Outsourcing Audit Solutions: Why You Should or Should Not Do It

 Benefits of Outsourcing

1. More hands, fewer costs

One of the main reasons why companies outsource is to save on costs and get additional people to work on their tasks. Outsourcing presents companies with an opportunity to get additional talents without having to go through the rigors of searching and hiring for talents. Aside from the usual costs associated with getting new people, audit firms are also treated with expert advice on how they can integrate and maximize outsourcing in their audit solutions offerings.

2. Expert Insights

While there are outsourcing firms who provide general services ranging from IT, marketing, human resources, etc., there are also firms that specialize in offering expert solutions and services to their clients. Audit firms can benefit largely from outsourcing firms that specialize in offering finance, accounting, and audit solutions. These outsourcing firms hire globally-competitive professionals to match their client’s expectations. Aside from which, the diversity of talents and their background in finance, accounting, and audit outsourcing firms enable them to solve complex problems through knowledge-sharing and proper mentorship.

Outsourcing disadvantages

While outsourcing presents a multitude of solutions to the problems facing audit firms, it is only natural that such a drastic change in your audit services offering. Here are some things to consider before starting your outsourcing journey.

Outsourcing presents a highly different solution to the traditional hiring solution. Growing your in-house team will help you to communicate and coordinate with your new staff, just like the ones before them. This is one of the main trade-offs with outsourcing. While you can’t communicate with your outsourced staff personally, new communications technologies (e.g. WhatsApp, Hangouts, Skype) have made it easy for people to communicate with each other on different parts of the world.

 

Meanwhile, project management platforms like Slack, Asana, and Basecamp have made collaboration via cloud servers easy. These enable teams to collaborate remotely in a well-organized manner. Notifications are sent to update team members on the progress of the projects and ensure that projects are completed on time.

Outsourcing, especially those who are not familiar with the business model is a risky and strange concept. If your audit firm has not experienced outsourcing before, you will need to identify the tasks that should be outsourced, realign your people accordingly, and assign people that will coordinate with your outsourcing partner.

 

At the start of your outsourcing journey, you must set aside proper time to help your people adjust their work processes, set up the software and other tools needed in your outsourcing engagement, and allow them to get familiar with the outsourcing process. While streamlining both your people and processes may take some time, you will be able to reap the benefits after you have made the necessary adjustments.

 

 

The process of outsourcing your own services, especially for audit firms is a big decision to make. You must be able to weigh both the gains and the costs properly to know which path you should take and when is the ideal time to start your outsourcing journey.

 

To find out more about audit solutions outsourcing, download our ‘Seasonal Audit Support’ services primer and see why D&V Philippines is the perfect audit outsourcing partner for your firm. This primer puts into detail D&V Philippines, our company structure, our solutions for audit firms, and how we have helped a US audit firm with our solutions and services.