What a difference a couple of years makes. From business as usual to complete disruption to finding a new balance that works for your organization, the last few years have been a rollercoaster for most companies and their employees.
Video conferencing, which was once mostly thought of as occasionally necessary and nice to have, has become a central, must-have tool in our daily lives. According to SkyQuest Technology Consulting, the video conferencing market increased by around 20% in 2022, with a total of $7.71 billion, and it is expected to reach a value of USD 13.18 billion by 2028.
Basically, virtual meetings are here to stay. While a few people still think everyone should return to an office setting, most leaders now realize that most employees work well in remote situations, finding no lag in productivity. The question is no longer “how would working remotely work?” It’s “how do we work better while remote?”
Virtual Advantages
Companies continue to realize the many advantages of the remote and hybrid work landscape. Flexibility and work-life balance are wins for employees. For organizations, decreased spending in travel and subsequent expenses, office space, commuter benefits, and miscellaneous in-office expenses and repairs are just some of the values that can add to better business. Global Workplace Analytics found that companies can save up to $11,000 for every employee working two or three days remotely per week.
Another advantage of our new virtual world is the expansion of our teams. Organizations no longer need to look in their backyard for recruiting, giving them more support around DEI initiatives and expanding their talent pool. Something as simple as virtual meetings can expand ideas from local to global, which can ultimately mean higher ROI and profit margins.
It also means businesses can quickly look for external resources to fill internal gaps. Staff/team augmentation is growing quickly as a solution to fill in for more highly skilled areas. These digital and development experts are waiting to help bring a company’s vision to life.
As any business knows, staffing, especially a department, is a challenging task. Having an idea is the first part, but finding and developing the right staff you need to make that idea happen can be costly and time-consuming. A lot goes into hiring just one employee, such as onboarding, training, and benefits. Not to mention ensuring everyone works well together and that all the puzzle pieces are correct and in the right place. What’s good on paper may not play out correctly once assembled. This process can lengthen timelines, increase spending, and create unengaged employees.
Advantages of using team augmentation include:
- Filling a skills gap by using a team with the needed expertise and experience already in place.
- Discarding time-consuming training to get a team up to speed on programs and nuances.
- Eliminating the need for searching, interviewing, and checking references and backgrounds.
- Raising quality standards through additional knowledge base.
- Having a team that is dedicated and responsible to one mission – results in more agility, productivity, and efficiency.
- Elevating your project with expert decision-making and executional know-how – giving your business a competitive edge.
- Completing one-and-dones, or more complicated long-term projects with ease.
- Accelerating organizational transformation.
Timing is Everything
Now that our world has gone remote, hiring a virtual team has opened many doors. You can tap into the expert skills of a ready-to-go team at the push of a button. You only need video conferencing, a cloud network (or other information-sharing capabilities), and an idea.
Outsourcing doesn’t work for every case. Typically, a position that will be critical in the day-to-day operations for years to come will be best filled by a full-time employee.. In other cases,executives think hiring an agency is the best option, but if you already have a dedicated department with the time, perhaps that talent needs to be utilized.
On the other hand, specific skills can be hard to find, especially for small-to-medium-sized businesses. Even in larger companies and enterprises, you might have a competent team, but often, they are pulled in too many directions to have the time to dedicate to your project in a meaningful way. This is where providing additional team support can improve performance, timelines, and profits.
Leave it to the Experts
Skill is the operative word when it comes to team augmentation. A knowledgeable, well-trained, and experienced team becomes plug-and-play for your initiative. Outsourcing was once thought about as best used for payroll, IT, and customer service, or sometimes in terms of certain types of industries, such as finance, healthcare, and insurance sectors.
However, today, the practice has grown to include more niche technical and creative abilities. One specialty that is growing by leaps and bounds is product development.
When you hire an outside product team, they can help you get up to speed faster, coming in with an already-in-place product development toolkit that can help you:
- Build strategic product roadmaps.
- Plan and execute complex digital projects/products.
- Create better user experience and user design (UX/UI).
- Take your product from concept to release and beyond.
- Provide added insight into launching your product.
Outsourcing has been an option for organizations for many decades. From a temp worker covering a leave to hiring an ad agency to launch a new product to bringing on a contractor to help on a particular project. Now, with staff augmentation, businesses have found these external teams can bring in new ideas, elevate projects, and jumpstart their projects.
According to Sia Partners, in 2018, 62% of companies reported 10% to 25% savings when they outsourced, and the remaining 38% of companies reported savings as high as 40%. And these cost-saving stats are growing.
Now, more than ever, essential parts of your business have new and exciting possibilities. If you are currently looking to plan, execute, or launch a digital product and need team augmentation to build strategic product roadmaps or other product development services, reach out to our team to learn more about how Trackmind can help.