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Any startup or newer business needs a strong focus on building an effective and productive team of employees. However, this remains somewhat difficult, as a job market favoriting candidates makes hiring new employees a costly and risk prone process. This is especially the case when considering the technology talent many new businesses need to execute the ideas at the core of their business hopes.
With many startups suffering from a lack of capital, taking a different approach to finding talent serves to optimize their staffing spend. It helps these new businesses affect the organizational changes they need to achieve for a real chance of success. A mix of staff augmentation and strategic outsourcing ensures emerging businesses have access to the necessary talent in a cost-effective fashion.
So let’s look more closely at these and other organizational changes new businesses need to consider for a better chance of success in 2023 and beyond. These ideas allow your emerging organization to stay nimble to take advantage of any new opportunities arriving on your doorstep. Leverage these insights to position your startup squarely on the path to success, providing a quick exit opportunity for your investors.
Related: 4 Ways Leaders Can Navigate Change and Find the Hidden Opportunities
Leveraging staff augmentation to maintain a startup’s talent pipeline
Any new business needs a robust talent pipeline providing the flexibility to thrive in its earliest stages. We already mentioned the expensive and risk-prone aspects of sourcing permanent employees in the current job market. A startup might spend an inordinate amount of time and resources trying to hire a permanent candidate, only to fail, with all those sunk expenses as a result.
However, adopting a staff augmentation approach provides talent from a development agency to quickly meet an acute skills gap or other talent shortage. It also remains a great way for startups to access the critical technology professionals they need to complete the technical product or service central to their growth potential. When considering this strategy, find a digital agency or staffing services firm able to provide a full team. It helps foster collaboration with your organization compared to contracting individuals.
Add outsourced expertise to your organization
Somewhat related to that point, in addition to using staff augmentation as a talent strategy, you might also consider outsourcing certain leadership and other managerial expertise to your organization. Many high-level consultants with experience in the same industry sector as your startup are willing to work with new businesses. It offers the critical know-how to help any new business devise a strategy to achieve its short-term and long-term goals.
Once again, this type of “on-demand” staffing lets businesses add expertise at significant cost savings compared to making permanent hires. A startup conserves its limited capital by not having to pay benefits and salaries to a host of new employees. When the current project finishes, those contract workers simply move on to their next gig, while a startup’s staffing spend returns to normal.
Data-driven decision-making helps startups gain a measure of wisdom
Any startup benefits when focusing on tangible insights derived from data for their decision-making processes. It makes a difference in a variety of functional areas but holds special importance when considering market research when vetting a potential target market for a new business’s first product or service. Developing any digital product — typically a software app or similar platform — without any market insights results in a startup flying blind.
Of course, data beyond market research also matters throughout the process of developing any software product. Any thorough testing process generates a massive amount of valuable data offering insights into the user experience — this helps inform the project team on what features to include and modify before the app goes live. Beyond that, never skimp on data analysis throughout a business’s history. Data remains the lifeblood of any successful company, after all.
Related: What Stops Organizational Change From Sticking, And How to Change That
Ensure your software projects follow an iterative approach
One important organizational change relates to the methodology new businesses use for their software projects. Following an iterative software methodology, like agile or lean startup, provides many benefits to startups and emerging organizations. This approach ensures any bugs or design mistakes are caught early in the development process when more inexpensive to fix. Finding a critical bug right before going live might result in the failure of the startup.
Lean Startup leverages a concept known as the minimum viable product (MVP). It’s essentially a prototype developed in short cycles that include sharply defined stages for testing, analyzing the data from those test results as highlighted above, and applying the lessons learned to a new version of the app. It keeps business stakeholders and the project team in close communication throughout the initiative, ensuring nothing gets lost in the fray.
In the end, improve your chances of a successful startup by adopting these organizational changes. Leveraging staff augmentation at startup launch provides the critical talent it needs in the most cost-effective manner. Additionally, adopting an iterative data-driven software development approach reduces expenses while resulting in an app with a better chance of making an impact on the market.
