An incessant challenge that all organizations including insurance companies face is finding the right talent, especially tech talent. Technology is developing at a rapid pace and businesses need to find the best talent from the small yet highly competitive talent pool available in the market, especially when it comes to professionals specialized in niche areas like insurance technologies. Talent shortage will ultimately lead to higher costs for onboarding the right talent; not to mention the other hidden costs in the hiring process.
Staff augmentation is the near-perfect solution to extend your team without the additional costs and hassles of recruitment, yet a great way to extend your team with experts and professionals, on-demand, especially for complex, robust and specialized businesses like the insurance companies across the globe. It is an effective way of bridging any existing skills gap within the organization at a fraction of associated costs, making it a win-win situation for the company.
Staff augmentation is the optimal strategy for your organization if:
- Your company already has a team and you want to expand it;
- Your team is working on a project that requires niche or specialized skills;
- Your team is working on a large project that requires extra tech support
- You’re not able to find the right tech talent;
- You are looking to reduce the cost-to-hire or time-to-hire of specialized professionals.
Why Staff Augmentation in Insurance Business?
- Get the best talent easily
Professionals with skills, knowledge, and expertise in advanced insurance technologies are extremely difficult to source and hire, thanks to their shortage, extreme competition, and demand as well as the cost to the company. Hence, the biggest benefit of staff augmentation for insurance companies is the quick, cost-effective, and hassle- free access to the best talent that is well versed with your insurance. With staff augmentation, companies can target the tech skills they need. It helps narrow down your search so you can find the best-fit resources based on the project requirements.
- Enhanced scalability and flexibility
When you’re working with the staff augmentation model, you can easily upscale or downscale the tech team based on the project requirements. You can set up a core tech team that can coordinate and work with the resources as per project demands. This working model works best both in terms of cost-effectiveness and quality results.
- Cost effective way to expand your team
Cost is the bottom line when it comes to making an important decision in most business scenarios. Hiring processes can be expensive, time-consuming and could also lead to a dead-end at times. Plus, hiring a full-time employee with full benefits and bonuses can take a cut in the budget for the project. Save big by hiring experienced insurance technology professionals like Duck Creek or Guidewire experts for the project. You can get good quality work with less effort and less cost by availing staff augmentation services.
Tips to Grow Your Insurance Business with Staff Augmentation
It can be difficult to move from the existing model to a staff augmentation model. However, if effectively used, this model can help in the growth and development of your business. The key is to use staff augmentation consulting services at the right time.
Aligning roles, processes, teams & outcomes
Adopting the staff augmentation model, your resources are ready, but how do you begin and how to take it forward in the most effective way to drive maximum results?
The most important step begins with clearly defining the project goals, processes, and core objectives. In addition to it, you need to explain the responsibilities of the experts and elaborate on the key expectations from them. The project manager or team leader should also explain the quality standards expected from each expects. All the members of the team should have a clear idea of the entire work process flow. Thus, aligning people, processes, teams and workflows with outcomes are critical to success.
Choose projects with fixed deadlines
Staff augmentation is most ideal for projects that have fixed deadlines. Hiring a team can help you complete the project faster and at a lower cost. Also, it can be expensive for your company to hire experts or professionals for a short-term project.
Identify talent gaps & unique skill requirements in your organization
Once insurance companies have identified the gaps in the organization with the help of a talent audit, you need to understand the skills required. You also need to determine whether the resource is necessary on a long-term basis or is the requirement just limited to the particular project. In case of the latter, staff augmentation is the way to go for bridging the gap.
Staff augmentation can ensure that the new resources are more experienced in handling similar projects and bring their own skill sets to the table which is an added advantage.
The breadth of knowledge of professionals who face diverse challenges by working on different sets of projects is definitely more than one who has been working on a single project for a longer period of time.
Effective communication plan
The key to a successful project lies in seamless communication. It’s important to create a clean line of communication right at the start of the project. Effective management and team collaboration is also possible only if the communication lines are clear. When you’re availing staff augmentation services, it’s important to be clear on who will be the point of communication and who will be responsible for client communication. This is extremely important in the insurance business.
Employing the right tools and technologies
Make effective use of project management platforms for seamless coordination between the in-house team and the experts. The platforms can help meet budget constraints and help in seamless project management.
Documentation
When multiple professionals and teams are working on a project, it’s important to document everything including the changes made. This can be used for maintenance and upgradation.
Staff augmentation ensures the best value as it helps reduce the time spent on hiring and doesn’t require any infrastructure investment for insurance companies.
Choosing the right partner for staff augmentation services
With the insurance landscape rapidly evolving, not having a trusted partner to help you meet your insurance technology needs, you can be left behind. Leading organizations like Axcel Beck and ShoreWise offer veteran resources to offer a flexible approach to strengthen your company’s IT teams, allowing you to plan, develop and deploy custom business solutions whenever you need it.
