Offshore Staffing In Finance Accounting Process Guide
When you hire offshore resources to form an extended finance team; language and communication barriers are expected. To quickly turn this decision into a successful advantageous position for the organization; the management must ensure their internal team about their job security and explain how important is it for the business to grow keeping its fixed expenses low. More the internal team is warm and accepting towards their offshore staffing; we have seen the whole process becoming very easy and comforting to all stakeholders overcoming all problems into healthy, successful & a profitable business relationship.
Process
Comprehending specific needs:
The first step is determining what operations you should outsource based on what you need from outsourcing. Every small business has staff members and managers who are executing numerous activities like AR/AP, Bookkeeping, Accounting, Financial Projections, Planning for growth, Fund raising and others. You must decide what part of the process shall you require the expertise of a specialist service provider so that your internal team becomes more efficient.
Set a Business Goal:
A clear statement of corporate goals is beneficial to all parties involved in contract negotiations. Such clarity also reduces the possibility of miscommunications and misunderstandings in the future. When objectives are stated, everyone knows what to expect from a deal. This improves communication and decision-making. For this, explain to the remote employees what their duties are, as well as what the clients do, how they work, and what their expectations are. Reports might also be discussed at the briefing. To maximize their potential, it is crucial to communicate effectively with personnel. Knowledge of the task will increase productivity among the staff. By executing processes and workflows efficiently, it will ultimately benefit your business.
Identify the costs involved:
Offshore staffing has its costs. Outsourcing involves time and money. You must plan and create a service contract, for instance. Finding, selecting, and hiring people with the relevant expertise are crucial when constructing an offshore team. Newly hired employees are also trained on the rules of the company. The company must be restructured even if the duties are outsourced. Therefore, estimating outsourcing costs ahead of time is advantageous.
Selection process i.e. recruiting the right candidates:
In the next phase, the hiring process will take place. It is extremely important for any company to hire the right person for each position. Taking the wrong decision can cost you time and money, while a good choice can positively affect the work environment and help your organization grow. Thus, it is essential that every company takes the recruiting process seriously without compromising on the skills that appropriate candidates should possess. We ensure the candidates that we present for interview to our clients are all pre-screened by Brivan Consultants technical experts ensuring that the recruitment time at the client’s end is drastically reduced. We have seen onboardings happening of the right candidates in between 3 to 4 weeks’ time from receiving clients’ requirements.
Set feasible timelines:
Each milestone you reach is a tremendous accomplishment. Therefore, when setting deadlines, you need to be realistic and achievable. Prior to launching each project, you should know the amount of time it will take. In order to estimate the length of a project, you can engage an expert.
On boarding process:
In this step, on boarding takes place. At on boarding you are provided with support for Infrastructure, Communication, and Workflow management. Onboarding refers to the processes that allow new employees to learn about the company’s structure, culture, vision, mission, and values. It includes activities that allow new employees to complete an initial new-hire orientation process.
Data security:
The purpose of data security is to safeguard data against breaches and cyber-attacks, both internal and external. Especially for firms that have employees operating remotely from overseas locations, data security is a top concern. In other words, the four Cs, which are Certification, Compliance, Credibility, and Commitment, ensure that the data of the clients is protected.
Payroll, IT & Admin:
The offshore staffing agency oversees payroll, IT and admin expenses towards employees while virtual staff will work on client’s project full-time. The cost of resources as agreed with clients is invoiced on set dates ensuring continuity in salary to this employee. In a nut shell these offshore resources are clients’ employees with their Salary date, perks, holidays, IT systems in complete sync to clients’ internal employees.
Contracts:
A contract is not a binding contract. The contract can be terminated whenever the company’s convenience dictates. Our agreement does not entail any lock-ins, but has a 30-day notice period.
Replacement:
The offshore staffing agency is responsible to get a replacement incase of any problems on either the employees end or client’s end. The necessary replacement will be given within 2 weeks incase its not a resignation. In cases of employee’s resignation; the staffing agency tries to retain as step 1 and as step 2 deputes an additional resource to shadow the outgoing resource ensuring the continuity of process and knowledge transfer before shadow resource takes over completely.
Performance management:
Staffing offshore is generally not a job you should undertake on a short-term basis. On average, outsourcing contracts last between three and five years. When the partnership is healthy for all parties concerned, the contract term may be extended. However, you should examine if your outsourcing contracts are delivering the desired outcomes before extending them. Monitoring your offshore activities on a regular basis can help you identify performance gaps, then devise solutions to solve them. Educate your employees on a regular basis. Furthermore, you need to remain open to new ideas while modernizing current technology and procedures.
Learn more here: Offshore staffing vs outsourcing in accounting and finance.
How Brivan consultants can help you?
Our vision is to bring the best practices of Big 4 and large accounting firms of hiring global talent pool to small and midsized businesses, Accounting and Tax firms.
Our Prime focus is to help in reducing staffing challenges and cost, therein expanding their operations, growing their businesses, managing practice and enhance profitability by offering offshore staffing.
We enable experienced resources to be hired for starting USD 10/hr. Based on brief/ requirement given by the client – there are multiple rounds of screening of nearly 10-15 candidates that happens at our end before at least 3 resources are interviewed directly by the client to select one resource. In our experience we take anywhere between 2 to 3 weeks to close our hiring and onboarding within 1-2 months from there.
Since each firm’s requirements vary significantly, we offer flexibility is the type of roles a business could hire ranging from bookkeeper, accountant, supervisor accounting or AR/AP specialists. We also give additional flexibility of hiring any of these resources for 10hrs/20hrs/40hrs per week depending on requirement.
We hence help businesses to reduce their recruitment cost, hiring cost, payroll cost, admin cost, IT cost and other intangibles like leaves etc enabling a saving of nearly 50% on average and at times as high as 70% savings on per employee hired.