In the hyper-competitive market we exist in today, it becomes impossible to turn down or delay a project, lest someone else swipe it up. Because of this, many teams are overworked, experiencing constant burnout and having to train in new technologies almost daily.
The answer most business owners find to this issue is to either augment/upgrade their resources or start outsourcing work to teams of specialists. Both methods alleviate pressure on existing teams, though one is more temporary than the other; they do not need to exist in a vacuum. Let’s start by asking the question;
What is Resource Augmentation?
“Resource Augmentation” is defined as changing your resources to better fit your business’s development. In that case, we will be referring to the “human” resource. As for when it becomes necessary, as companies expand their projects tend to do so as well, often becoming more complex and too much for a small team to maintain.
This method of resource configuration often takes a few forms, referring to the ability to more “permanently” alter the resources you have on hand. This method requires hiring, either locally or offshore, or training teams to handle such projects.
In a pinch, companies will often look to offshore hiring, since the required skills will be more abundantly found in the international market, plus it is cheaper to hire and keep an employee situated in a developing country.
Offshoring Versus Outsourcing – What is the difference?
Since both methods involve hiring someone(s) internationally to complete work, what is the difference? Well, first is the permanence of the resource you’ve acquired. Offshore hiring means you now have a resource attached to your company as permanently as the rest of your regular employees, albeit likely in a different country.
Outsourcing, on the other hand, involves hiring a team of pre-trained specialists to take on a project that you assign. You pay for their hours worked on your project, but they are not regular employees and will leave when the assigned project or projects are complete.
While only a temporary resource, outsourcing provides some much-needed respite for overburdened teams and is a financially sound investment to get projects done efficiently. Also, it is a point to note, both methods do not need to exist in a vacuum. You could use Outsourcing to provide your team with the leeway they need to train in new technologies, or as a holdover while you hire more employees offshore and train them as needed.
When It Might Be Time for You to Outsource
There are a few tell-tale ways we know it may be time for a company to outsource. Having been in this business for a while, we here at Genetech Solutions have been picking up projects from overburdened companies for over 20 years, building their websites and setting up technical solutions for them that will continue to help them in the long run.
If you want to know the details, we would recommend reading our blog on the top 5 signs signaling when it’s time to outsource. To give you the brief version though, it is time to outsource when;
- Your team is running on fumes,
- Your budget feels like a black hole,
- “Launch Day” feels like a myth,
- You’re stuck in skill shortage purgatory,
- Your innovation feels stale,
Most of these are self-explanatory, and outsourcing can be a major boon when you’re working with an exhausted or underskilled team, bumpy financials, or when you feel the company has plateaued and is making next to no progress.
None of these are pleasant situations either, which is often why outsourcing companies do their best to provide the smooth transition of projects to their team. We follow a strict code of values, such as 100% transparency, to make sure you, as the client, are never in the dark about the status of your projects.
Conclusion
To conclude and answer the first question we asked, what is better, resource augmentation or outsourcing? The answer is that it widely depends on the situation. Outsourcing can be utilized to give a company a boost over a recent upsurge of projects coming their way, they can also provide a company with room to breathe so that they can alter their resources freely.
This solution is simply a temporary one, and it is only by training their current employees, or hiring new specialists to add to their team, that companies can ready themselves for the inevitable growth of the scope of future projects.
The answer remains to see how much room you have to work with, depending on the context of the situation.
