Recruiting / Staff Augmentation
Staff Augmentation...
it makes good business sense!
In difficult economic times every business is looking for ways to make their dollars go further and time be spent more productively. It is during times like this that the concept of augmenting staff with contracted professionals makes sense.
The concept of outsourcing professional work began in earnest in the 1980’s. During that time, individuals who were highly skilled in various disciplines started “consulting firms” and began to augment company’s needs with their specialized skill sets. Into the 1990’s and as Y2K ( year 2000) grew closer, consulting firms began to offer “turnkey” solution offerings to companies. These contracts afforded companies the ability to truly change the course of their business through streamlined, targeted solutions.
Today, outsourcing portions of a company’s business processes can take many avenues. In some situations, a company may only need an “extra pair of hands” to help install a network or program an ERP solution. A company may be moving to a new technology with the current staff consumed with learning – leaving the legacy systems needing to be monitored by augmented staff. Other situations may find a company needing assistance moving to a new technology while mentoring internal staff. Still another company may need recruiting good technical professionals and would welcome assistance in that area.
Why would a company look at staff augmentation? Some of the reasons include:
- Cost savings. The lowering of the overall cost of the service to the business. This will involve reducing the scope, defining quality levels, re-pricing, re-negotiation, cost re-structuring.
- Knowledge. Access to intellectual property and wider experience and knowledge.
- Operational expertise. Access to operational best practice that would be too difficult or time consuming to develop in-house.
- Staffing issues. Access to a larger talent pool and a sustainable source of skills.
- Capacity management. An improved method of capacity management of services and technology where the risk in providing the excess capacity is borne by the supplier.
- Catalyst for change. An organization can use an outsourcing agreement as a catalyst for major step change that can not be achieved alone.
- Reduce time to market. The acceleration of the development or production of a product through the additional capability brought by the supplier.
- Customer Pressure. Customers may see benefits in dealing with your company, but are not happy with the performance of certain elements of the business, which they may not see a solution to except through outsourcing.
Heartland Business Systems and Avastone Technologies specializes in assisting companies locate good talent. Finding an individual who can compliment a team, lead a project, direct a new technology or simply add that much-needed extra pair of hands is an offering that clients expect from us. For more information contact Sue May, Director of Business Development.