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Resourceful outsourcing

Shehla Raza Hasan
06 March 2003

Against this scenario, one of the segments within the BPO stable that is getting increasingly serious is finance and accounting (F&A) outsourcing, where customers want to go beyond transactions processing and seek trends analysis and crucial information that will help their chief financial officers make more informed decisions.

National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) says worldwide, a new trend seems to have set in and BPO majors are now redefining the boundaries of customer satisfaction. Today’s customers are looking at BPO as a vehicle for achieving the greater target of business process transformation.

In the past, a majority of F&A outsourcing deals were focused on transaction processing. But, as in today’s date, customers want BPO solution providers to manage business processes, all on a turnkey basis.

According to figures available with the International Data Corporation (IDC), out of the worldwide BPO market growth of $1.2 trillion in 2006, the F&A BPO market will touch around $65 billion, which is a 12.3-per cent five-year annual compounded growth, up from $36 billion in 2001. This establishes the fact that the F&A outsourcing market will be the fastest-growing BPO segment in the years to come.

Sample some of the reasons why F&A outsourcing is going to be a hot proposition for BPO players:

  • F&A outsourcing leads to greater savings and better results. One way of doing business here successfully would be by selling shared services centres and switching on to an outsourcing strategy.
  • One of the positive fall-outs of the economic downturn is that companies are compelled to look for service providers that can provide analytical information to better understand financial data.
  • Availability of seasoned and stable BPO suppliers is helping the F&A outsourcing market to explode. While F&A outsourcing is already a decade old, leading services providers have just gained history, context and actual experience to develop best practices in this area.
  • Consulting giants like ACS, Accenture, Deloitte Touche, SourceNetSolutions and EDS have built their credentials in this space.

India is poised to ride the crest of the global IT-enabled services (ITES) wave, due to its cost advantages, the success of reference customers and positive government initiatives. The industry has been growing at a blazing 70 per cent over the last two years. The sector has employed over 1,00.000 people as of March 2002 and over 50 global corporations have begun pilot projects in either captive or third party operations.

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