Speaking at the Accountants’ Technology Showcase Australia (ATSA) 2015 event in Sydney, Andrew Noble, co-founder of outsourcing platform AccSource, emphasised the need for firms to free up their advisory capabilities.
“We still need people to operate our machines, and more so than ever it’s hard to find good human resources with the capability to manage some of the more complex things we have going on in our practices,” he said.
“Certainly outsourcing has been here for a while, and I believe it’s here to stay in a big way.”
When integrating an outsourcing system, adopting a hands-on approach is paramount, according to Mr Noble.
“Whoever takes control of trying to adopt and adapt outsourcing for your practice needs to have the right mindset,” he said. “The drive needs to come from the top, it needs to come from the partners – it’s not something for your admin team to implement.”
Mr Noble also detailed the perils that many firms face when attempting to integrate a successful outsourcing system.
“Accounting firms struggle because typically you need to have unity across the firm in terms of what you’re doing. If you haven’t got the whole team together to take advantage of the outsourcing effectively, it’s not going to work for you,” Mr Noble stated.
He also attempted to ease concerns related to data security around outsourcing.
“Everyone is cognisant [of] the fact that data security is paramount, confidentiality is paramount – no more so than an outsource platform. We know that any leak off our platform would be the end of our business,” he said.
Mr Noble concluded by stressing the importance of informing clients of any decision to outsource, and that honesty in client engagement is the best policy.
“There’s a lot of talk about ‘Oh, we can’t talk to our clients about it’, but what happens if you say to your clients, ‘Listen guys, we’re under a lot of resource pressure, we want to deliver better services to you with respect to advisory’?”
