CASE STUDY #5

How we Handle Staff Augmentation


Who We Are and What We Do?

Ecommerce Professionals provides ecommerce services specializing on Amazon and other major marketplaces.

For Amazon related services, our services include product launch strategy, vendor and seller account management, promotion management, graphic design, inventory planning, Amazon search engine optimization, Amazon pay per click advertising, Amazon analytics, content management, enhanced brand content A+ detail pages, to name a few. We have experts related to the above mentioned fields.

In addition to Amazon Services we perform other ecommerce services on major marketplaces including Wayfair, Walmart, Overstock, Groupon, Fingerhut, JC Penny, Hayneedle, Houzz, Blue Stem Brands, Target, Tractor Supplies, Woot, Zulily just to name a few.

Understanding What Staff Augmentation is…

Staff Augmentation is an outsourcing strategy which can be used to hire/recruit staff members for completing a project if the company/organization needs more staff. Staff augmentation can be remote or collocative. This technique is used to evaluate the existing staff and determine what additional skills are required and thereby hire the necessary staff members, either to work remotely or in the office.

Delving Deep into the Case Study…

We were approached by our client for assisting them in staff augmentation. We first analyzed the capability of the client's skill set. We did a detailed analysis and were successfully filled the gaps for the resources they were lacking in.

Goals

  • Identify the skill level of the current staff members of the client
  • Identify which area needs more attention and staff strength
  • Find out whether remote assistance will work or if collocative staff should be hired
  • Check the right staff from our team to fill in the missing skill set for the client
  • Ensure and overlook that the task is done on the stipulated timeframe
  • To reduce the cost by hiring external experienced resources

Results

  • We found that the staff members were efficient enough to finish the task on time
  • The results were significant as it exceeded the client’s target and expectations
  • As remote assistance had initial issues, the staff members figured out the goals and tasks they had to achieve and gave fruitful results
  • The client achieved targets and it made a positive impact on the brand

Challenges

  • As we could only access our client remotely, we faced certain challenges in analyzing the staff specializations and accuracy
  • Assigning apt staff members with the expertise we needed was a challenge
  • The staff, initially had to work overtime to identify and figure out what needs to be done in order to finish the task by the stipulated time

Actions

  • Decided to go for remote assistance rather than collocative assistance due to financial constraints from the client
  • Performed an in-depth analysis on the existing staff members and identified their strengths
  • Listed out the areas where there was lack of staff and identified staff internally who had experience in the required field
  • As the scope and the project kept on increasing, trained and hired new staff to fulfill clients requirement

Summary

Our client was happy with the results achieved and increased the scope to hire more resources from us. This staff argumentation project is an on-going project for more than a decade. As the senior management of the organization collectively have more than 30 years of US experience with Fortune 500 companies, we understand and can deliver the results according the client standards. As the majority of the work was done offshore, we were successfully able to deliver with a cost reduction of more than 50%.