Technology has always been a rapidly developing career path for those that choose to follow it. IT jobs have exploded beyond our wildest imagination since the onset of the computer en masse and the introduction of the Internet. With that comes the challenge of building out strong teams that can cater to many ongoing functions within a company. The ability to work from home was something that, at one point, was a pipe dream or usually involved taking surveys or being a “mystery shopper.” Now in 2022, it’s not unusual to have an entirely distributed workforce without an office of any kind, relying solely on various communication applications and software systems to perform essential job functions. This is made stronger by cloud infrastructure and an ever-evolving mobile workflow.

For many companies, it is still essential to maintain a strong, dedicated in-house workforce for daily operational success. For others, smaller in-house teams are preferred while outsourcing to other companies or employees, usually, contractors are beneficial and can help fill in hiring gaps should those arise.

But if we take a step back, are companies leaving potential growth by not having an entirely in-house team? Or is staff augmentation here to stay?

What is Staff Augmentation?

We’re sure you’ve heard of staff augmentation, hiring outside developers, technicians, or any other type of employee to fill a talent gap. Sometimes it’s used temporarily, and other times call for more long-term endeavors with the potential, for some, to turn into full-time employment. 

Benefits of Staff Augmentation

Staff augmentation can get tricky depending on the goal of the company. On the one hand, short-term outsourcing could be beneficial when staff members are out on vacation, or a specialist skill set is needed for a particular project. Long-term outsourcing can be helpful for extended assignments or a longer-term stopgap between the time in-house staff is trained or hired for that outsourced role. 

Staff augmentation is also more cost-effective in most cases. This is because an augmentation firm usually handles the distribution of funds for payroll, and companies pay them a monthly fee. This saves the business from providing benefits but also disperses a lot of the tax burden usually associated with on-staff personnel. 

Problems and Things to Look Out For

One problem companies may face while looking to fill talent gaps is the length of commitments. The shorter the term, the more it usually costs. In some cases, like a six-week project that needs talent ASAP, it may be cheaper to hire an independent contractor or completely outsource the work. Some staff augmentation firms provide talent in blocks of time, which may require keeping staff for specific time frames (eight weeks minimum, for example) and could be more expensive than necessary.

Is Staff Augmentation Worth It?

That’s the million-dollar question, and for good reason: It’s an incredibly valuable service that helps fill a gap for a company. Just remember to assess the needs of your business to see if staff augmentation is right for you. The time to find dedicated in-house staff is often filled with multiple-stage interviews, salary and benefits negotiations, and ongoing training. 

The benefit of hiring in-house talent is that you’ll get the right candidate for the job you’re hiring for, and they’ll hopefully stick around to become an invaluable asset to your team. But when situations that need experienced talent immediately arise, staff augmentation and outsourcing can prove to be the right thing at the right time.

IT consultants are technology professionals who help design and execute a strategy for better leveraging technology in your company. This includes using technology to streamline operations, reduce challenges and risks associated with your company’s unique IT structure, or help to improve security and ensure compliance.

Implement the Right Software & Technology

Your IT consultant will help you select and implement the right software and technology at the right time. This includes analyzing your current business objectives and challenges, auditing legacy systems, understanding budgetary needs, and contrasting current needs with future needs for the best decision for your company.

IT consultants will also help to implement these systems and ensure your team members are comfortably trained on the new technology.

Streamline IT Infrastructure

IT consultants will also make sure that your IT infrastructure stays running smoothly to ensure technology improves your team’s productivity instead of detracting from it. This means making sure there are systems in place for updating software, solving technology challenges, training or onboarding, automating backups, etc.

Improve Business Intelligence

One reason many modern companies are hiring IT consultants is to help improve business intelligence. With the right systems and processes, businesses can organize and consolidate information more effectively to improve business intelligence and insights. This means making sure the right reports and data are ready at the right time to help inform strategic business decisions.

Oversee Security & Compliance

Many business sectors have inherent security risks or formal regulations they must abide by. However, many companies may not have internal team members who understand these risks or regulations, or how to manage them. An IT consultant takes the guesswork out of navigating these challenges and implements the necessary systems and processes to fulfill your security and compliance needs.

Network Development & Support

An IT consultant will help support and facilitate company growth by implementing, maintaining, and monitoring the business’s network servers. An IT consultant will often start by analyzing your current systems, looking for bottlenecks, observing challenges, and seeing areas for improvement. Then the consultant will design and implement a network solution that will be most successful for your company. If you already have an in-house IT team, offloading network support to an IT consultant frees time for your current staff to take care of more pressing, on-site problems while ensuring network issues are addressed in a timely manner.

Organize Backup & Data Recovery Planning

Regardless of your industry, chances are there’s a lot in your business that rides on documents, records, data, indexes, and so on. If you were to lose all of your data today, how long would it take you to get back up and running? A report by FEMA showed that 40% of businesses experiencing massive data loss never reopen, and a further 25% went out of business within 1 year. An IT consultant provides backup and disaster recovery solutions by putting safeguards and systems in place to reduce the risk of data loss and increase your ability to recover with as little downtime as possible in case of a data emergency.

What to Look for in an IT Consultant

Not all IT consultants are created equal. If your company is ready to hire an IT consultant to help design and implement better systems and technologies for your company, you’ll want to make sure the consultant will provide the greatest benefit for your company.

Look for an IT consultant with specific experience in your industry

It’s important to look for an IT consultant who not only has significant experience in information technologies but also has significant experience in your particular industry. This helps inform better system and software decisions based on experience helps to predict and understand risks and challenges more thoroughly and helps provide better, more educated responses to certain challenges or business objectives.

Look for an IT consultant experienced in business strategy.

The best IT consultants are the ones who not only understand technology but also understand how it all fits into the overall business strategy. Look for an IT consultant who has experience in business operations and organization and who has real-world applications in aligning business strategy with technology.

Look for an IT consultant who is vendor agnostic

Some IT consultants receive kickbacks or commissions when they commit a client to sign up for a particular software or service. This bias makes it difficult for the company to know whether they’re getting the right choice for their company or simply helping to pad their consultant’s bonus check. Instead, intentionally look for an IT consultant who is vendor agnostic—or who has no biased ties to vendors.

Works well with your team

IT consultants do more than just choose the right technology and systems for your company; they also help to implement them. In order to help this part of your IT strategy go smoothly, the IT consultant should mesh well with your existing team. This is especially true if you have an IT team in place. Your IT consultant should be able to provide new solutions, encourage buy-in for change from your existing team, and be able to train the right people to ensure a smooth implementation.

Creating an Effective IT Strategy

Effective IT strategy begins with a deep look into business strategy. Most companies see IT as a necessity for performing operations. However, the right IT strategy doesn’t only support your daily to-dos; it also helps you more effectively achieve your business goals.

When you are designing an effective IT business strategy, you shouldn’t approach it with only the idea of solving immediate needs, but also with the intent to progress your business strategy. This means approaching your IT strategy with the mindset of “what business goals do we plan to achieve now and in the future, and how can our IT best support that?”

Think of Your IT Strategy as an Assessment of Changes Needed to Achieve Business Goals

IT strategy used to consist of a list of costs for the IT technology a company wanted to implement. This strategy was typically not necessarily aligned with business goals but more likely responding to immediate or perceived operational needs.

In many cases, this mindset decreases the company’s ability to prioritize changes that achieve greater long-term benefits.

By having a business-forward focus with your IT strategy, you can ensure your IT strategy aligns with business strategy to save time, and money, increase productivity, and—most importantly—support your business goals.

By using the following tips, you can begin designing a more effective IT strategy.

1. Review your Business Goals

What are your long- and short-term business goals, and what are your company’s current challenges to achieving these goals?

Consider process bottlenecks, lack of integration, systems that cannot handle the current (or future) volume, outdated or poorly functioning systems, underutilized resources (such as servers), etc.

After you determine the challenges currently impeding your business goals, you can design IT strategies that can help better support them.

2. Analyze Current Security Threats

Although you may not immediately associate cybersecurity with business goals, a threat or data loss can have a significant negative impact on your business. It should be part of your IT strategy to ensure you have cybersecurity systems in place as well as an automatic data backup and recovery system conducive to your company’s current stage of growth.

3. Include KPIs

As you’re designing your IT strategy, be sure to include KPIs in your plan. Instead of focusing on inputs and outputs, focus these metrics on actual business impact. The purpose of the KPIs isn’t to prove the IT is doing “something,” but rather to measure whether the technology is providing real, measurable outcomes for the business. Look for KPIs such as cutting costs, decreasing delivery time, improving productivity or output, reducing downtime, etc.

4. Tie Your Strategy to Business Outcomes

Each segment should be tied to business outcomes in a business-forward IT strategy. For instance, your IT strategy may include overhauling outdated systems—how will this provide real, measurable business outcomes? In the case of outdated systems, it may reduce delivery times, improve productivity, or strengthen customer satisfaction scores.

5. Doesn’t Overshoot or Undershoot

Two mistakes companies make in their IT strategy is to choose systems that will satisfy their needs only for a short period of time or that look too far into the future and far exceed their needs.

It’s important to find the right balance of fulfilling your company’s existing needs while leaving room for growth. The best option in these cases is to look for systems that can scale with you as you grow.

Would you Like Help Designing the Right IT Strategy for Your Company?

Network Coverage is an award-winning IT services company providing managed IT services, IT consulting, and more for companies of all sizes across the United States. Our solutions are affordable, scalable, and—most importantly—designed with a business-forward approach to help you achieve your goals. Reach out today to talk to an IT expert about your IT strategy.

 

IT Project Outsourcing vs. Staff Augmentation: Pros & Cons

While some aspects of a company’s IT needs to stay relatively steady such as monitoring systems, data backup, and network management, new or unexpected IT projects can bring a bulk of work all at once. When this happens, many companies have to decide whether they want to outsource the IT project or use staff augmentation to complete the project.

IT Project Outsourcing vs. Staff Augmentation

IT project outsourcing is outsourcing the full project or aspects of the project to an external company while staff augmentation adds virtual resources to the in-house IT team to help manage the workload.

The main difference between IT project outsourcing vs. staff augmentation is who is responsible for project management and who is held accountable for results. In IT project outsourcing, the outsourcing company will manage the project and be accountable for results. In contrast, staff augmentation requires in-house project management and leaves your company accountable for results.

Should I Choose IT Project Outsourcing or Staff Augmentation?

Determining whether to augment your staff or outsource your IT project depends on your current team’s capacity as well as your goals for your project. For companies that have a strong internal IT team and who have reliable, dependable management, staff augmentation may be a good option. Companies often choose this solution when they need to maintain a certain level of control over the project. However, for companies whose IT team already manages a full load and who need a project done quickly and with reduced internal management, IT project outsourcing may be the best bet.

The pros and cons of IT project outsourcing vs. staff augmentation depend on a company’s unique IT situation and project goals. Below, we compare the pros and cons of each.

Pros of IT Project Outsourcing

Companies that have a tight deadline and need to maintain day-to-day core business IT management during the completion of the project may benefit from IT project outsourcing.

– Outsourced project manager. One of the benefits of outsourcing IT projects is that project management is handled by the outsourcing company.

– Requires less training. Unless your company has legacy or proprietary systems, there most likely will be little or no training required for an outsourcing company to complete your project.

– More likely to hit deadlines. With an internal team, deadlines are often more negotiable. However, an outsourcing company’s success depends on reliably hitting deadlines.

– Does not distract focus from core business needs. Since you will not be detracting team members from in-house needs to work on the project, core business IT needs continue to be fulfilled as usual.

– Scales more easily. In times when a project evolves or if more resources are needed than anticipated, it’s often easier to scale using an outsourcing company than staff augmentation.

– Turnover rarely impacts the project. An outsourcing company’s agreement is centered on production, not on which team members are executing the project. This means in the case of turnover an outsourcing company is motivated to fill the position with an internal or external team member as quickly as possible.

– Overcomes lack of internal capabilities. If part of your team does not have the capabilities necessary to fulfill a project, it can often be more cost-efficient to outsource the project than train new skills.

– Decreased management costs. Employees for outsourced IT projects mean no additional management overhead for additional employees.

Cons of IT Project Outsourcing

The main detriments of project outsourcing are that it removes control over the project and often makes it more difficult to integrate with internal systems.

– Less control over the project. Outsourcing IT projects means you have less control over the project. This is because after goals, deliverables, and deadlines are established, the actual execution of the project is up to the outsourcing company.

– More difficult to integrate with internal systems. It can be more difficult to integrate outsourced projects with internal systems. This is because it requires the business to align with the outsourced IT team.

– Smaller projects can be less cost-effective. Outsourcing companies are sometimes less inclined to take on smaller projects or may charge a premium for them.

Pros of Staff Augmentation

Using staff augmentation to fulfill an IT project can be beneficial to a company because it improves control over the project as well as making integration with internal systems easier.

– More control over the project. One reason companies choose staff augmentation over IT project outsourcing is that staff augmentation allows more internal control over the project.

– Flexible deadlines. If your project timeline needs to be accelerated without notice, it is often easier to accommodate this with an internal team than with an outsourced team.

– Better integration with internal processes. Since staff augmentation utilizes your internal team, it becomes much simpler to integrate the new IT project with internal processes.

Cons of Staff Augmentation

One of the main cons of staff augmentation is that it relies in part on internal resources to complete the project. This can increase project costs, management workloads, and can detract focus from your core business needs.

– Higher management costs. Staff augmentation for an IT project means managing the project remains internal. With expanded project needs, this often means increased management costs.

– Can detract focus from core business needs. Staff augmentation blends internal staff members with virtual staff members. Without making additional hires, this usually means your IT team is being pulled away from core business projects.

– Greater training costs. While companies will not have to train virtual staff in technical capabilities when using staff augmentation, there still may be training required to get the employee up to speed with internal processes, tools, and other knowledge.

– Can be more difficult to scale. If there is a change to the scope of the project, it is often more complicated to find or change resources when using staff augmentation.

How Can We Help?

Not sure whether staff augmentation or IT project management is right for your company? Reach out! We are happy to help discuss which option might be the right for you.

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IT Talent Shortages Leading to Increased Outsourcing Needs

As you’ve probably witnessed, the last year or two have been different, to put it mildly. With a global pandemic, a rise in remote workers, and an ever-growing amount of tech ‘boomers’ retiring — a return to normalcy doesn’t look like it’s coming soon to the IT sector. And while there’s no one sole reason for the shortage — rather, it’s a culmination of factors occurring simultaneously — the impact is making waves throughout the tech industry worldwide.

Is There A Shortage of  Talent In the IT Industry?

Before we answer the overarching question, we first have to inspect a few of the biggest indirect culprits resulting in staffing shortages. Because while it’s true that there’s a shortage of IT talent, the reasons for that shortage are of more concern as they result from several factors. From current professionals aging out to companies offering fewer incentives for highly trained staff in different tech sectors, an ever-widening skill gap makes up a large portion, to be sure.

How  We  Got Here

Back in September, Gartner surveyed IT executives about new technology adoption. The results showed that the biggest problem IT firms faced was a shortage of qualified workers. One of the six tech sectors surveyed, IT automation, showed that only 20% of newly adopted tech continued ahead in the adoption cycle. The survey also revealed that implementation cost and security only affected 29% and 7% of new emerging technology, respectively. However, talent was again the biggest hurdle for companies to overcome — it was the reason 64% of new emerging technology wasn’t progressing as expected.

According to Gartner research VP Yinuo Geng, the problem isn’t just a talent shortage, but the problem is being amplified by an ongoing hiring boom. Geng stated, “The ongoing push toward remote work and the acceleration of hiring plans in 2021 has exacerbated IT talent scarcity, especially for sourcing skills that enable cloud and edge, automation and continuous delivery.”

Which Tech Sectors Does This Affect?

This problem of talent scarcity isn’t really about a shortage of people, but rather a shortage of ‘the right’ people for the constant technological growth we’re currently experiencing — a technology explosion if you will. In the aforementioned survey, Gartner asked IT executives about:

• Compute infrastructure and platform services
• Network
• Security
• Digital Workplace
• IT Automation
• Storage & Database

Since most IT-related job hiring is falling within these six categories, companies are investing heavily amongst them all with 58% of those surveyed stating they’d be increasing investments in emerging technology in 2021. In 2020, that was only 29%. Gartner also said that many of these shortcomings were made visible by the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes beefing up systems resilience and implementing larger thresholds in critical infrastructure.

Resilience made up 63% of emerging cloud technology investments with a key focus on software tools for enterprise resource planning (ERP) and multi-cloud configurations. Gartner also concluded in their findings that 64% of survey participants plan to increase investment allotments within the security sector, more than double the 31% in 2020.

The Increase in Outsourcing

So we’ve got an increasing amount of new technology without enough skills crossing over to meet this extraordinary labor demand — in comes outsourcing.

For years, the US has been shipping many industries to lower-cost countries like India, Mexico, and China. And while the tech sector’s unemployment rate seemingly never rises above 3% — even during a pandemic where millions of Americans were laid off — there are just not enough employees to feed the hiring frenzy.

According to CSET, “Two-thirds of graduate students in AI-related programs are international students, and the number of domestic graduate students in these programs has not increased since 1990.” And with Silicon Valley practically relying on qualified candidates, which are overwhelmingly international or foreign-born, the positions that need filling are outsourced.

There’s a bit of a silver lining in all of this, although, for the average IT worker, it needs to be viewed from rose-tinted glasses. In the United Kingdom, the London School of Economics says there’s a burst of productivity resulting from outsourcing. With all of the money saved on expensive labor, companies are able to take those proceeds and reinvest them back into newer jobs.

This doesn’t really solve the problem for those who are having their jobs seemingly taken from them. And while the term, “It comes with the territory,” can seem a bit harsh, the reality is that this technology drives the world, and money sets the GPS.

The Future of IT Jobs

It’s unclear if the majority of tech jobs will ever return to being solely US-based or if we will continue to see more and more jobs being outsourced. With companies revamping their infrastructure to accommodate a predominantly remote workforce, we expect that trend won’t change for the foreseeable future.

Benefits of Hiring a Top IT Company

Navigating the modern business world can be difficult, especially without experience in tech. Like it or not, technology is a critical part of running a business in today’s world no matter what you do. Unfortunately, many businesses fall short due to a lack of IT consulting.

Having somebody to help you navigate the technology of today’s business world is important. From cloud computing to business networks, there are a lot of things you can utilize to grow your business. If your business could use a boost in the tech department, here’s why you need to hire a top IT company.

Savings

Hiring a company to assist with business operations may seem like a costly venture, but you can actually hire an IT company and save your business money. There are several reasons an IT consulting company can help your business save money.

Though hiring an IT consulting company is an expenditure, your company also gets the benefit of having a more stable infrastructure. This means less downtime, which in turn can save money that would have been spent recovering from said downtime. Plus, flexible payment options such as paying per project or per hour mean you have options when it comes to hiring IT consulting.

Increased Availability

The internet never stops, especially when it comes to cyber threats. A cyber attack can happen at any hour of the day, so having an IT consulting service that’s always available means you can do a better job of securing your business online.

IT consulting companies can also help secure your business by providing monitoring services that can help prevent cyberattacks and downtime. When you consider how much productive work time you can use due to IT problems, hiring a company that can sort your IT out seems like a no-brainer.

Professional Training & Expertise

One of the biggest benefits IT company outsourcing offers is the fact that you get better-trained and more experienced employees. Just because you have an employee who’s good with computers doesn’t mean they have the knowledge and tools to be responsible for your important business operations.

An IT consulting company can help train your employees to better understand the technology they’re using and when they’re facing a cyber threat. While this little bit of training won’t make your employees IT experts, it will give them a solid foundation that will help protect your business from cyber threats and other IT problems.

The fact that hiring an IT consulting company means you’re actually hiring several experts is another benefit. The collective knowledge of this team of experts is always going to be better than your single in-house IT employee or team. Here are some of the things an IT consulting service can offer:

• Experienced IT professionals who work in several different fields
• Up-to-date knowledge about IT and how it affects various industries

Focusing on Your Business

 As a business owner, it can be difficult to find time to focus on the big picture of your business. This problem is made even worse when you have a significant amount of downtime due to an IT problem, which means you have to spend more time trying to make up for the time you lost.

When you can trust a talented IT consulting company to prevent downtime and other IT problems, you have more time to spend on more important business operations. This also saves you money in a sense, since you don’t have to spend your valuable time working out a minor IT problem instead of dealing with other important business operations.

Having an in-house employee learn and handle IT for your company can also be a big ask. This added stress can lead to lower productivity levels in some employees. While in-house IT may seem like an affordable option, you’re almost always better off hiring a top IT company.

Better Data Management

“Big data” is an important term in the business world today, but most business owners don’t know how to properly utilize data. One of the benefits IT company outsourcing offers is the ability to tap into this big data to gain insights that can help you boost sales and improve customer relationships.

Minimize Downtime

Even if it didn’t cost you money, you wouldn’t want to deal with downtime due to IT problems as a business owner. The fact that downtime can cost your business a significant amount of money means it’s even more important to prevent it.

When you hire an IT consulting company, you don’t have to worry about downtime because you have continuous professional monitoring and a team of professionals who can fix any problems that may arise. By minimizing downtime, you can save your business money, improve your reputation with customers and spend more time focusing on core business operations and growing your business.

Running a business isn’t easy, especially if you don’t know a lot about tech. Fortunately, hiring a top IT company can get you the help you need at an affordable price. If you’re looking for a better way to handle IT for your business, hiring an IT consulting company like NetCov is a smart choice.