Staff Augmentation For MSPs and MSSPs: What You Need To Know
If you’re an MSP or MSSP, you know how challenging it is to hire an in-house team to keep up with the fast-changing business environment.
IT professionals are in high demand, and the skills shortage in specific disciplines (e.g. cybersecurity) is driving up labor costs. If you’re filling on-site positions, your talent pool is limited by your geographic location. Meanwhile, the additional expenses associated with onboarding, equipment, office space, and administrative overhead further eats into your profit margins.
These challenges can hamper your growth. That’s why savvy MSPs and MSSPs are using staff augmentation services to improve their agility and profitability.
The Benefits of Staff Augmentation for MSPs and MSSPs
Here are some key advantages of using a staff augmentation service for your managed services:
Cost Reduction
You can eliminate the capital and operating expenses associated with hiring full-time employees, and better control your budget, since you only pay for the resources you need. An offshore development team gives you access to skilled engineers for half the labor cost of additional staff, so you can do more with less without compromising service quality.
Access to Talents
Even if you have the money, the right talents aren’t easy to come by. A remote staffing solution gives you access to a wide range of resources, including service desk engineers, systems engineers, product specialists, security engineers, security analysts, project managers, project engineers, automation engineers, and service delivery managers.
Scalability and Flexibility
You can easily add or reduce resources based on workload to meet fluctuating demand, both short term and long term. You can also leverage a network of resources and a talent hunting team to find the help you need quickly, so you can become more responsive to market conditions and meet client expectations.
Streamlined Onboarding
When you work with a dedicated remote team of top talents, you minimize the onboarding time so resources can become productive as quickly as possible. Not to mention, you don’t have to worry about the time-consuming HR processes and paperwork required for hiring full-time employees.
Key Considerations When Building an Offshore Team
You might have heard of various challenges associated with building an offshore team. Here are some of the common pitfalls and how you can navigate them to minimize potential issues:
Communication Hurdles
When an offshore team doesn’t have a good command of English (e.g. a heavy accent that’s hard to understand, or not grasping the nuances of the language) you could encounter errors and delays due to miscommunications. Also, it’s harder to make sure everyone is on the same page when you’re managing from afar.
To minimize these challenges, vet your candidates for their language and communication skills. Appoint a dedicated leader to oversee the offshore operation and act as a single point of contact so you can streamline communications while effectively aligning the team with your objectives.
Integration with Internal Team
Your remote team should act as an extension of your in-house resources, but it isn’t always easy to ensure seamless collaboration between the two teams. Some may even develop a “us vs. them” mentality that will sabotage the effectiveness of your staff augmentation strategy.
Foster strong relationships between your offshore and in-house resources. Share your company’s culture with offshore employees and align their processes with your goals. Make sure everyone is working toward your company’s vision. Also, leverage robust collaboration platforms to ensure that everyone is rowing in the same direction.
Security Concerns
Cybersecurity is especially important for MSPs and MSSPs because you’re handling sensitive information on behalf of your clients. A breach in your offshore facility could impact not only your business information but also clients’ data and your reputation.
Use a staff augmentation solution that prioritizes security. For example, it should have a secure office location with private working spaces, CCTV, access controls, and secure networks to ensure that your offshore team connects to your systems without exposing your data to unnecessary risks.
Choosing the Right Staff Augmentation Service For Your MSP/MSSP
To reap the benefits of staff augmentation while avoiding the potential pitfalls, choose a provider with extensive experience working with MSPs and MSSPs to ensure that it can cater to your specific needs.
Your vendor should have access to top talents and build a dedicated team to meet your outsourcing needs. It should give you the scalability to support your growth and the flexibility to add new services so you can stay agile in today’s fast-changing market. Last but not least, it should have a robust and secure infrastructure to ensure that you’re delivering the highest level of services to your clients.
Learn more about Halexo and get in touch to see how we can help take your MSP/MSSP business to the next level with our staff augmentation service.