Outsourcing Accounting Services
What is Outsourcing?
Outsourcing is a business practice in which a company hires another company or an individual to perform tasks, handle operations or provide services that are either usually executed or had previously been done by the company's own employees.
The outside company, which is known as the service provider or a third-party provider, arranges for its own workers or computer systems to perform the tasks or services either on site at the hiring company's own facilities or at external locations.
Companies today can outsource a number of tasks or services. They often outsource information technology services, including programming & application development as well as technical support.
They frequently outsource customer service and call service functions. They can outsource other types of work as well, including manufacturing processes, human resources tasks and financial functions such as bookkeeping and payroll.
Companies can outsource entire divisions, such as its entire IT department, or just parts of a particular department.
Outsourcing business functions is sometimes called contracting out or business process outsourcing.
Outsourcing can involve using a large third-party provider, such as a company like IBM to manage IT services or FedEx Supply Chain for third-party logistics services, but it can also involve hiring individual independent contractors and temporary office workers.
Reasons for outsourcing
Companies often outsource as a way to lower costs, improve efficiencies and gain speed.
Companies that decide to outsource rely on the third-party providers' expertise in performing the outsourced tasks to gain such benefits. The underlying principle is that because the third-party provider focuses on that particular task, it is able to do it better, faster and cheaper than the hiring company could.
Given such benefits, companies often decide to outsource supporting functions within their businesses so they can focus their resources more specifically on their core competencies, thereby helping them gain competitive advantages in the market.
However, some companies decide to outsource for other reasons.
For example, they outsource because they're unable to hire in-house workers with the specialized skills and experience needed to perform certain jobs.
Companies sometimes opt to outsource as a way to shift meeting regulatory requirements or obligations to the third-party provider.
Furthermore, more companies are looking to outsourcing providers as innovation centers. According to Deloitte's 2016 outsourcing survey, 35% of respondents said they are focused on measuring innovation value in their outsourcing partnerships.
Outsourcing vs. off-shoring
Companies that hire third-party providers to perform the outsourced work overseas are engaging in a particular form of outsourcing known as offshoring. Near-shoring is a term used for work done or services performed by people in nearby, often bordering regions and countries.
Outsourcing pros and cons
In addition to delivering lower costs and increased efficiencies, companies that outsource could see other benefits.
By outsourcing, companies could free up resources (i.e., cash, personnel, facilities) that can be redirected to existing tasks or new projects that deliver higher yields for the company than the functions that had been outsourced.
Companies might find, too, that they can streamline production and/or shorten production times because the third-party providers can more quickly execute the outsourced tasks.
Outsourcing, however, can produce challenges and drawbacks for companies.
Companies engaged in outsourcing must adequately manage their contracts and their ongoing relationships with third-party providers to ensure success.
Some might find that the resources devoted to managing those relationships rivals the resources devoted to the tasks that were outsourced, thereby possibly negating many, if not all, of the benefits sought by outsourcing.
even if the company's contract with the provider stipulates certain quality measures, the company might find it's more difficult to correct an outsourced provider than it would be to correct an in-house team.
Companies that outsource could also face heightened security risks, as they exchange with their third-party providers the company's proprietary information or sensitive data that could be misused, mishandled or inadvertently exposed by the outsource provider.
Additionally, companies might encounter difficulties in getting their own employees to communicate and collaborate effectively with those working for third-party providers -- a scenario that's more common if the third-party operates overseas.
Ethics
Outsourcing has raised some ethical issues for companies as well.Most notably, some have criticized the practice for its impact on workers.
Employees at companies that decide to outsource frequently see the decision to outsource as a threat to their job security; in many cases, that fear is justified as they lose their jobs to workers who may be paid less and receive fewer benefits.
This scenario has also drawn criticism from the public as well as from politicians, labor leaders and others.
Companies could also face negative publicity as a result of their decisions to outsource, with customers and the public in general viewing the move as a way to cut workers' wages and benefits or as a way to skirt environmental, financial or safety regulations.
Insourcing vs. outsourcing
Companies may decide against outsourcing and instead turn to insourcing.
As the name implies, insourcing refers to the practice of having in-house teams perform functions that could be handled by outside companies or contractors. Thus, insourcing can be viewed as the opposite of outsourcing.
Sometimes insourcing involves hiring new employees, either on a permanent or temporary basis, to execute the tasks being in-sourced. Companies might need to invest in new equipment, hardware and software when insourcing, and they might need to re-engineer business processes as well.
Outsourcing trends and future directions
Although outsourcing had been viewed as a way to lower costs and gain efficiencies, it is increasingly becoming a strategic tool for companies, too.
Leading companies understand that outsourcing some functions can help them gain a competitive advantage by allowing them to access expertise or innovative technologies they don't have in-house; or by helping them deliver products or services more quickly; or enabling them to shift resources to the areas of the business that are most critical.
For more assistance, send your queries to info@sesam-accounts.com or WhatsApp your questions to Ms Kiran Makhija on + 971 52 8731596
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