improve the overall efficiency of their practices. A consultation company ensures to downsize the overhead cost the company is bearing while salvaging time and resources smartly.

Businesses can easily get help identifying their problem areas of insufficiency and foster talent development by providing training to the company’s employees. The guidance and support are ongoing for a good period of time leading businesses to track their progress, adjust strategies, and make improvements over time

2.Competitive Advantage In The Market

A consulting firm can help you gain a competitive advantage by providing you with insights into the industry’s trends and best practices. Businesses can leverage this by developing strategies accordingly and identifying opportunities in the market that help them embark on grounds of unique brand identity.

The consultancy company usually acquires a wide array of investor networks. You can utilize their reach by finding and getting linked with potential investors or clientele. Building relationships with your consulting provider can help you tap into the list of valuable business referrals.

3.Find Solutions With Expert Advice

A consulting provider holds in-depth industry knowledge and expertise in an array of domains. This knowledge can help businesses identify the root cause of the problem hindering their operations while developing customized solutions as per your business needs.

One major benefit consulting provides businesses is helping them analyze the areas they are struggling with and deliver valuable unbiased advice with a focused objective of helping you find smart solutions. The areas of improvement are carefully looked into and the best decision to deal with the issue is made.

4.Helping Businesses Drive Innovation

Consulting helps businesses meet unique ideas leveraging them to stay ahead of the curve and launch innovation that disrupts the market. They provide meaningful recommendations on integrating new technologies, services, and products that help businesses grow.

Businesses can easily identify new trends in the market while adapting them into practices to stay relevant in the industry and succeed. Consultancy allows building a room for innovation and recommends a fresh perspective to cater to problems arising in between.

Staff Augmentation vs Consulting - Main Difference

Staff augmentation and consulting stand on the same grounds of helping businesses achieve their goals faster however, it has a few major differences that make staff augmentation vs consulting a big debate for organizations to overcome before deciding which one to pursue.

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1.Difference In Objective

Staff augmentation vs consulting holds a major difference in the objectives it helps the businesses to reach. Staff augmentation relies on allowing businesses to augment external resources to fulfill their talent gaps. Whereas consulting provides expert advice and guidance to help companies reach their overall objectives.

2.Level Of Control Provided To Client

Staff augmentation allows its clients to have a much more enhanced level of control by working alongside the organization's existing team. Consulting, on the other hand, forsakes a bigger role in its external resources having more control by providing valuable suggestions and recommendations. Often the models and strategies utilized by these teams might be unfamiliar to the company and result in a rise in the difficulty of adaptation.

3.Decision-Making Ability

Staff augmentation is entirely related to providing recourse who bring their unique expertise that helps businesses find valuable solutions and make decisions. The augmented resource works as an extension of your team and follows your guidelines. However, a consultant aligns you with a roadmap helping you acquire experts with experiences within various industries. Each consultant brings you innovative ideas to enhance the decision-making ability of your business.

Faqs

1.Is it important to evaluate a staff augmentation company based on reviews and testimonials?

Absolutely yes, When choosing a staffing partner, it is crucial to seek referrals from their previous clients and skim through the reviews they have been given upon their service. A good staff augmentation company would be transparent in terms of what their previous clientele has to say about them.

2.What factors should you consider prior to availing services from a staff augmentation company?

When availing services from a staff augmentation company you must determine the required skills and expertise for your project, determine the level of scalability and flexibility required for the project or task, research the track record of staff augmentation firms, and ensure their compliance with your legal and contractual requirements.

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Author: Hania Saleem

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