Outsourcing Small Business for Maximum Efficiency

Outsourcing small business tasks has become a popular way for small companies to grow.

In 2020, 78% of businesses around the world are optimistic about working with outsourcing providers.

Pangea Partners—an Adelaide-based accounting firm that created dedicated Philippine-based offshore team with EMAPTA two years ago—are already reaping the benefits of outsourcing their finance and accounting functions.

As a 100% Xero-based firm, they have mastered the widely used cloud computing software to make accounting reports and updates more accessible to its digital-savvy client base.

Pangea Partners’ co-founders Brendan Connolly and Lee Kelly started their small accounting business leveraging on cloud accounting technology.  But with limited capital and deficient local talent pool, Brendan and Lee had to re-evaluate their business strategy.

Referred to EMAPTA by one of its successful clients, Pangea Partners carefully implemented an offshore staffing strategy to build a full-time team in the Philippines with the goal of increasing their service level capabilities.

Being able to find a rich talent source of accounting professionals, Pangea Partners immediately grew their team from hiring one staff to 12 team members in under 10 months. By the second quarter of this year, Pangea Partners aim to double their offshore staff count.

Pangea Partners is one of many small businesses who managed to increase their service levels and win higher value clients by offshoring accounting roles with EMAPTA at a lower cost.

If you’re a small business owner who is seeking to scale but could not because of the lack of affordable onshore talent, building a dedicated offshore team in a cost-efficient location like the Philippines can definitely help you increase capacity, broaden your expertise, and earn higher profits at an increased pace.

Why should outsourcing talent be a growth strategy for small business?

One of the most common challenges small business are faced with is “growing pains.” To solve this, more than one-third of small businesses have engaged in business process outsourcing (BPO) or offshoring to keep up with growing demand and seize bigger opportunities while saving up to 70% on operating cost.

If you’re ready to take advantage of the many benefits of outsourcing and overcome growth challenges like most of the other businesses in the US and Australia, let’s dive deep into the stages of growing your business with offshore staffing.

RELATED READING: How to Make Offshore Staffing Work for Your Company

The 5 Stages of Business Growth for Small Businesses

Plotting where your small business stands in the business lifecycle is crucial in identifying your next steps for growth.

To scale your operations by leveraging on offshoring, you should have a clear idea on what to expect and which goals to set in these five growth phases:

While getting past the second stage of the business development process is already difficult, moving from stage three onwards can be equally challenging to small businesses – especially when resources are limited.

In the case of Pangea Partners, they were able move from the third stage and take off with an offshore team of accountants whom they fully trust with their processes and their clients. “It’s been very comforting for us how engaged our team in the Philippines get with our client and with our business itself. They certainly don’t arrive at work and just think they have some jobs to do. They care about the outcomes of our clients,” – Lee Kelly, Pangea Partners.

Take advantage of these benefits when you outsource your small business to the Philippines

So you’ve seen how offshoring can help move your business through the different stages of growth, but what other benefits can your small business get from a high-performing offshore team? Aside from the cost advantage, here’s why outsourcing to the Philippines would be a transformative decision to a small business like yours:

1. More Capital for Your Growth

“Every penny you save as a small business owner is another you can spend elsewhere,” says Strategic Growth Adviser Gene Hammett, on what small businesses think about outsourcing.

From the first stage of your business stage, it’s essential that you save money. Probably the most popular benefit of outsourcing, cost savings by hiring skilled offshore talent at lower labour costs will not only let you earn profitable revenue, but it also gives you the power to invest more into your business.

2. Time for Your Priorities

What companies outsource are usually administrative, standard processes that are critical to the business but are considered part of their background functions. Most of the time, these tasks and processes are not directly related to product or service delivery. You can free up clutter in your local team’s workload by offloading these processes to your offshore team.

3. Double the Capacity, Deeper the Capability

Accounting companies from Australia to the US were the first ones to embrace outsourcing to this day for the simple fact that it gave them 40-hour work weeks again (even during demanding tax seasons). That’s without sacrificing quality, too. Top outsourcing destinations such as the Philippines have a highly qualified talent pool that gives small businesses access to a broad range of skill sets for a fraction of the cost.

4. Agile and Flexible Operations

A firm is most likely to outsource services when they feel stuck doing the same set of tasks every day and couldn’t find proper time to innovate and evolve their products and services to a more competitive level. Outsourcing gives you the capacity and freedom to respond to quick changes in your industry and it helps you focus on finding more high-yield business.

Small Business Outsourcing Success Stories

There’s nothing better than hearing straight from business owners how offshoring helped them to improve their service levels, increase their profit margins, and leverage a wide range of skill sets from their high-calibre offshore teams.

Here are some insights shared by our clients who realised their business goals following a well-executed staffing plan to build, manage, and grow their dedicated offshore teams with EMAPTA.

“EMAPTA enabled us to put on those extra people and grow at the same speed that we’re growing now as well. The key part of the success in training and getting up to speed is having a good manager in the Philippines. That’s one thing we did well early – identify a strong leader and then that leader can grow the team over there.” ” Brendan Connoll, Pangea Partners

“We focus on two things: cost savings because Australian staffing is very expensive, and greater quality while addressing our current workload. We need to do a lot of extra tasks. One of our big products is managing services, thus plenty of service level agreements. By having the guys here, at the EMAPTA office, we are able to do the things we weren’t doing on a regular basis or typically skipped.” With the aid of EMAPTA’s technology infrastructure and support for remote training, Techpath’s offshore help desk and sales support teams have become an exceptional asset to get things done and stimulate future growth. “Offshoring with EMAPTA is allowing us to plan ahead, create more service options and add more value to our clients’ businesses.” Chris Adams, TechPath

After going through an extensive selection process, OneAffiniti choose EMAPTA as their offshoring partner. They specified the need to build a marketing production in the Philippines, and we secured the right talent, training, technology, and facilities to meet OneAffiniti’s requirements.

After two years, the positive experience continues with their thriving offshore team, including a strong site leader, graphic designers, data entry and customer service specialists. For OneAffiniti Founder and CEO Joel Montgometry, “policies and processes are clear, facilities, high quality, pay and rewards are expertly managed and equitable.” Joel Montgometry, OneAffiniti

Going through the various phases of growth as a small business can be challenging, but with the help of the right outsourcing partner, you don’t have to do everything alone.

If you’ve got your plate full of tasks that hold you back from launching your next innovative product or scaling your business to meet growing demands, it’s highly recommended that you let an outsourcing provider lighten your burden and do the heavy lifting for you while you focus on bringing in bigger business.