When IT and business leaders need external support, they’re often faced with a choice: staff augmentation vs consulting. While both offer valuable expertise, they serve very different purposes. Whether you’re filling a short-term skills gap or navigating a major transformation, understanding the difference between staff augmentation and consulting helps you choose the right model for your goals, budget, and team structure.
This complete guide explores staff augmentation consulting services in depth, covering key differences, cost comparisons, pros and cons, and real-world use cases so you can make a considered choice that is right for your business.
What is Staff Augmentation?
Staff augmentation is a flexible hiring strategy that allows businesses to temporarily extend an internal team with external talent. Unlike traditional outsourcing, where tasks are handed off to another company, augmentation staff work within your organisation, following your processes and reporting to your managers.
This model is particularly common in IT, development, and engineering teams that need to scale fast without the delays and costs of permanent recruitment.
Key characteristics of staff augmentation include:
- Hire specialists short-term to fill gaps or meet deadlines
- External hires work as part of your internal team
- Maintain full control over workflows and priorities
- Scale cost-effectively without full-time overheads
What is Consulting?
Consulting services are focused on advisory, strategy, and implementation. Instead of embedding with your team, consultants offer independent guidance to solve complex business challenges. They might conduct audits, design systems, lead transformation programmes, or recommend best practices.
Consulting is about outcomes, not just capacity. That’s why consultants often operate at an executive level, delivering strategic value rather than tactical support.
Key characteristics of consulting services:
- Strategic focus: Consultants bring industry knowledge and a structured methodology
- Project-based: Engagements are typically tied to a clear problem or outcome
- Independent delivery: Consultants don’t need day-to-day oversight
- External perspective: Often used to challenge assumptions and drive innovation
Key Differences Between Staff Augmentation and Consulting
The main difference is the employment duration. Staff augmentation hires extra staff for short-term projects to support full-time staff members. In contrast, consulting firms provide a staffing model as needed, with a dedicated team with fresh perspectives.
Here’s how they compare:
Factor
Staff Augmentation
Consulting
Objective
Fill skill gaps and boost capacity
Solve business problems with expert guidance
Engagement Type
Short-term or ongoing
Project-specific or strategic
Management
Managed internally
Managed externally
Integration
Embedded within the team
Operates independently
Cost Structure
Hourly or contract-based
Fixed-fee, retainer, or value-based
Best For
Development, IT support, execution tasks
Strategy, transformation, high-level problem-solving
When to Choose Staff Augmentation for Your Business
Staff augmentation is ideal when you want to retain control over how work gets done but need extra capacity or specialised skills.
Choose staff augmentation when:
- You have a well-defined project and need more hands on deck
- Your internal team lacks certain technical skills
- You want to scale quickly without hiring full-time
- You need flexibility to increase or decrease resources as needed
- You require team continuity and knowledge retention
As Collette Wyatt, CEO of Evolved Ideas, puts it:
"Staff augmentation works best when businesses want to stay in the driver’s seat. You get access to great talent without giving up control, and that can be a real differentiator when speed and consistency matter."