Nick Sinclair, CEO of The Outsourced Accountant (TOA), shared expert advice on how to handle the biggest concerns with outsourcing as polled in our webinar entitled Essential Guide To Outsourcing And Cloud Security For Accountants held in 10 May 2017. The webinar is joined by Jamie Beresford, CEO of Practice Protect.
CEO Shares Insights On Handling Top Concerns With Outsourcing
Essential Guide To Outsourcing And Cloud Security For Accountants (May 2017)
How To Become a Real-Time Accountant and Add Value to Your Firm (November 2016).
For over 5 years, Nick Sinclair has been in the accounting space outsourcing tasks specifically to improve the productivity and efficiency of accounting firms. The last three years of those are with TOA leading over 500 accountants and support staff. The types of concerns on outsourcing have not changed much over the years but we are seeing changes in their ranking.
In December 2016 in a joint webinar with Panalitix, How To Become a Real-Time Accountant and Add Value to Your Firm, quality of work ranked first in the list of concerns on our recent webinar, communication occupies the top spot. For each of these, Nick Sinclair shares his pro tips on how he and his team at The Outsourced Accountant have dealt.
- Communication (28%) – The quality is very high and getting the right communication structure in place is crucialPhilippines ranked 13th in the English Proficiency Index (EPI) worldwide giving you the best English speakers in the region. Effective communication is easily achieved because the quality of their English is really strong. To add, you also have to get your communication rhythms in place with your global team. Do a daily huddle with your team in Australia and also to your offshore team helps significantly.
- Quality of work (23%) – A huge priority is placed by the Philippine teams to complete high-quality work and be very productiveAccountants at TOA are all degree holders, CPAs, a lot have been CFOs for 5,000 FTE companies who are doing accounting with us. The CPA certification in the Philippines over there has a 70% fail rate. It’s really difficult to pass but the Philippines has a sheer volume of people. There’s over 3,000 CPA is coming out of universities each year, so there’s plenty of talent. As talent shortage in Australia is a big issue, many of our clients have actually solved their major talent challenge, as talent shortage in Australia is a big issue, with our help.
- Security (23%) – Security concerns and business risks can be locked away very quicklySecurity is not a problem offshore, the real issue is onshore. Jamie Beresford, CEO of Practice Protect, supports this by having cloud security done properly right on day one. Password protection via a single-sign-on system and having the right internet setup are strongly suggested. The single sign-on system tracks and control users’ access and activities. Everything that a firm needs for its own protection and for due diligence. Read more about Jamie Beresford’s insights on cloud security here.
- What clients would think (21%) – The key focus for clients is on the delivery of valueOut of all the firms that work with us, probably 60% – 70% of them do disclose this with their clients. Some of them, who have been with us for years, are now starting to teach their clients how to use this as a business strategy.
- Worried about their team (5%) – Outsourcing can dramatically increase local team member engagementIf it’s positioned properly, your team will actually be excited by being able to really have an offshore team to do the work that they don’t enjoy doing so that they can actually add more value. Their role is to be more client-facing or strategising on how to provide higher value services to clients.
