In outsourcing its accounting processes to SBS, an award winning London based accounting firm found a partner who could be flexible to their needs, technologically innovative in developing solutions, and who could scale up to match their appetite for growth.
Country: United Kingdom
Industry: Financial Services
Situation
The client is an award winning UK based Chartered Accounting firm in the Greater London area, servicing 250+ clients including mid-sized companies on a variety of issues ranging from payroll, and accounting to monthly MIS and investment advice.
Challenge
The partnership wanted to focus its resources on providing value added advice to its clients, who very often were high net-worth international businessmen. They also found that clients found a bundled offering most compelling. A bundled offering typically included administratively burdensome tasks such as payroll, VAT returns and monthly MIS.
At the same time, the firm also found it difficult to scale up rapidly (despite the demands of their clients) due to the difficulties in sourcing good book-keeping talent.
SBS Solution
The client was exploring the possibility of outsourcing parts of its Accounting, Payroll and Taxation processes so as to concentrate on its core business and improve operational efficiencies.
However, these processes were all “critical to quality” for their customers, and so choosing the right off-shoring partner was of utmost importance. While cost savings was an important factor in considering outsourcing, it was more important to find a partner with the required expertise who could drive further productivity gains through efficiency in this process.
After examining multiple vendors, the client identified SBS as their outsourcing partner and migrated parts of their Accounting, Payroll and Taxation process to the offshore team based in India.
- A team of SBS IT experts, and accounting experts with UK specific knowledge worked on-site with the client to manage transition
- A unique transition model was developed in partnership with the client. One of the client’s own employees worked with India-operations for 12 months to ensure systems and processes were perfectly replicated
- SBS used technology to create an innovative all-electronic work-paper file that provided top-quality accounting output for clients
- The end-to-end accounting process, including data entry, calculation of monthly VAT/payroll, monthly MIS and consolidating year-end accounting was migrated
Impact
- SBS and the client achieved a seamless transition in the highly critical first 6 month period
- Cost savings were achieved. Clients were serviced with significantly lower cost compared to “year 0”
- With proof of concept established, the client is now doubling its number of partners and expanding the practice
- The client is now eager to grow the partnership, and is looking at moving higher end processes off-shore (including work related to real estate and wealth advisory)
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