Top advice for SMB leaders who want to outsource IT or outsource accounting
Recently, I was asked what we’ve learned from ten successful years providing outsourced IT and outsourced accounting teams to small and medium-sized businesses. What advice can we offer to business leaders who are thinking about outsourcing to the Philippines for the first time?
A decade ago, my business partner Ian Parkin and I saw that small and medium-sized businesses were being let down by the offshore sector. Inexperienced providers, often with a background in running contact centres, overlooked SMB organisations or offered sub-standard talent. This allowed larger firms to undercut their smaller competitors and increase their profits.
Those outsourcers that did attempt to serve the SMB sector often had high staff turnover rates that left leaders at their clients constantly in training mode. Hidden costs landed larger than expected invoices on SMB leaders’ desks.
Clients tell us that our business is unique within their experience of outsourcers. They love their high-caliber remote IT and accounting team members. They appreciated our comprehensive, simple, supportive, and transparent operating model.
So, here’s our advice for business leaders who are thinking about outsourcing to the Philippines.
Know what matters to you, what outcomes you want.
Outsourcing to the Philippines saves money. It’s the number one outcome that our clients want to achieve. But what other outcomes do you need to achieve? List them out. It’s important to balance savings with your other goals.
Outcomes you may want include:
- Building a high-quality team. Cheapest usually means less skilled, more supervision is required.
- Low staff turnover. Cheapest means higher turnover as remote employees seek higher wages.
- A reputation for service. Cheapest means less experience and lower quality.
- End-to-end support, HR understanding. Cheapest doesn’t fund this. You pay in your time
- Ultra-fast issue resolution. Cheapest means this won’t happen. You lose peace of mind
- Predictable and simple invoices. Cheapest providers add extra costs that you’re not expecting.
- Joined-up local and remote teams. Cheapest can’t match the working conditions of your local team.
- The right tech and cybersecurity. Cheapest means lower specs. There’s less to invest in security.
Quality providers will have these things covered. They will save you a substantial sum, but they won’t be low-cost.
We’ve gained many clients that have come to Yempo after they’ve tried super cheap and found that they need outcomes that go beyond simply saving money.
Find provider(s) that understand your industry and/or specialism.
An outsourcing industry oddity is that many providers claim to be able to find talent for any industry, any role. Somehow, they believe they can hold their own across IT, law, accounting, engineering, marketing, admin, property management, etc.
Let’s think about this from your perspective. They expect you to believe that they can understand your acronyms, skillsets, tools, and various specialist job roles despite their lack of focus! They expect you to believe that they can separate superior talent from the superficial!
It’s fanciful. Specialists do better jobs.
If you want great talent and low hassle, then you need a provider that understands your area of expertise.
Decide who has the right talent bank for you to tap into.
Accounting specialists are most likely to have the best offshore accounting talent bank.
IT specialists are most likely to have the best offshore IT talent bank.
‘All roles’ providers have a hotchpotch talent bank. They leave you to sift the talented from the talentless. Recruitment is slow, your time is soaked up, and you may end up with sub-standard team members.
Specialists only take up your time when they’ve pre-screened and selected the best talent for you to interview.
Building a talent bank for IT and accounting outsourcing has taken us years. Make sure any outsourcing providers that you’re considering have put in the hard miles required so they can put the best talent in front of you.
Do their leaders have experience in your sector? And your markets?
Both Ian and I enjoyed long successful careers in the IT and finance sectors prior to setting up Yempo. Over 15 years ago, while employed at a global investment bank in Manila, I established a substantial offshore IT engineering team, which Ian and his team later utilized. At the end of our bank careers, we realised that we’d acquired a deep understanding of offshore outsourcing, accounting, and IT.
I still live in the Philippines. I can bridge how Western businesses operate with Filipino business culture. I understand IT and accounting. Clients find this experience incredibly helpful.
So, do use LinkedIn to check out the careers of leaders of prospective outsourcing partners. You’ll soon understand if they are blagging it or really know what good looks like for your sector. You’ll see if they get your market’s culture.
List the tools your team uses. Check if providers use them as well.
One of the great enablers of outsourcing is that your local and offshore employees are able to collaborate by using the same IT platforms and data sets. Platforms like Xero make the locations of accounting staff irrelevant. Jira makes IT task management simple. So, it’s essential that your outsourcing partner is able to equip remote employees with the right platforms for the job. They must be able to provide team members that are skilled in your choice(s) of platforms.
Once again, it’s time to beware of ‘we do all things’ providers. They simply cannot understand every tool for every industry.
Maintain your values.
Clients talk about how we give them ‘peace of mind’ that their offshore accounting and offshore IT team members are treated similarly to their local employees. Most business leaders want to trust that salary savings don’t equate to modern slavery for remote employees.
Teams only work when values are shared, and working conditions are level across locations. We’ve always ensured that our staff are able to work in modern offices, have access to health insurance, regular social events, holidays, modern technology. Yes, this does cost a bit more. But staff are happy, hard working, and loyal.
Dig into how they cover your back.
Clients tell us that they worry about complying with Philippine labour law. They want to know that their offshore partner understands the law and can protect them should things go wrong.
Assessing the quality of offshore and outsourcing providers is a bit like car insurance. You only know how good they are when things go wrong. Many providers will claim that they can secure the talent that you need. But not every provider is willing to invest in the support team that your business also requires.
Yempo’s management team includes expert local HR professionals. Our clients are just a video call away from support. We solve problems before our clients are aware that they’ve occurred.
Summary
After ten years in business, clients still tell us that not all outsourcers are equal. Most providers lack the expertise that can enable SMB business leaders to successfully add quality offshore IT and offshore accounting talent to their teams.
By looking beyond cost savings SMB leaders can gain fantastic talent, remove HR headaches, offer their clients great services, and still save on costs. Their businesses are in a great place to pursue growth.
Thank you for visiting our blog! We hope you found our content informative and engaging. Stay connected with us for more insightful blogs, updates, and tips on outsourcing IT and outsourcing finance in the Philippines, or shoot us an email at [email protected]. We are happy to answer your questions!
Learn more: Download our Step-by-step Finance Outsourcing Guide
