One of the major challenges affecting business growth and scalability is the shortage of top talents or specific skills required for specific tasks. Again, the traditional hiring method can be time-consuming, expensive, and complex, making it hard to onboard some experts who will accelerate business growth and scalability. The good side of all these is that you can save your business or small startup through offshore staff augmentation. With offshore staff augmentation, you will be able to hire top talents from across the globe while enjoying the flexibility that comes with this hiring method. In the end, your business will grow rapidly while scaling your employees and other resources where necessary, thus saving you from some expenses.

This guide explores all the insights you need to know about offshore staff augmentation, including the benefits, challenges & solutions, and how to carry out offshore staff augmentation successfully, among many other valuable insights.

What is offshore staff augmentation?

Offshore staff outsourcing involves onboarding a third-party service provider from other countries to collaborate with your in-house team remotely. In the end, you will bring top talents or specialized professionals into your company who aren’t available in your location without incurring full-time hiring expenses.

Engagement models for offshore staff augmentation

How to work or collaborate with your offshore staff augmented team differs depending on the guidelines of the specific agency. Here are the main engagement models of offshore staff augmentation you should know:

• Project-Based Model

With this model, you onboard an offshore augmented team to carry out specific tasks or handle a particular project. This saves costs since you only pay for the service delivered while providing maximum flexibility.

A perfect example is an organization situated in India that has a complex mobile app development project, but the in-house team lacks the full potential or required skills to accomplish some tasks effectively. In such an instance, such an organization can opt for a project-based offshore staff augmentation approach instead of hiring full-time workers.

The augmented staff will then focus on the specific project as they work closely with the in-house team until the project is completed successfully.

Once the project is over, the organization can easily terminate the engagement or contract with the augmented staff, thus scaling down the team size without having to commit to long-term engagements.

• Dedicated Team Model

This is a common engagement model in the offshore staff augmentation method. Here, the offshore team focuses solely on a client’s project and tasks once they start working together.

The dedicated team model offers high flexibility and control processes. The in-house team integrates seamlessly with the offshore augmented team and works collaboratively, enhancing the success of the project delivery.

A good example is an agency located in India with an offshore dedicated team from the UK whose main purpose is to handle digital marketing. The dedicated team focuses mainly on SEO, content creation, and social media management, among many other digital marketing campaigns, to ensure the agency achieves its set goals.

• Hybrid Model

This model is a combination of both project-based and dedicated engagement models, which helps businesses achieve their set goals.

In this case, a company has the flexibility to adopt a project-based model, a dedicated team, or both. It all depends on the dynamics of the projects or tasks at hand.

For instance, a global consulting company located in the USA sources many projects from different regions, with each project having unique delivery timelines and general requirements. As a way of accomplishing an individual client’s goal, such an organization must use a hybrid engagement model.

For short-term projects with clear needs, the company will go for a project-based model where it partners with offshore service providers from other countries, with each team assigned to handle specific project requirements.

In the case of long-term projects that keep changing, the company will go for a dedicated team model where the augmented offshore team works exclusively for the company, ensuring the project is completed successfully with the changing requirements.

Generally, the offshore teams work with the in-house teams seamlessly, offering scalability and flexibility without having to incur the costs of keeping the dedicated teams once their work is over.

When to consider offshore staff augmentation

So, when do you know you need to consider staff augmentation for your company? Below are key indications that it is high time you opted for offshore staff augmentation:

• Foster innovation

When you need to take your business to the next level, it means onboarding some specialized experts who will bring innovative ideas. Therefore, you may need to explore different cultures to boost overall productivity, hence the need to consider offshore staff augmentation. In the end, you will be able to generate new ideas and concepts that will put your business ahead of the market competition.

• Missing skill gaps

This is a major challenge to many businesses, especially startups. Lack of enough expertise can affect business growth while limiting innovative ideas that could save the company big time.

Once you realize you lack adequate expertise or specialized skills, it is a signal that you need to consider offshore staff augmentation.

• Saving costs

When you realize that you are working under a fixed budget or want to save some cash for business expansion, offshore staff augmentation is the solution here.

You will save more on operational costs, full-time employee salaries & benefits, and many other related expenses.

• No geographical constraints

When your business operations are flexible enough without geographical limitations, it is a clear sign that offshore staff augmentation will benefit you big time.

You can proceed to onboard top talents from across the globe who will work seamlessly with your in-house team remotely to increase productivity.

• Flexible management

With offshore staff augmentation, you can manage the team smoothly depending on the dynamics and nature of the projects at hand. For instance, you can choose either short-term or long-term engagement. Besides, you have all the freedom to add or reduce the number of augmented staff based on the project requirements. This gives you flexibility when managing your teams.

• Mitigating business risks

When your company doesn’t have adequate resources to commit to full-time hiring processes, you can opt for offshore staff augmentation and onboard top talents from across the globe when the need arises. This helps you save your business from unavoidable risks while keeping it adaptable and agile.

Benefits of offshore staff augmentation

There are many reasons why offshore staff augmentation is the best hiring model for your business. Below are some of the top advantages of offshore staff augmentation:

• Ease of scalability

One of the major benefits of making offshore staff augmentation ideal for many businesses is scalability.

A company can easily scale the employees either up or down depending on the demands of the available projects or tasks. Besides, you can decide to commit your engagement on a long-term or short-term basis, depending on the volume of work available.

This ease of scalability comes with many benefits. For instance, you can easily adapt to changing industry trends by responding to emerging requirements. Above all, you get to use resources well, ensuring none goes to waste.

This, in turn, creates a seamless and productive working environment, ensuring no risks associated with economic changes and market changes.

• Access to top/specialized talents

Offshore staff augmentation gives you an opportunity to explore and reach out to global talents. While it may be hard and expensive to hire specialized talents locally, you can easily solve the issue and save your company through offshore staff augmentation.

These specialized global talents will accelerate project delivery while maintaining high-quality standards. This enables an organization to overcome some challenges while staying ahead of the competitive market.

• Reduced costs

With offshore staff augmentation, you will save more costs while maintaining high standards. You can divert the saved expenses on other plans and strategies to expand the business, such as product promotion and research & development processes.

With offshore staff augmentation, you won’t incur equipment costs, rent or office space expenses, employee benefits & monthly salaries, insurance, and taxes. This will save you more resources you can use to expand your business.

• Access to advanced or trending technology

Advanced and emerging technologies are some of the core factors that enhance rapid business growth.

One of the best ways to introduce advanced and emerging technologies to your company is through offshore staff augmentation. By reaching out to global talent, you not only acquire skilled personnel but also experts who have advanced tools.

Once you access and introduce these technologies into your company, you will beat the market competition, increase productivity, and maximize revenue.

• Improved productivity

Offshore staff augmentation allows you to onboard a global team dedicated to handling your project faster and in a professional manner. This makes it easy to deliver work and projects of high standards in a timely manner, thus enhancing productivity.

What’s more, combining your in-house with remote offshore team motivates the teams to work autonomously, thus creating a sense of accountability and attentiveness to details. This, in turn, gives your business a competitive advantage which maximizes productivity in diverse ways.

• Streamlined management

It is easy to assign specific tasks among the teams with offshore staff augmentation. You don’t need to hassle between managing main work and admin tasks. You simply assign specific duties to each team, which gives you adequate time to manage all the work and tasks seamlessly.

In the end, you get updates and projects of individual teams in a timely manner, enabling you to plan effectively. What’s more, assigning relevant tasks to specific teams gives your employees ample time to focus and stay committed to accomplishing the set goals and objectives of the company.

• Highly flexible

With offshore staff augmentation, you have the flexibility to choose specific talents when you need them. Again, you cannot be sure of how the project will progress, especially with the changing technologies, trends, and customer preferences. Offshore staff augmentation gives you the flexibility to adjust the team size and the type or skills relevant to a specific project.

Challenges of Offshore Staff Augmentation

While offshore staff augmentation offers a high level of scalability and flexibility for companies, it has some challenges that cannot go unnoticed. Below are some of the major challenges and solutions:

• Communication challenges

Sourcing talents from different countries with diverse cultural practices and communication languages can make it hard to understand the project requirements clearly. This can lead to errors, poor services, and disagreements between the in-house and the offshore teams, thus affecting overall project completion.

Solution: You can overcome this challenge by onboarding a customer success manager to oversee all the communication processes for each project to ensure both teams are on the same page. Above all, create an environment that encourages open feedback and frequent updates on the progress of each project.

• Time zone differences

Again, working with an offshore team means dealing with different time zones, and this can affect project completion, especially if you have tight deadlines.

Solution: Good planning is all you need to solve the time zone difference element when working with an offshore team. Use modern technologies to track and monitor the progress of individual projects, ensuring each project is delivered on time without affecting the quality.

• Quality control

Tracking and controlling the quality of the service delivered can be hard when dealing with an offshore team. The different practices, tools, resources, and standards enforced by different agencies can affect the final quality of your project.

Solution: Establish a reliable quality control management process and define the tools and resources for your company. This will help the offshore team understand your company’s culture and practices, thus maintaining the required quality across different projects.

• Hidden costs

Some offshore staffing agencies aren’t transparent with their pricing from the word go, and this can challenge you, especially when working with a fixed or tight budget. While some agencies charge on a monthly basis, some charge on an hourly basis.

Solution: always do prior research before settling with a specific service provider. Besides, during the interview session, make sure you state your pricing preferences clearly. Above all, ask your service provider about any hidden charges early enough. This will help you manage your resources well.

At Aalpha Information Systems, we offer transparent and fair charges for all our offshore software and mobile app development projects.

How to onboard offshore augmented staff: step-by-step process

Having explored how offshore staff augmentation benefits many organizations, the main question is, how can you onboard the augmented staff? What are the processes? Once you know it is high time you considered offshore staff augmentation, follow the simplified steps below to ensure the whole process turns out successfully:

• Know the problems and define the needs

Start by identifying the reasons why you need offshore staff augmentation. Do this by identifying the gaps or missing skill sets in your in-house team together with the issues you are experiencing.

Most importantly, understand the delivery timelines for the project in alignment with the requirements. You will need to explain all these details to your offshore augmented team later on.

Among the core questions you should ask yourself here include the following:

• What is the project like?
• Can the internal team handle all the processes?
• Which skills or expertise is lacking in the internal team?
• What is the delivery timeline?
• What should the project look like in the end?

Make sure you can define these questions before you move to the next step of onboarding offshore augmented staff.

• Select engagement models

Define whether your project requires long-term or short-term offshore teams. You can then choose the perfect engagement model, whether project-based, dedicated team, or hybrid model, depending on the type of project and overall requirements.

• Search for professionals in the required fields

At this point, you know the missing gaps in your company, and you understand the professionals or experts you need to be sourcing.

Perform some research and get several companies who have the skills and expertise you are looking for. Have a list of companies, then start filtering out in the next sections until you remain with the perfect match.

• Conduct initial interviews

At this step, you need to evaluate several elements that will help you remain the best fit for your company’s needs. Factor in elements such as availability, time zone differences, language barriers, tech stack, and project management processes, among many other elements. The goal is to ensure your offshore team is on the same page with your project needs.

Don’t forget to give a detailed description of the project delivery and general requirements to avoid misunderstandings later on. Above all, establish reliable communication channels and frequency for a smooth collaboration.

Finalize this step by choosing the ideal offshore partner for your company’s requirements.

• Sign contract

This is the final step when onboarding an offshore team to work with your internal team. The contract is a binding agreement that safeguards your business dealings and that of your partner.

Don’t forget to add all the relevant details in the contract to set clear requirements and boundaries.

Factors to consider when searching for the best offshore staff augmentation agency

Once you start the process of engaging third-party service providers through offshore staff augmentation, you need to find the right partner who will help you accomplish your business objectives. For these reasons, factor in the following elements when searching for a perfect offshore partner:

• Check track records and agency reputation

Check and review the agency’s reputation and past engagements with previous clients. Check case studies, reviews, and testimonials to weigh if they are a perfect match for your project.

• Expertise & specialization

Check the specialization and expertise of the service provider. Do the services align with what you are looking for? Do they offer services and solutions that align with your industry? This will enable you to select a partner with the same vision as your company.

• Talent pool and recruitment process

Your selected service provider must have the right experts with relevant qualifications in relation to what you are searching for. Don’t forget to review the training processes and onboarding procedures. This will enhance a seamless collaboration with your in-house team.

• Communication protocols

Communication is a core aspect of any task or project development. Therefore, discuss communication processes and how to handle urgent issues arising during project development. Create a platform for open and reasonable communication in relation to enhancing the success of the project.

• Scalability & flexibility

Is the service provider flexible enough to adapt to the changing or evolving project requirements?

Get an offshore agency that can easily adapt to changes within your organization and scale the services based on the demand and available resources.

These factors will help you pick the most suitable staff augmentation agency that will support you in accomplishing your business goals and objectives.

Conclusion

Offshore staff augmentation is a modern solution to the shortage of talent within an organization. Whether you are searching for project managers, software developers, mobile app developers, QA engineers, administrative personnel, or communication managers, among many other fields, you can opt for the offshore staff augmentation method and enjoy the flexibility that comes with this hiring model.

While the challenges will always be there, doing extensive research and planning effectively are the core strategies to enhance successful collaboration between in-house and offshore teams.

Offshore staff augmentation FAQs

What is the difference between offshore staff augmentation and outsourcing?

The onshore hiring model allows companies to onboard local talents, which in turn enhances better project management and seamless communication.

Offshore staff augmentation, on the other hand, allows companies to source talent from different countries, thus offering access to global talents and technologies that help bring fresh and innovative ideas that can accelerate the company’s growth.

However, both offshore staff augmentation and onshore hiring methods give businesses the flexibility and scalability to hire top talents without committing to long-term engagements.

Where can I get the best offshore service provider for my company?

There are a lot of offshore service providers available online. You only need to define your business goals and project requirements before searching for a perfect offshore service provider who aligns with the vision of your business.

Aalpha Information Systems, is your number-one offshore development center for all your tech requirements.

How will my business benefit from offshore staff augmentation?

You will save on costs while enjoying flexibility and scalability with offshore staff augmentation. You are free to add the teams or reduce the teams depending on the complexity and nature of your project without hiring full-time employees.

Besides, it is quick to onboard offshore staff, which accelerates project completion, thus faster time to market.

Want to hire offshore development team? Get in touch with our offshore outsourcing company : Aalpha information systems!