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Should You or Shouldn’t You: Outsourcing Bookkeeping

Outsourcing Insider — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 10:22:31 +0000

Bookkeeping is an essential part of every business irrespective of the size, nature or type. In fact, it is recommended before you start a business to acquaint yourself with the basic bookkeeping skills. This is because proper bookkeeping will determine the success or failure of your business especially during start up when money matters are critical. As your business grows and tasks and responsibility increases, you may find it difficult and challenging to keep track of all your business activities. Furthermore, you might feel disinterested with bookkeeping activities for your business. You should remember that neglecting your business bookkeeping is inviting failure. Thus, if you cannot do it yourself or the tasks are overwhelming you should consider finance and accounting outsourcing.

Although, the major reasons why most people outsource the services of bookkeeping are lack of bookkeeping skills and lack of time to undertake the rigorous task, there are many other reasons why finance and accounting outsourcing is necessary for every business. The most identifiable reasons why you need the services of an outsourcing company include:

Time to focus on your business primary activities: This is the major reason why most small and medium businesses outsource bookkeeping. When you hire a bookkeeping outsourcing company to perform all your finance and accounting activities, you are left with more time to dedicate to your business core activities. You are also left with some time for family and relaxation because you will not have a workload of financial statements and receipts to manage in the evening.
Professional services: If you are still not sure on whether to hire finance and accounting outsourcing company or an in-house bookkeeper, you should consider this. When you outsource the service of an expert, you bring with it a diverse pool of experience and knowledge due to the diversity of the industry. A BPO company is faced by many competitors in the market and thus, it must maintain high standards and skills to have a competitive edge unlike an in-house bookkeeper with a security of tenure.
Administrative efficiency: When you outsource your business bookkeeping activities, you eliminate the cost and challenges associated with hiring and training new employees. You will also not worry about the challenges in defining employee work descriptions and employees’ retention and succession plans. This is because once you outsource bookkeeping you will only be interested in what you need the finance and accounting company to deliver
Better utilization of available resources: An in-house bookkeeper requires hardware, software and space to perform accounting and finance activities. When you outsource the service, you can utilize the resources needed to buy and maintain those equipment on other essential activities.

Finance and accounting outsourcing will also help your business avoid conflicts and challenges of running a business by embracing reliable business strategies such as timely filling and return of taxes. There will also be transparency on your business dealings, which will make it difficult for your employees to misappropriate money.

When is the right time to outsource finance and accounting company for your business?

There is no absolute time that is ideal for outsourcing bookkeeping services but understanding your business vision, goals and objectives, your unique proposition and the ongoing customer needs will help you make the right decision. Nevertheless, if you are looking for professional ways to reduce costs and enhance your business operations without compromising on your core activities, you should consider contacting Infinit-O to provide you with finance and accounting outsourcing solutions such as bookkeeping and brokerage reconciliation among others.

Outsourcing Best Practices that Make the Mark

Outsourcing Insider — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 10:01:06 +0000

Outsourcing has been around for decades, showing no signs of going away. What it does show signs of are evolution and massive growth. It’s changing, and it’s also changing the way most companies work.

Gone are the days when organizations demanded just “more productivity, more efficiency, and more savings” from their outsourcing services provider. Now they also demand insight and innovation. In a recently published article, Infinit-O tackled innovation and the kind of BPO-client partnership that fuels it. Clients, however, will find it much easier to build a partnership, rather than just sign a contract, with a good BPO company.

What makes a BPO company good?

There’s no standard answer to that. But based on our long experience of providing services and creating partnerships with our clients, we can say that a good BPO company takes to heart these outsourcing best practices:

Creating value. Most outsourcing providers translate “value” to “fulfilling all requirements”, but good BPO companies know it to be more than just addressing client concerns. It’s certainly more than just big cost savings. Value is also about doing more than what’s stipulated in the contract, whether it’s optimizing the client’s business processes or creating new functionalities to better serve the end customer.
Bringing out the client’s competitive edge. When a BPO company creates value for its clients, it brings out their competitive edge, enabling them to stay ahead in the marketplace. Outsourcing services should then achieve certain strategic outcomes in a client’s overall business objectives. Like we’ve stressed before, it’s not just about meeting requirements, it’s about doing more to help clients achieve the goals they’ve outlined for the fiscal year.
Delivering subject-matter expertise. As the outsourcing industry matures, so do the demands of the other industries it services. Businesses nowadays seek BPO companies with domain experts who can analyze data, identify trends, and help predict outcomes.
Executing end-to-end outsourcing services. A BPO company can’t help a client achieve strategic goals if it only provides solutions piecemeal. A good BPO company sees the big picture and customizes services to address, even centralize, other core and non-core processes that may affect a client’s achievement of overall business objectives.

We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again. Outsourcing is changing, and it’s also changing the way companies work. This practically equates effective outsourcing to business growth and vice-versa. And this means a strategic, innovative, and results-oriented BPO company is needed – now more than ever – for a global organization to stand out and succeed in an increasingly competitive and volatile economy.

The Call for Effective Healthcare Solutions: An Overview

Outsourcing Insider — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 09:07:03 +0000

While the last economic meltdown crippled the healthcare sector, it also spurred industry professionals to innovate to survive. Now, healthcare is slowly but steadily changing with the upholding of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which will hopefully lead to radical transformation.

People are clamoring for the healthcare industry to reduce costs, streamline processes, develop helpful healthcare solutions, and fulfill the ACA mandate. On the flip side, healthcare service providers are being challenged by rising expenses, lower reimbursements, regulatory deadlines, administrative inefficiencies, and fast technology adoption.

These challenges have coerced healthcare industry professionals to recast its service delivery framework and business processes. With the rise of business process outsourcing, healthcare firms can finally redefine their operating models to maximize the value of their processes. Healthcare solutions delivered through outsourcing also support service providers in extending their enterprise with domain expertise and operational excellence, so they can focus more on their core business.

The core business, of course, is to continue giving quality care services.

Many healthcare outsourcing firms mix propriety tools and industry best practices to boost patient satisfaction and decrease costs in operations while reorganizing processes through technology enhancement.

To go the outsourcing route is the best solution to reallocate human resource while cutting costs. It addresses the problem of increasingly expensive administrative. Outsourcing professionals or knowledge workers are highly adept at clerical work like typing referrals and documents. Likewise, doctors are freed from preparing medical reports themselves, gaining back their primary role as “givers” of effective and compassionate healthcare solutions.

The Social Media Meter: Effective Solutions for Marketing

Outsourcing Insider — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 09:15:47 +0000

In the last five years, social media marketing services have popped up like mushrooms with bright promises of qualified traffic and lead generation. The results are usually less than stellar, but it’s not because work wasn’t done. Some social media solutions fall short of their projections, because online platforms or channels were paired with the wrong audience.

Online marketers should disillusion themselves of the notion that just because you have a Facebook page, the public will automatically “Like” your brand or services.

Social media marketing doesn’t work that way.

Like any well-thought-out marketing plan, you should formulate your brand message, assess the landscape, study both your target audience and your competitors, then choose the right tools or solutions to get your message across.

But with so many social media solutions in your toolbox, how do you determine which ones are suitable for you and your business? Infinit-O assesses the most popular social media platforms and gives its verdict.

Blogs. What started as “online journals” have now become a powerful tool in social media marketing. Blogs work particularly well for B2B organizations due to the rise of the “thought leadership movement.” People are no longer after information, they are after insights, and a blog allows a company to share and highlight ideas based on their expertise.
Blogger and WordPress offer the strongest social media marketing services in the blogosphere. Blogger is connected to Google, while WordPress has the friendliest interface, with a lot of social media plugins. If a B2B company can produce compelling visual content, Tumblr and Pinterest might also work for them. For the most part, though, these two platforms are suited to B2C objectives.
Twitter and Google+. What does a 140-character-per-message platform have in common with the behemoth that is Google+? They’re fast becoming effective B2B social media solutions. For Twitter, brevity is the mark of a genius, and only the best B2B organizations get to harvest the rewards of this particular platform. The strategic approach to Twitter is to have it draw attention to your longer blog posts or promotions. Post a 140-character blurb with a link that redirects to your website or blog and voila, instant adverts. The same approach will work for B2C endeavors.
Google+, on the other hand, is becoming a formidable force in social media marketing services, mostly because of its Communities and Events features. For both B2B and B2C organizations, these features offer new venues for interaction with their target markets.
YouTube. Video marketing started gaining momentum in late 2011, and the brave B2B and B2C companies that first dove into this kind of marketing are now reaping the rewards. Consumers are very visual beings, so anything that catches their eye is bound to pique their interest and hold their attention.
Facebook. Facebook marketing is one of the most effective B2C social media solutions. Why B2C? Because Facebook, among all other platforms, thrives most in “social”, and by “social”, we mean recommendations and comments from friends, friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends. Every feature it releases is based on this strong social principle.
LinkedIn. This is the king of all B2B social media solutions. It started as a talent acquisition tool, but with much better Groups and Company Pages, LinkedIn has become the watering hole for industry experts. You have experts seeking experts, consumers seeking experts, companies assessing competitors, and companies reaching out to their audience. If you’re a marketer, LinkedIn is a vibrant and extremely useful tool to add to your suite of social media marketing services.

Say, you’ve chosen your tools or ammunition. There’s still one question that needs to be answered: do you have the bandwidth and the expertise to flawlessly execute your social media campaign?

If you don’t, why not outsource? Outsourcing your company’s social media marketing services is a cost-effective way of ensuring your brand gets prime online attention and visibility. To outsource this particular process doesn’t dilute your brand at all; in fact, it strengthens it. Infinit-O recently published an article on how outsourcing enhances the brand experience.

Each online platform brings with it opportunities for growth, but it is up to you and your social media marketing services provider to maximize the potential of these platforms. Weave into your marketing plan the strengths and weaknesses of the social media networks you intend to use, and assess which one reaches your audience faster and delivers your brand message better.

Creating effective social media solutions for your business can be tricky, not to mention time-consuming, but rarely will you find a marketing initiative as rewarding as social media: you get to build a loyal following, generate qualified leads, and boost your brand experience. When done right, the rewards of social media can contribute directly to your business’s growth.

Paradigm Shift: Not Just Providers, but Partners in Innovation

Outsourcing Insider — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 05:47:43 +0000

What we know about outsourcing services remains as true as they were, even before they became practically a staple in a global organization’s business toolbox. Cost reduction, increased productivity, immediate savings – all these are the results of well-implemented outsourcing solutions. There is, however, another thing outsourcing offers: innovation.

Innovate or die is the challenge looming over every business’s metaphorical head. To be, and stay, ahead of your competitors, you have to know what’s coming next and innovate accordingly. While outsourcing services are supposed to help decision makers focus more on their core business, outsourcing providers can play a huge role in innovation. That is, if and when they’re given the chance.

For innovation to reflect in outsourcing solutions, businesses have to look at them differently. They’re not just part of a strategy designed to take care of non-critical business operations. Outsourcing services can also help transform your business, so you, in turn provide your own customers the kind of innovation they need.

Innovation thrives in the best BPO relationships, and the best BPO relationships thrive in environments where the following occur:

Motivation. When an outsourcing services provider is given the right kind of motivation, expectations aren’t just met, they are exceeded. BPO companies get the motivation they need from being looped into a client’s decision-making, particularly in the areas where their solutions are deployed.
Collaboration and consultation. Implementing outsourcing solutions according to the mindset that BPO companies are simply service providers does get the job done. But one way to get the most out of outsourcing is to consider your BPO provider as a strategic partner. To deliver business growth and transformation, BPO providers should get clients actively involved in customizing solutions through collaboration, whether it’s being part of testing or giving timely, constructive feedback.
Another good collaborative practice is to have clients engage with the teams handling their accounts. While interacting with clients is a standard procedure in ensuring seamless delivery of projects, regular discussions centered on eliciting fresh ideas will bring out the best in both outsourcing services provider and client. This practice is crowdsourcing at its finest.
Trust. This should be the first on the list, because no company would get a BPO provider it didn’t trust, but it’s the last on our list, because it’s the most important. When outsourcing solutions deliver the desired results, the trust grows. And when the trust grows, results go from ‘desired’ to ‘exceed expectations.’

When there’s motivation, collaboration, and trust, the relationship becomes a symbiotic one, something that’s win/ win. The BPO company becomes more than an outsourcing services provider, it becomes a consultant and a partner.

Innovation in outsourcing, however, isn’t as dramatic as one might think, though its impact is nonetheless impressive, especially to a business’s bottom line. This could be a year-on-year increase on service delivery levels, a new application that directly addresses the needs of client’s end customers, or the creation of next-generation outsourcing solutions that deliver better-than-expected business outcomes.

Infinit-O has helped clients achieve their own goals and more. We’ve done this consistently, because we turn business transactions into long-term partnerships, leading clients to see us more than just an outsourcing services company.

Own It: How Outsourcing Services Enhance the Brand Experience

Outsourcing Insider — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 07:55:46 +0000

Gone are the days when “soft metrics” and “brand marketing” were scoffed at; the paradigm has shifted. Driven by content marketing, thought leadership, and customer experience, more and more companies are looking at brands with newfound respect.

The “brand experience”, of owning it to help drive business growth, sometimes puts outsourcing in a bad light. The argument is, subcontracting services to a BPO company hurts the brand, that the concept of outsourcing is not about “owning” but “disowning” operational activities, which goes against branding principles.

This isn’t necessarily true. What others fail to see, and what Infinit-O has always leveraged, is outsourcing’s massive role in enhancing the brand experience.

How can outsourcing services boost a company’s brand?

With a BPO company running your non-core operations, you get the bandwidth to rethink your main business strategy to align them with your brand and what it stands for. The hard metrics that outsourcing services are measured against deal mostly with operational costs. Cutting costs allows companies to reallocate resources to the core operations that directly add value to a customer’s experience with the brand.
Global sourcing companies like Infinit-O have dedicated knowledge workers trained to execute services in various industries or business sectors. Technical support services, for instance, are implemented by IT professionals. Back-office activities like research and social media are done by data analysts and digital marketers. Pharmacy benefit management transactions are handled by real pharmacists. Whenever you subcontract services to a seasoned BPO company, you are assured of high performance.

This is particularly vital in outsourcing services for the voice or contact center sector, which has people directly interfacing with the end-client. A contact center with skilled customer support representatives who serve as a company’s “frontliners” speaks volumes about a company’s brand.

To sum it all up, outsourcing services allows organizations to 1) cut costs and strategically reallocate resources and 2) increase service levels by subcontracting non-core processes that still require specialization.

Both results improve the brand experience.

In an era of globalized yet very volatile economies, end-clients or customers think and spend smart. While the low price of products or services is a huge factor in spending decisions, research has shown that customers are still swayed by brand loyalty. If companies give a great brand experience, customer satisfaction is bound to lead to customer retention. Customer retention leads to brand loyalty.

Outsourcing services neither weaken nor hurt the brand; in fact, it reinforces it. The activities of a BPO company, after all, shouldn’t stray from the client’s corporate vision, mission, and values. And when both BPO company and client work as partners, not just as “principal and subcontractor”, business goals are aligned and easily achieved.

The Art of Mix and Match: The Advantages of Outsourcing Combinations

Outsourcing Insider — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 05:07:53 +0000

You may already be doing it, or even just considering it. Business process outsourcing (BPO), after all, is one of the most cost-effective business strategies moving the global economy today. If you are seriously considering outsourcing, Infinit-O is here to help you.

The most obvious option, though not always the most viable, is to look for a BPO company that can provide outsourcing solutions piecemeal. We suggest, however, to go for a company that can execute not just one but a combination of your business-critical operations.

When searching for a BPO services partner, take into account their solid experience in providing end-to-end solutions. They should be able to implement processes that will optimize your team’s efficiency. Additionally, their solutions should also be scalable and easy to integrate into your existing workflow or setup.

Outsourcing combinations can definitely unlock great rewards for your business, creating a more seamless and flexible process that’s customized to suit your needs. It’s one of the biggest advantages of outsourcing, because it enables you to increase revenues, expand your capabilities, and reduce costs.

How can it reduce costs, you ask? A BPO company capable of executing end-to-end outsourcing solutions can guarantee that only highly trained professionals will do the job for you. With a team of experts producing high-quality work, you can concentrate on your core business without worrying how your deliverables are being handled.

Many companies in different industries have improved their efficiency and productivity, and even expanded their portfolios since partnering with a BPO services provider. Some of these industries include:

Customer Care
Accounting (Finance)
Legal Services
Procurement
Research and Analytics
Risk Management
Banking, Financial Services, and Investment (BFSI)
Healthcare
Insurance
Media and Entertainment
Consumer and Retail Products
Logistics and Shipping
Social Media
Telecommunications
Travel and Leisure
Utilities and Energy

Business requirements vary, of course, but there are outsourcing solutions that can easily be implemented across industries and value chains. Infinit-O published an article about outsourcing combinations, and we would like to continue sharing both knowledge and ideas on what other combinations a good BPO company can offer:

Medical billing preparation and payment posting
Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable processing
Hedge fund accounting and administration and investor servicing
Payroll and general processing
Call center and healthcare information management, e.g. medical hotlines
Call center and collections and refunds
Cloud computing and information and document management
Traditional and non-traditional market research
Insurance policy set up and changes
Inbound logistics processing and outbound logistics processing
Churn analysis and support, usage analytics, and CRM analytics

In the end, what matters are the results, and the results should contribute to your company’s bottom line. But to get great results, you first have to determine what’s most needed by your operational structure.

Business outsourcing, if done by a transparent and reliable BPO company, is easy and painless. What we have, and will continue, to share with you will help you choose both the right outsourcing combination and the right BPO services provider.