With the help of IT staff augmentation, you can significantly increase your annual recurring revenue (ARR) as you retain more customers and reduce churn. If you’re wondering specifically how you can boost ARR with these solutions, here we’ll explore how IT staff augmentation works to improve your bottom line.

In the following article, we’ll cover the following key topics:

  • What IT staff augmentation is and its advantages
  • How to assess your company’s IT staff augmentation needs
  • Steps for selecting the ideal partner
  • How to integrate augmented staff into your teams
  • Ways to measure the results of IT staff augmentation on ARR

Male IT programmers in an office working on a project using computers - IT staff augmentation benefits.

1. Understanding IT Staff Augmentation and Its Benefits

Before considering using IT staff augmentation to increase ARR, you should know exactly what it entails and the potential benefits it has to offer.

1.1. What is IT Staff Augmentation?

IT staff augmentation entails hiring temporary IT staff to fill certain roles, making it slightly different from IT outsourcing which keeps hired experts separate from your team. Using IT staff augmentation, you’ll gain access to skilled and trained experts who can quickly adapt to your business and help fill your team’s skill gap. When you no longer need these professionals, your team can go back to working entirely in-house.

Generally, this is ideal if you temporarily require IT experts to meet your current needs.

1.2. Advantages of IT Staff Augmentation

There are also certain benefits of IT staff augmentation that you won’t find with other types of solutions if you require temporary help for your teams. The following are some of the main advantages that you’ll find:

  • Access to the skills you need. Get help from experts with the unique skills you currently require, from cybersecurity to UI and UX design.
  • Save more money on team expansion. Due to the costs of hiring full-time IT employees, it’s often more cost-effective to use IT staff augmentation to bypass those expenses if you want to grow your team.
  • Increased flexibility. If you need to make any significant changes to your IT systems and operations, you can easily do so with temporary help through staff augmentation.
  • Get another perspective. Having another expert on your team can offer a new perspective that your team may not have considered. This, in turn, can potentially lead to more effective solutions to specific problems.

2. Assessing Your Company’s Needs for IT Staff Augmentation

While IT staff augmentation might be crucial for many organizations, it’s not always the right solution. Whether you need this kind of help will depend on your specific needs.

2.1. Identifying Skills Gaps and Project Requirements

If you have an in-house team but don’t have enough resources to complete a particular project or lack the necessary skills at the moment, you may benefit from IT staff augmentation. These solutions will be able to bring in experts who can fill skills gaps and meet project requirements as needed, without the hassle as well as the costs of hiring and training full-time employees.

2.2. Setting Clear Goals and Expectations

You may also want to consider IT staff augmentation for your business if you must achieve unique IT goals. You might only need someone on your team temporarily to help you achieve a certain level of efficiency or meet the expectations you currently have for your IT team. You’ll have complete control over your projects as new temporary hires work to meet your specific needs as fully integrated team members.

IT professionals in an office working together for a project - boosting collaboration through IT staff augmentation.

3. Choosing the Right IT Staff Augmentation Partner

Once you’ve determined that your business will benefit from IT staff augmentation and that this is the right move, you must find the right partner. Not all providers offer the same services or the same value. You’ll want to take some time to pinpoint the best prospective partner that can give you the best results.

3.1. Evaluating Potential Providers

To begin your search for the ideal partner, begin by evaluating multiple companies and shortlist the best options. Request some quotes and proposals from multiple companies and compare and contrast them. You can also meet with representatives of these companies to ask some questions and express any concerns you have, gauging their responses in the process. 

Based on your evaluation, you can choose the right partner that’s capable of not only meeting but exceeding your expectations.

3.2. Key Criteria for Selection

As you begin locating and evaluating services and potential partners, there are also certain criteria to look for that will help you in your search.

So, what should you look for in your IT staff augmentation partner? The items to consider as you assess and interview companies include the following:

  • Pricing. Are the partner’s services affordable and do they fit within your allotted budget?
  • Staffing process. How does the company hire and vet its IT experts to provide consistent quality with every partnership?
  • Scalability. Your IT staff augmentation partner should be able to grow with your business and scale services based on your needs.
  • Security and protection. All IT partners should also have the resources needed to keep your operations and data consistently secure. This can include VPNs as well as disk encryption.
  • Responsive communication. You should be able to easily get and stay in touch with your partner as needed.
  • Ease of replacement. Is the new staff member not the right fit for your company? You should be able to easily and quickly find a suitable replacement at no extra cost.

4. Integrating Augmented Staff into Your Existing Team

After finding the right partner to provide IT staff augmentation services, you should be able to easily integrate your newly hired staff into your team. The right partner will facilitate this process to make it as smooth as possible.

4.1. Onboarding and Communication Strategies

The process of finding the right staff should begin with sending your partner a well-defined job description. Based on this, the partner can begin finding qualified professionals for you to interview. Once you’ve found the right team member, you can begin onboarding, and your partner will let the new team member know what they need to know. You will then be able to maintain efficient communication with the new staff member and your staff augmentation partner.

4.2. Fostering Collaboration and Team Cohesion

After introducing the new team member and onboarding them, you can encourage the new hire as well as your existing team to work together to solve various challenges. One of the best ways to foster collaboration and cohesion among your teams is to develop certain team-building activities and events that help develop the relationship between augmented staff and the rest of the team.

Also, define each staff member’s role and responsibilities to ensure they know where they fit and how they work together.

Business people in a meeting room discussing project results.

5. Measuring the Impact of IT Staff Augmentation on ARR

You should be able to easily measure the effect your strategy has on your ARR and overall success. Knowing what to measure and how to measure it will help you track progress and determine if you need to make any adjustments to your strategy.

5.1. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Before you can begin measuring the impact of IT staff augmentation, you must identify specific KPIs to measure with your analytics. These KPIs will enable you to track the progress of your projects and ARR to determine if your augmentation strategy is truly a worthwhile investment.

The following are some of the KPIs you can measure to gauge the effectiveness of your efforts:

  • Project completion rates. Is your augmented staff helping to complete IT tasks and projects faster?
  • Productivity metrics. Track your staff members’ overall productivity to find out whether augmentation is helping make your team more productive.
  • Impacts on objectives. Actively monitor ARR, monthly recurring revenue (MRR), as well as other metrics that help you determine how augmentation helps you meet objectives, such as achieving a certain level of revenue growth and market share.

5.2. Analyzing Results and Adjusting Strategies

Using in-depth analytics and helpful tools, you can measure the metrics corresponding to your KPIs and compare them to your goals and objectives. You may then determine the best way to adjust your strategies to improve performance. You might discover that you need to adjust your augmentation strategy or another element of your IT strategy. Your IT staff augmentation partner should make it easy for you to make any necessary changes to get optimal results.

Boost ARR and Improve Other Efforts With ParallelStaff

By taking the right approach to IT staff augmentation when needed, you’ll be able to navigate nearly any IT challenge that comes your way. If you can optimize the efficacy of your IT team, you’ll be able to increase annual recurring revenue as well as other metrics, helping your business grow and remain consistently agile.

For one of the most reliable IT staff augmentation partners, turn to the experts at ParallelStaff. Schedule a call with our team today to discover how we can help you improve ARR and other objectives with the most compatible IT staff augmentation solution.

Rick Wallace
Latest posts by Rick Wallace (see all)

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