How Outsourcing to a Trusted Advisor Can Improve Efficiency

Maximising efficiency is among the core objectives of any business. This is particularly true for smaller and medium-sized organisations, who may lack the resources for hiring more staff or investing in the latest tools, processes, or software. In fact, for such businesses, it’s often the case that employees take on more and more responsibility, limiting the time they have available to complete tasks with the necessary dedication.

Being able to rely on outsourcing providers, however, represents an affordable means of relieving the burden on others while accessing expert knowledge. Nowhere can this be more effective than when it comes to outsourcing financial assistance to trusted advisor.

How Is Outsourcing More Efficient?

You may be wondering exactly how providing third-party employees can help improve the efficiency of your work; after all, keeping everything ‘in-house’ enables complete supervision and ensures work is being done on time and according to your needs, right? Well, not necessarily.

As identified above, businesses with few staff members often find employees being spread too thinly across projects to be able to function with complete efficiency. If, for example, your office manager is scheduling work, managing staff levels, training new recruits, and looking after holiday requests, adding the burden of managing the company finances means even more work to complete and less time in which to do it. Not only is this detrimental to the quality – and accuracy – of the work, it also negatively impacts employee morale, leading to illness and higher staff turnover.

By being able to call upon the services of an outsourced trusted advisor, you would instead have the expertise of an experienced – and qualified – accounting professional as and when needed, thereby relieving your office manager (in this scenario, at least) of added responsibility they may not want.

Benefit from Expertise When You Need It

This is arguably the greatest benefit of outsourcing to a trusted advisor and a key contributor to improving efficiency in your company. Quality finance directors will possess many years’ experience of working in accounting departments, having the knowledge of an array of related activities such as tax, bookkeeping and payroll, meaning they can complete a number of tasks quickly and with precision.

In addition, with changes to financial legislation and practices occurring at a fast rate, you can rest assured an outsourced trusted advisor will be staying abreast of the developments – something internal staff with other responsibilities may be unable to do.

The costs associated with outsourcing accountants are also beneficial to your business. While you may find yourself outsourcing to a trusted advisor on a higher per-hour basis than you would hiring a full-time member of staff, you will be paying only for the time that you need. After all, there’s no point paying for 40 hours per week – plus the associated insurance, software licences, equipment provision, and other employee expenses – when all you need is 10 hours per week.

Maintain Business Focus

Saving money and accessing the nous and experience of a trained and qualified finance director will also free up your team to focus on the core business objectives, leaving the accounting and financial administration to others.

As a business leader yourself, meanwhile, you need access to top level information in order to make company and investment decisions, and have the confidence that all salaries and expenses are billed on time. So, why not consider outsourcing to a trusted advisor and relinquishing control of the finer details in order to improve the efficiency of your team, and your business? You may well find the returns on doing so are significant.

For any further information about financial services for SME businesses, speak with London Chartered Accountants, THP, with offices in London, Essex and Surrey.


6 Comments

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    Collins Services

    June 25, 2018

    We outsource a couple of freelancers on an ongoing basis, and really appreciate being able to do this. It makes so much sense, cost wise, as it means we only pay for such services when we really need them.

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    Sally

    June 27, 2018

    Couldn’t recommend outsourcing enough, even better when you develop a good working relationship with those who you outsource to.

    Reply
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    Hamish

    June 27, 2018

    We outsource a couple of jobs on an ongoing basis. However, word of advice, try to aim for fixed prices rather than per-hour basis. We’ve found in the past that per-hour is hard to maintain control of, whereas fixed price equals clarity.

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      Sally

      June 28, 2018

      Definitely, Hamish. In fact, I actually work for a couple of companies offering bookkeeping work, and I prefer fixed rates.

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      • Avatar

        Hamish

        June 28, 2018

        Fixed rates allow us to set the price and give a deadline, so everyone knows when to expect the completed job.

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    Daniela Bucatele

    June 28, 2018

    Some excellent points here, thank you. Yes, fixed rate allows you to budget better, especially if it’s an ongoing outsource contract.

    Reply

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