{"id":81864,"date":"2021-02-22t12:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-22t17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/48e130086c.nxcli.net\/?p=81864"},"modified":"2022-01-10t13:51:13","modified_gmt":"2022-01-10t18:51:13","slug":"12-signs-its-time-to-outsource","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/\/www.g005e.com\/2021\/02\/22\/12-signs-its-time-to-outsource\/","title":{"rendered":"12 signs it’s time to outsource"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>also: seven covid-driven client needs. by hitendra patil<\/i> when you are the key person to make things happen at your firm, you want to invest as much time in \u201cbusiness development\u201d (not just marketing and sales) as humanly possible. your firm\u2019s growth will make you feel that producing and delivering your services is an essential core business function for you, but some of it is not.<\/p>\n more:<\/b> how to create your firm\u2019s cas team<\/a> | technology and your cas clients<\/a> | top five cas killers and how to overcome them<\/a> | 21 ways to adjust your practice in 2021<\/a> freeing up yourself to spend more time focusing on the things that add value to your practice and help set it apart from the competition is the most essential differentiating growth strategy you will ever deploy. the same principle applies to your experienced, talented staff. therefore, it makes sense to leverage paraprofessionals and transactional staff, located anywhere. cloud technology will give your firm that mobility and flexibility to let such staff work from anywhere, anytime. when you do so, your more experienced team members can start working on higher-value tasks to ensure your firm\u2019s profitability is enhanced. it also gives such talented and experienced people much-needed \u201cjob satisfaction\u201d by being able to do higher-value work.<\/p>\n recordkeeping and finance department operations are considered the core functions of cpas and accountants. that is why millions of businesses \u201coutsource\u201d accounting functions to accounting firms. and compliance is a huge responsibility for accountants. regulation and laws create compliance necessities, and accountants help people deal effectively with the complexity of compliance. accountants ensure that people understand what is permissible and what is not. accountants study the laws and regulations on behalf of their clients so that their clients don\u2019t have to. it is the trusted accountability of accountants to ensure compliance for their clients.<\/p>\n accounting is a knowledge<\/strong> profession. \u201cservices\u201d turn the knowledge into benefits that accountants\u2019 clients enjoy. services is a mechanism to deliver benefits of knowledge. the complexity and sheer magnitude of laws and regulations that accountants have to learn continuously are not easy for non-accountants to emulate. it is, therefore, critically important for accountants to \u201cinterpret the information\u201d to derive customized insights and intelligence about their clients\u2019 business and taxes.<\/p>\n to acquire this intelligence, accountants need timely, accurate and reliable information consistently. to optimize the cost of producing such information, accounting firms cannot compromise on the quality of resources. outsourcing can help reduce the cost of quality resources to maintain healthy profitability for accounting firms. nearly 70 percent of the top 100 firms have built their business models on benefits of accounting outsourcing (work is done in the country where accounting firm is located) and offshoring (work is done in foreign countries).<\/p>\n most firms that outsource consider it to address one or all of the following significant reasons strategically:<\/p>\n resource challenge <\/strong><\/p>\n management bandwidth<\/strong><\/p>\n cost-effective growth management<\/strong><\/p>\n while there is a cost to outsourcing, it can save your firm a significant amount of money by freeing up the capital that you can invest in other, more productive areas of your practice. outsourcing can be especially beneficial for growing and new startup firms by allowing them to conserve valuable capital instead of using it to build costly office overhead and some internal staff. outsourcing is also beneficial for bigger firms to retain their talented and experienced staff who get increasingly frustrated with routine, repetitive, data-intensive work.<\/p>\n if you are experiencing one or more of these 12 common scenarios, then bringing in an outsourcing services provider might help you grow your firm much more profitably.<\/p>\n in a nutshell, the three significant challenges mentioned above simply get transferred to the outsourcing vendor. and if you transfer some risks, you must analyze whether your outsourcing vendor can mitigate these risks. hence, it is critically essential for accounting and tax firms to ensure that the selected vendor has adequate competencies and resources to overcome these challenges. as early as possible, in your decision to outsource, do comprehensive due diligence. here is a suggested checklist to conduct your due diligence:<\/p>\n resources<\/strong><\/p>\n management bandwidth<\/strong><\/p>\n cost-effective growth management<\/strong><\/p>\n coronavirus caught the entire world totally unprepared for its aftermath. the impact on economies is unfathomable. accounting firms are not immune to this unprecedented situation. the deadly pandemic led to \u201cworking for home,\u201d a requirement for accounting firms. the alternative was a risk to life itself. firms scrambled to make technological arrangements to make remote working possible. it was a systemic shock to the decades of operating models of accounting firms.<\/p>\n but over about four to six months into the pandemic, several firms recognized that it is possible to achieve good results by remote working. several staff members of accounting firms reported increased productivity and efficiency, as working from homes saved them commute times and stress. new collaboration tools like zoom videoconferencing, microsoft teams, etc. minimized the undesirable challenges such as degradation of teamwork. despite employees working from their homes, such tools made it possible for them to regularly interact with others on the team and across the firm and clients.<\/p>\n how did accountants respond to the new normal amid the pandemic?<\/p>\n other than helping clients obtain small business loans and apply for paycheck protection program (ppp) benefits, what were accountants experiencing? based on daily conversations with accountants over six to eight weeks, i found these were some core focus areas of accountants:<\/p>\n that led to another critical question: \u201care accountants now thinking differently about cas?\u201d<\/p>\n one of the silver linings of the dark clouds of coronavirus-impacted economic challenges is that business owners interacted far more with their accountants, compared to the pre-covid-19 world. in addition to being commercial and compliance-oriented, such interactions were also highly emotional in these crazily anxious times. accountants have seen far more busy times to meet the deadlines of ppp and small business administration loan programs.<\/p>\n all of these efforts ensured that, in general, clients are very grateful to their accountants, and that accountants have accumulated very strong goodwill in a very short period of time during the pandemic. many accountants i interacted with told me that they waived tens of thousands of dollars in advisory and process work fees for clients for loans and ppp-related work.<\/p>\n importantly, clients increasingly experienced and recognized how much more accountants could help their businesses beyond traditional accounting, payroll, compliance and tax services. these experiences are fully expected to turn more clients obtaining more assistance from their accountants as post-pandemic, business owners would want to focus on their own businesses entirely. one of the key factors that is driving this new thinking among business owners is the experience they have had in recent times \u2013 how competent, capable and resourceful accountants are in quickly navigating the changing landscape (economic and legal\/commercial) to meet tight deadlines successfully. without accountants\u2019 help, thousands of businesses would have missed obtaining the ppp and sba loan benefits. clients have clearly experienced the lack of their own \u201cprofessional capabilities\u201d that accountants have in abundance.<\/strong><\/p>\n given these new shifts in clients\u2019 thinking processes, many accountants have planned to include more client accounting services in their offerings. many accounting firms are expecting and working on generating more revenue from existing clients because cas will also make the clients more \u201csticky.\u201d it is also much faster and economical for firms to sell more services to existing clients who are more receptive to explore such possibilities now.<\/p>\n in particular, here are the specific services accountants are working on offering more to their clients.<\/p>\n business planning services: <\/strong>many accounting firms are planning changes to their practices \u2013 not just in core work but how they will run their own business. these freshly enhanced capabilities are making accountants help their clients more practically in planning their businesses.<\/p>\n cost optimization advisory and working capital management services: <\/strong>firms themselves have rapidly worked on optimizing their own costs, and this experience is helping firms offer that expertise to their clients now. the measurable value of each dollar in a given business is something accountants understand masterfully. accountants can leverage this core competency to offer working capital management services to business clients.<\/p>\n different tax planning and advisory services: <\/strong>the economic stimulus and ppp program will create new compliance requirements that are likely to have a significant impact on the taxability of businesses. there is no other professional segment than accountants to help clients with tax planning and advice.<\/p>\n core, client accounting services: <\/strong>firms will do more work while clients will have no choice but to focus, more than ever before, on their core business transactions\/operations, leaving professional accounting work to professional accountants. automation and integrations across many solutions mean accountants can achieve excellent process efficiencies at their firms to be able to service many more clients and process much more work without adding resources at their firms.<\/p>\n payroll processing and compliance services: <\/strong>never in the recent past would have clients recognized the need to keep payroll records up to date and fully compliant as in these unprecedented times. this is the much-needed trigger for business owners to take the help of professional payroll service providers to keep things correct at all times. even with large-scale unemployment, small businesses will still employ millions of people, and many of these small businesses that did not have robust payroll processes will find greater value in professional payroll services. as people return to work in the post-coronavirus world, this segment will grow quickly.<\/p>\n technology advisory services: <\/strong>accountants have been adopting cloud technologies for many years now. even those firms that still had desktop solutions have now felt the urgency to move to the cloud. these experiences have turned into technological expertise for accountants. and no wonder accountants are finding themselves advising more clients on implementing technologies in client businesses more and more, at the very least in those businesses that do not involve purely physical labor.<\/p>\n more interactive and collaborative services: <\/strong>social distancing made it necessary for accountants to be much more interactive and collaborative. clients who traditionally resisted a paperless way of working with accountants have more or less adapted to the new ways of working. the most significant impact of this has been the increased interactions and collaboration between clients and accountants. this is paving the way for clients to understand that accountants can provide real-time services even from miles away, liberating more work to accountants. accountants are adapting their business processes accordingly to make them more interactive and collaborative, thanks to technology. in other words, it means clients will be more open to working collaboratively with accountants, not just after the fact.<\/p>\n crisis brings opportunities<\/strong><\/p>\n almost everyone has now been forced to rethink how to work and do business. accountants are not immune to this effect. it is actually turning out to be an opportunity for accounting firms to rethink their business processes, technologies, services mix and even business models of their firms. re-evaluating the allocation of the budget at the firm to productivity enhancement, and more importantly, to process innovation using more technology solutions is the opportunity you don\u2019t want to miss to enhance your cas practice.<\/p>\n make your office virtual, at least partially<\/strong><\/p>\n remote working is here to stay, pandemic or no pandemic. cloud software is a fundamental necessity for remote working arrangements.<\/p>\n in your firm\u2019s cas staffing strategy, make sure you actively consider leveraging remote talent to make your office virtual, at least partially. it can help you create capabilities to offer higher-end services that otherwise would be difficult if you are in locations where staffing is a constant challenge.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" <\/a>
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\naccountaneur: the entrepreneurial accountant<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n
\nexclusively for pro members. <\/span><\/strong>log in here<\/a> or 2022世界杯足球排名 today<\/a>.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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\nyou will build your cas practice on newer, cloud, collaborative technologies. it will help you automate many routine functions and optimize your operating costs. but you still need competent people to manage, nurture and strengthen your client services and advisory functions.<\/p>\naccounting is not a services profession<\/h3>\n
why do accounting firms outsource?<\/h3>\n
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how to know if you should explore outsourcing\/offshoring<\/h3>\n
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how to mitigate strategic risks in outsourcing<\/h3>\n
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how the coronavirus changed mindsets of accounting firms<\/h3>\n
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seven covid-driven client needs<\/h3>\n
\nalso: seven covid-driven client needs.<\/strong>
\nby hitendra patil<\/em>
\naccountaneur: the entrepreneurial accountant<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1363,"featured_media":48696,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3058,1363,3120,3002],"tags":[3084,3085,3089],"class_list":["post-81864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-client-accounting-services","category-featured","category-pro-member-exclusive","category-special","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-wfh"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n