Blogs - Finance and Accounting Services Outsourcing
| Three reasons why Finance and Accounting outsourcing (FAO) will continue to deliver value |
| By Rick Sturge on 3/3/2010 2:53:55 PM |
There were very positive sentiments around the future of finance and accounting outsourcing at a recent webinar I spoke at along with a Bob Cecil, Executive Director, Business and Financial Processes Advisory, EquaTerra, Glenn Turner, Finance Director North America, Shared Services Center for Avon, and Stan Lepeak, EquaTerra’s Managing Director of Global Research.
From the discussion, there seemed to be three clear reasons for CFOs saying “we will outsourcing more in 2010 than what we did in 2009.”
1.Driving efficiencies: Glenn put it very succinctly: “FAO is part of our strategic vision and we are always looking for ways to drive efficiencies in our processes.” CFOs have long acknowledged their functional inefficiencies and are working hard to identify strategies to improve efficiencies – “good enough is not good enough anymore."
2.Reducing costs: Bob zeroed in on how outsourcing could be deployed to bring down cost and improve the balance sheet which in turn will provide capital to invest in growing the business. As pundits ponder whether the recovery will be u-shaped or flat, the focus is clearly on cost reduction which is driving CFOs to adopt offshoring and outsourcing.
3. Affordable brainpower: With outsourcing, companies tap into plentiful brainpower at an affordable cost. Today, staff delivering BPO services come with multi-language capabilities, certifications from CIMA or in IFRS and even with MBA qualifications. And these well-qualified staff can be deployed at almost half the cost of an onshore resource. So the days of outsourcing to tap into sources of less expensive staff have been replaced with cost-effective brainpower.
To sum, the CFO’s agenda is dichotonomous - split between the need to meet strategic demands (growing business and tackling competition), and operational challenges (cutting costs and improving the controls environment) There are many solutions and strategies that CFOs can adopt to meet these challenges, but increasing the breadth and depth of FAO is surely high up on the CFO's agenda. |
Permalink | Comments (0) |
Email to a Colleague |  |