Managing Your Finances: An Introduction to Outsourcing

Keeping track of business finances can be a pain. For most, this becomes a problem due to the frequency that assets have to be transferred. Larger companies can afford a proper financial department and will not need to worry about this, but small to mid-sized businesses often will need outside help or in some cases, a dedicated financial professional, in order to properly manage their finances.

This is where outsourcing and full-service BPOs come into play. For a cheaper cost, you can hire financial professionals remotely. These remote staff bring benefits such as saved time, better organization, and control.

Full-Service BPOs

Business process outsourcing centers have helped connect businesses with professionals all over the world. The solutions they provide for businesses help to save time and money. However, it’s only recently that the barrier to entry has lowered. In the past, only companies of a certain size, namely the Fortune 500, have had access to outsourcing.

Outsourcing is the acquisition of goods and/or services from a third party. In the cases of these giant companies, it could be any form of outsourcing, including the manufacturing of physical goods, financial services, call centers, etc.

While there are specialized outsourcing service centers for industries such as marketing, finance, medical, etc, full-service BPOs cater to all of the above, all while keeping the same level of proficiency. The added benefit of partnering with a BPO is the different types of staff you can hire through them, should the need arise.

Simplified Steps To Partnering With A BPO

  1. Initial Contact – Questions are exchanged from both your company and the BPO
    1. Use this time to ask any clarifying questions and voice your concerns
    2. The BPO will ask you what you’re hoping to achieve and create a proposal
  2. Proposal Meeting – Based on information from the discovery call, you will be presented with a plan
    1. Go back and forth to get the plan that works best for you and your company
  3. Recruitment Started – Sourcing and interviewing of applicants based on your requirements
  4. Shortlist Created – The most qualified candidates are presented to you
    1. If you like someone, select them and set a start date
    2. If you don’t like the candidates, a reset will happen
  5. Staff Hired – Hiring details finalized
    1. Staff onboarded
    2. The staff starts work/training

Cost-Effective Solution

Cost reduction is an explicit benefit of outsourcing and probably the one that gets more and more businesses to outsource. Depending on the specifications of the job and the location of the selected remote staff, savings could be higher than 60% when compared to hiring someone onsite for the same position.

By partnering with a BPO, you get the professional support you’re looking for at price points much lower than the talent pool in your immediate area. For example, the average accountant makes $3,000 a month in the US, while in the Philippines they make between $700 and $1,500 a month.

Time Saved

There’s a saying that “time is money”, and in our society, it really is. We get paid by the hour, we clock in and out to mark exactly what time we start and end. That being said, when tasks like paperwork begin to pile up and people aren’t allowed to do the primary function of their job, that time is lessened and the amount of money their time is worth also decreases.

Having people specifically hired to do repetitive tasks such as administrative work frees up time for your core employees to do their primary duties, essentially giving them more time in the day to be productive with more impactful tasks.

Organized Finances

The whole purpose of having a finance department is to keep your finances manageable and in order. The cost is minimal compared to hiring onshore, but the cost of having financial errors, especially during tax season could cost you much more.

Take a bookkeeper for example, their records are the basis for company decisions, and in certain situations are actually a part of the strategy development process. Without an organized representation of your company’s finances, you wouldn’t be able to make informed decisions regarding your company’s future.

Control Over Your Remote Staff

Control is a serious discussion when considering remote staff. Big box BPOs that cater specifically to the Fortune 500 businesses tend to offer remote staff in packages. Essentially you pay these BPOs to complete a task that they oversee, meaning you give them a task, pay them, then they complete the task while being led by someone else.

With smaller more personal full-service BPOs, such as Clark Staff, you are able to customize the service to your needs. This usually translates into being able to fully control the processes of your staff all while the administrative side is still taken care of by the BPO.

Long story short, the BPO takes over the administrative work, so you can focus solely on your remote staff’s productivity.

The Wrap Up

BPOs help alleviate any downward pressure felt from any department, including finance. As a business owner or even in management, you don’t have to take on additional responsibilities such as bookkeeping in order to keep your business running. Doing everything yourself often ends in the loss of productivity, burnout, or even mistakes that will cost you capital. Not hiring finance professionals has far greater costs in the long run when compared to the cost of hiring remote staff. Reach out to BPOs today to see how they can help create or bolster your finance department.