Choosing the optimal outsourcing model for your enterprise
The convergence of several key factors is bolstering a significant trend in business—technology outsourcing through staff augmentation and managed services, especially for custom enterprise software and AI-driven solutions.
As enterprise leaders increasingly lean into leveraging a mix of full-time employees and contractors, they gain access to a global pool of talent for high-demand skill sets and hard-to-hire roles—particularly in areas like AI, data engineering, and modern software architectures. The benefits are substantial: greater flexibility and scalability, increased speed and efficiency, decreased costs, and a more satisfied, engaged, and productive workforce. Outsourcing can provide the agility an enterprise needs to stay competitive and satisfy customers in a rapidly evolving digital and AI-powered market.
The two main forms of outsourcing partnership—staff augmentation and managed services—offer many of the same benefits, but they’re essentially opposite approaches.
What is staff augmentation?
Staff augmentation refers to outsourcing specific functions and tasks while keeping a project under the organization’s own management. It’s an input model that allows a business to bring in outside staff on a temporary basis—experts with specific experience and skill sets who adapt to the company’s culture and project roadmap.
For example, you might:
- Add AI/ML engineers to accelerate an internal initiative
- Bring in senior architects to modernize a legacy platform
- Embed product engineers to help deliver a critical release on time
This form of outsourcing saves money on the recruiting and onboarding process, the resource costs associated with a full-time hire (hardware, space, etc.), and most importantly, in the ability to scale a team as needed. This model is especially well suited to small and midsize organizations requiring support and expertise for individual shorter-term projects, or when they need a long-term tech partner for a discrete role.
What are managed services?
Managed services is an output model in which an entire technology project or process is outsourced to a third party to manage and execute. The parent company provides the outside partner with specs and parameters, and they agree on goals and deliverables. From there the third-party provider handles the project as a whole—from people and workflows to training and tools.
In this model, your partner might:
- Own end-to-end delivery of custom enterprise software built for your business
- Design, build, and maintain AI-powered platforms or internal tools
- Run and continuously improve a critical application or data pipeline for you
This model typically works best for longer-term, more labor-intensive projects, when a company needs significant support for a major technology initiative.
Empowering your existing team
Either approach can empower an organization’s existing team by reducing the ways in which they’re currently multitasking to cover gaps, and freeing them to focus on what they do best while specialists address particular needs.
Both models also help a company bring top tech talent to their projects—seasoned pros that focus on contract work because they value engaging work, new challenges, flexibility, and independence over permanence. By outsourcing, businesses can not only draw on a much wider talent pool, but also a greater range of expertise, more diverse voices, and innovative thinkers—crucial when building AI-enabled products and modern digital experiences.
Which model is right for you?
Neither strategy is inherently superior, or right for every situation. The model that works best for an organization depends on their project type, its specific demands, and scale. It’s also a matter of preference—how much autonomy and direct control of the project the enterprise leaders wish to retain.
What’s certain is that we are at an inflection point—the future of work is being reimagined in real time, and it’s clear that outsourcing will play a pivotal role in companies’ growth and competitiveness in today’s rapidly evolving market. Whichever outsourcing model is the best fit for your business, finding the right partner is key.
How Lukasa helps
At Lukasa, we specialize in helping companies define their operational and technological needs through expert process analysis and a modern lens. We design and build custom enterprise software and AI solutions tailored to your business, not one-size-fits-all products.
As specialists across multiple industries, we have a complete crew at the ready and will scale a team to meet your initiative’s precise demands—whether you need:
- Embedded engineers and AI experts through staff augmentation, or
- A fully managed team delivering end-to-end custom software and AI platforms
We take a partnership approach to every project, working closely with each client to strategize and seamlessly implement the most effective custom outsourcing solutions.
