Tag: Outsourcing

Posted on by Vipul Sheth

AI, or outsourcing? Or both? AdvanceTrack MD Vipul Sheth takes a big picture view on how things might develop for your practice – and for us.

 

Will AI be so clever, intuitive and powerful that you won’t need outsourcers to support your firm? And, by that definition, does that mean you’ll be able to reduce your own headcount?

These are the kind of questions that we’re hearing (or, quite frankly, we’re being asked) at the moment. Let’s not beat around the bush: there are a number of people in the outsourcing space that see AI as a huge competitor to their entire business models.

What about us at AdvanceTrack? Well, we’re not complacent enough to think that it definitely won’t impact us. In fact, the opposite. Those of you that have worked with AdvanceTrack will know that we’re big investors in technology. Our IT has to work with your practice’s systems, and securely. It needs to be ‘on’ as much as physically possible, and also enable fast and effective communication (of both knowledge and data) between us and our practice partners.

We’ve seen various technological leaps and iterations over the past 20 years, and we view AI as another leap. Broadly speaking, we will use AI.

AdvanceTrack is, by definition, an extension of practices’ own business. And if you’re thinking of using AI, or having it placed upon you through developments and updates across practice and accounting platform tech, then it makes sense that it will impact our systems, our operations – our way of doing things – too.

Big data, big questions

Certainly, we can envisage the likes of Xero and QuickBooks looking to add intelligence into their offerings. After all, with masses of data at hand they will be able to turn that into knowledge to be actioned upon. This evolution will drive hundreds and thousands of micro-decisions made on your behalf, which will save practitioners seconds, that turn into minutes and then hours.

Perhaps, at AdvanceTrack, our masses of information at hand will be similarly leveraged by AI tools? It’s still conjecture – and we would be rightly cautious about what that would mean for your clients’ data security.

AI may well free up your people’s time even further than current levels of automation can do. That’s true – but that will be the case for AdvanceTrack’s people, too. We’ve no doubt that our offering will evolve, in tandem with the way practices operate too.

We’re still not at the stage where just a review is needed of client files. There is still plenty of up-front work and checking before the validation stage. Things will change, and it’s possible at a faster rate than we can envisage. But, whatever the pace of change, we hope to still be very much in the mix of helping practices grow – perhaps with AI in there too, helping us all grow faster and higher.

Vipul Sheth is MD of AdvanceTrack Outsourcing

If you’d like to talk to us about helping your practice grow and develop, please get in touch by clicking here.

Posted on by Vipul Sheth

A mid-tier practice in London had previously used outsourcing and offshoring, but turned to AdvanceTrack when it looked to take things to the next level.

 

Tell us about your practice

We’re an accountancy firm with more than 250 team members – providing a full service, from tax to large audits. We’re on a growth path, with private equity investment in place. We’re on course to make ourselves bigger and better in the next few years, as a client service provider and as an employer.

 

What problem did you need solving?

With the work we do – as many accountants will know – there is a restriction on resources. So, we’ve previously looked for a partner to alleviate that with their own pool of people.

A small number of our partners worked with outsourcers in India for particular types of work and particular types of client – and did it successfully for a number of years. One of the partners, in particular, had a strong relationship with the outsourcer – but when that partner left, we saw the quality of work start to diminish (and clearly that’s a two-way thing). And then you use that resource less and less.

We’d begun to review our strategy. Then, in lockdown, it gave us a chance to really understand what we wanted to do, for whom, and how. Our financial accounts and outsourcing production teams were brought together; within that wider team, people were placed into smaller specialist teams called pods. That made it easier to understand our resourcing, and where remote working fitted into that.

At this point we revisited the idea of working with an outsourcing partner.

 

How did you begin working with AdvanceTrack?

AdvanceTrack MD Vipul Sheth had been speaking to our CEO – the seed of a relationship was there. Once we started considering revisiting outsourcing then Vipul was the obvious person to speak to.

And once we’d spoken to him, we didn’t really feel the need to speak to anybody else.

It’s clear that AdvanceTrack is technology-driven, and that suits our direction. We also opened up outsourcing as a firmwide strategy rather than, as previously, funnelled through a few of our teams.

 

How has the relationship between your firm and AdvanceTrack progressed?

I would say that the biggest challenge for us was developing our processes internally and getting our people on board. But the benefits became obvious when teams were short-staffed and began utilising the outsourcing resource available – realising it was fantastic.

We now have had AdvanceTrack people working across all of our business services pods, with some serving as offshore support – meaning they’re focused purely on our firm. We think that having a mix is great, because your offshore people become ‘representatives’ for how we do things, and so they add support and knowledge to AdvanceTrack on our behalf. This helps maintain a connection and relationship.

 

How has your firm developed… and what does the future hold?

All firms reacted to the 2020 lockdowns by thinking more deeply about their systems and processes – and how technology is going to impact the accountancy world.

Now, rather than just producing figures, we’re looking at the best tech and processes to enable us to provide better and broader advice to our clients. With our plans to expand, we need to work very efficiently, and AdvanceTrack is important to helping us achieve our goals.

Posted on by Vipul Sheth

Myths are circulating about outsourcing and GDPR. Here are the facts.

If an outsourcing provider is accessing your servers from India then this, on its own, does NOT mean ‘GDPR compliance’.

Without other security measures and protocols in place then the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) could find what your practice is doing is illegal.

The ICO states that a restricted transfer takes place if “you are initiating and agreeing to send personal data, or make it accessible, to a receiver who is located in a country outside the UK” – note the part marked in bold.

You must also be aware that most accounting firms handle ‘special category’ personal data – such as healthcare invoices, records of union fees paid, or political/religious donations. So, if your outsourcer experiences a data breach and your controls are inadequate, you have a big problem.

So, what do you need to make sure is in place?

  • Firstly, there needs to be appropriate risk assessment of, and contracts in place, with the overseas legal entity.
  • Secondly, your client engagement letter needs to reflect the possibility of transfer.
  • Finally, the data being transferred needs to be treated securely, both on your network and on the network of anyone accessing it.

At AdvanceTrack we work with a top legal firm to ensure that we have the correct contractual measures in place. You contract with our UK legal entity and we handle the transfer to India.

We have also made considerable investment in security measures and controls around use of personal information, and have been assessed on this by numerous top accounting firms.

Additionally, we are certified by BSI against ISO27001:2022 Information Security and ISO27701/BS10012 Personal Information Management. More detail on our security can be found by clicking here.

AdvanceTrack give data protection the investment in time and resources that it needs. We need to sleep soundly at night – and so do you. Which is why data security and protocols receive our highest priority.

If you would like to speak to us about outsourcing and offshoring, please click here.

Posted on by Vipul Sheth

Believe the GDPR myths, and you could see the information regulator come down on you and your firm.

There are a few myths circulating in the accounts outsourcing industry about what is required to make outsourcing legal from a GDPR perspective. Chief among these is the idea that if someone is accessing your servers from India then this, on its own, is GDPR compliant. Without other measures in place this is actually illegal, and you can get into a lot of trouble with the ICO as a result. The ICO makes it quite clear that this is the case – they say that a restricted transfer takes place if “you are initiating and agreeing to send personal data, or make it accessible, to a receiver who is located in a country outside the UK” – note the part marked in bold.

To make this worse, you may not be aware that most accounting firms handle ‘special category’ personal data – such as healthcare invoices, records of union fees paid, or political/religious donations. So, if your outsourcer experiences a data breach and your controls are inadequate, you have a big problem.

So, what do you need to make sure is in place?

  • Firstly, there needs to be appropriate risk assessment of and contracts in place with the overseas legal entity.
  • Secondly, your client engagement letter needs to reflect the possibility of transfer.
  • Finally, the data being transferred needs to be treated securely, both on your network and on the network of anyone accessing it.

At AdvanceTrack we work with a top legal firm to ensure that we have the correct contractual measures in place. You contract with our UK legal entity, and we handle the transfer to India. We have also made considerable investment in security measures and controls around use of personal information and have been assessed on this by numerous top accounting firms. Additionally, we are certified by BSI against ISO27001:2022 on information security and ISO27701/BS10012 on personal information management.

AdvanceTrack give data protection the investment in time and resources that it needs. As a result, we are not the cheapest in the market, but you need to ask yourself how much it is worth for you to sleep soundly at night!

If you’d like to talk to us about planning for outsourcing, or getting a better understanding of the regulation that both you and Advancetrack must comply with, get in contact by clicking here.

Posted on by Vipul Sheth

In our latest FAQ, we ask how pricing typically works from both an outsourcing and offshoring perspective – and what you should be mindful of when considering these structures.

It’s a great question – particularly as there are distinct aspects between outsourcing and offshoring.
Firstly, outsourcing involves a set amount of work being undertaken by AdvanceTrack within a set timeframe. Whereas offshoring involves our team members being dedicated to an accounting firm full-time.

Outsourcing
Pricing is very much around the scalability of the solution. So, you could have ten sets of accounts per month or 100 sets of accounts that need preparing. As an important note, at AdvanceTrack we work hard to use our technology and skillsets to drive forward ambitious accounting firms. We have exited clients who chose to use us ‘very sporadically’, because we found that it becomes difficult to maintain a good working relationship or an optimal quality of work.

The firms we work with all have slightly different processes, ways of doing things – the more we work with them the better we are at understanding and managing those differences.

Offshoring
The pricing model for offshore team members is fairly straightforward. It’s similar to a salary scenario i.e. as a set cost based on the number of hours that our team member works with you – and that’s it.

Agreement will also be made on when that team member is available to work with your practice. The key, therefore, to keep them busy for it to be financially viable and successful.

At AdvanceTrack we always say: the most successful firms are those that treat our team members as part of their team. If you have that mindset and strategy then you’ll share things with them, socialise with them online and integrate them into your team. They become much more than just contingent support.

We’ve had practice clients who have flown their offshore staff over to the UK so that they can become more ingrained in the way the firm works and get to know the people they work with – they learn about each other. A genuine colleague relationship really creates value.

‘Value’
While we’re talking about value, we are finding ‘cheaper’ outsourcing and offshoring options where staff working solely from home (to maintain the outsourcers’ margins). While Covid saw working from home enforced, we would advise practices to carefully consider their potential outsourcer’s data compliance. We have also found that staff retention is higher when people work more closely together.

Read our FAQ on how your practice would begin working with AdvanceTrack by clicking here. If you would like to talk to us about pricing, or any aspect of how we work with practices, then please get in touch by clicking here.

Posted on by Vipul Sheth

As the founder of AdvanceTrack Outsourcing, I get a unique view of what goes on in the accounting profession, and wider. I speak to practice leaders and their teams about how they run their operation, and understand that they want to provide efficient and valuable services to a client base that trusts them… but also wants more from them.

I am kept very busy – as they are. In a positive way, of course. But that can mean that I don’t spend enough time holding discussions about my views and experiences more broadly, to a wider community.

It then made me think that outsourcing can be seen as impersonal: that tasks and processes are ‘handed over’ to simply drive efficiencies, saving money. However, it’s the exact opposite, at least that’s how I see it for myself and the AdvanceTrack team.

First and foremost our tech and processes have to be optimal, in terms of how they work but also from a security perspective. But, AdvanceTrack’s people have to be great at communicating with the practitioner clients they work alongside. And, crucially, the efficiencies gained through outsourcing tax and accounting tasks isn’t merely about lowering costs. It frees up valuable resource within a practice, enabling leaders to change and adapt their offering to suit complex and deeper end-client relationships.

What is an accounting practice but a series of relationships between accountant and client? And the relationship is integral to AdvanceTrack’s arrangement with accountants.

This ties into my original point, which is you’ll be hearing more from me, AdvanceTrack and our clients in the months to come. Relationships and communication are, after all, central to what we do.

Vipul Sheth is MD and founder or AdvanceTrack. He can be contacted by clicking here

Posted on by Vipul Sheth

Accountex Summit UK 2020

The recent online Accountex UK Summit saw AdvanceTrack MD Vipul Sheth lead a 45-minute session giving a really concise and useful roundup of what goes on in the outsourcing industry, and how firms can make outsourcing work for them.

In ‘The good, bad and ugly of offshoring and outsourcing’, Vipul started with ‘the ugly’. There are lots of horror stories told by accountants who have had bad experiences with outsourcing.

“One of the things we often hear is: it doesn’t work. In many cases that can be true,” said Sheth. “One reason is a lack of tech. A lot of people in the industry don’t have the tech to manage outsourcing effectively – whether that’s the firm, or sometimes the outsourcer or offshorer. Without tech it can’t be managed successfully, or at scale.”

The ‘real horror’ is the lack of security protocols in place. “We do hear of outsourcers with little regard to these,” he added. When it comes to ‘the bad’, poor communication between the outsourcer and accountant is at the fore. “We’ve improved over the years,” said Sheth.

Secondly, outsourcing can be seen as a short-term solution to a workflow ‘problem’. “However, this means it’s not usually managed and put together effectively. Outsourcing is not a magic wand to ‘wave’; there needs to be thought.”

For ‘the good’, Sheth said that “we want accountants to go and help their clients more”. “What can you use your extra time created by outsourcing to do? Clients really want your help – and if you can demonstrate value then they will rarely question their fee.

The firms we serve have increased revenues through the pandemic. “They have capacity to drive growth, and offer new services. We’re seeing them offer bookkeeping in the cloud; lots of virtual FD/FC services – getting under the bonnet of client data and feeding back analysis to clients. It gives them a place in clients’ ‘boardroom’,” he concluded.

• Visit https://summit-uk.accountex.co.uk to access this archived recording, along with all the other sessions

Posted on by Vipul Sheth

AdvanceTrack has teamed up with business advisory platform Clarity to offer clients a way to understand and improve their business

We have exciting news of a new partnership, bringing together AdvanceTrack’s outsourcing capability with support to build and deliver a top-level advisory service. Clarity has partnered with us to provide an exclusive offer for AdvanceTrack’s clients.

Clarity is a business advisory platform harnessing AI, machine learning and blockchain, which uses the right combination of people, process and tech to transform the business advisory services of accounting firms worldwide.

Clarity’s offering helps practices support clients in understanding their numbers – and how to improve them. Accountants can help them create a step-by-step plan to build a better business and, through a structured online data room, help access the cash and investment to grow or exit. The Clarity platform empowers 100% of accounting teams to help 100% of their small business clients with business advisory.

Its founder and CEO is Aynsley Damery – a qualified accountant and former CEO of a multi-award winning niche advisory accounting firm for entrepreneurs in the UK.

 

“Our world is now so connected – both people and devices, and the ability to reach customers is no longer restricted by borders,” said Aynsley. “The move to the cloud and the ability to analyse big data opens up incredible opportunities for many accounting firms. Harnessing the power of technology effectively has become critical to gain competitive advantage.”

 

 

 

 

AdvanceTrack founder and MD Vipul Sheth said that, by outsourcing, accountants should be freed to drive client value. “We want practices to break free from spending all their time on compliance work that can be managed and processed in a better way,” he said.

“And by freeing them from these bonds, they can make much better use of their time understanding and advising their clients on growth, or their longer-term aims.”

Get in touch with #TeamClarity on in**@cl********.com to find out how you can benefit from our partner programme, plus an advanced implementation plan to get your firm on track.

Posted on by Vipul Sheth

Growing practices need support to drive efficiencies, improve processes and create value. AdvanceTrack has been integral in helping firms achieve their goals for nearly 20 years. Here’s our story, and where we (and you) are heading.

 

While technology is integral to what we do, outsourcing on behalf of accounting practices requires so much more than that. It requires a commitment to collaborative working, absolute prudence and rigour in terms of IT security, and a focus on client service. These criteria are borne of a mindset that comes from our own experiences working as part of – and with – the accounting profession.

 

MD Vipul Sheth: About myself, AdvanceTrack and Inside Outsourcing

AdvanceTrack provides critical outsourced accounting and bookkeeping services to many UK accounting practices. Working with the accounting technology you know so well, we offer the best combination of IT and qualified people to free practices up to provide a better and more valuable service to clients.

As for me? Well, I trained with a great firm as an auditor and business adviser, and understand the challenges and rewards of being an accountant.

I eventually ended up in what is now EY. I remember thinking that, with my smaller firm training, it would be difficult to cope in a ‘big firm’ environment. However, I quickly discovered that my work to date prepared me better than I could imagine. I already knew how to deal with everything from a technical perspective, but now I focused on the value-added service of tax.

 

Understanding the ‘process deficiency’ in accounting practices

Going back to practices and workflow. My biggest lesson was realising that EY didn’t have 400 ways to produce a file (I’m guessing the numbers of partners in the firm then), but just one way.

This was the lightbulb moment in understanding what differentiated the firm I trained with and the Big Four firm where I now sat. And when I left, I then realised that a client is transitioned very quickly from yourself to another very capable colleague with almost no difference in client service.

A few years later I put this learning into what we all now know as AdvanceTrack.

Finally, Inside Outsourcing is AdvanceTrack’s monthly publication where we share insights on practice management, usually with a tech focus, and highlight the work we’re undertaking. A print version is available or you can view it online at www.AdvanceTrack.com.

 

AdvanceTrack and founder Vipul Sheth – the journey so far

2002 I left practice with the ambition to start up an outsourcing business. I spent several weeks in India meeting people and concluded that it could be done, and successfully. Having met people in the accounting industry, I knew the technical capability was there – but I wondered if the technology was as well.

 

2003 Formally set the company up and sought to build an online platform immediately. Being someone who used IT rather than creating it taught me many lessons. Most importantly, it taught me that staff need careful management, and I needed to build the technology to run the business.

 

2005/2006 I found some developers who demonstrated incredible focus and enthusiasm for the project. I told them what I wanted was to build something accessible on the internet (they hadn’t called it ‘cloud’ at that point).

 

2013 Security and quality accreditations were achieved. This was without making any material change to any of our processes. The security accreditation just demonstrated how the whole process was designed to deliver higher quality in a secure way.

 

2016/2017 Despite many improvements over the years, we ripped up the platform we had spent over a decade building and refining. It’s hard to do, to take something that has helped deliver great service and growth for the business and consign it to history. We bit the bullet and put a team together to deliver a brand new platform for the business.

 

2018 There were good reasons to rebuild the platform, particularly the need to comply with new and exacting data protection legislation (GDPR) that was brought in across Europe. Our early planning helped ensure that with plenty of time to spare, the platform was ready for GDPR and the challenges that would be undoubtedly coming, particularly as technology in the industry was changing so quickly. We can be sure that we’ll need to continue making changes.

 

2020 While other outsourcers are beginning their cloud journey, we’re proud that we started our journey more than 15 years ago. We’ve reimagined it time and again but sticking to our core values. With the pace of change increasing in the sector, we know we have to constantly re-invent ourselves to keep relevant to the customers we work with.

 

Beyond 2020 We won’t be making big announcements until they have happened. We don’t make our commercial strategy a public manifesto. It’s fair to say though that we’ll drive technological advancements faster and more thoughtfully than ever. Our clients expect us to help them lead the change.

 

Posted on by Vipul Sheth

AdvanceTrack’s most recent webinar was one of its most thought-provoking and interesting.

On the topic of ‘value’, three experts joined AdvanceTrack MD Vipul Sheth to discuss what value means in the context of an accounting practice, its people and clients.

Andrew Van De Beek, founder of Australian accountancy firm Illumin8, kicked off proceedings with an intensely personal and heartfelt presentation. This tone supported his message: work with clients you like, and understand the purpose of their business, before you can deliver value.

Clients are usually sold an expectation of what it will be like to work with another party, and are then disappointed with the reality.

“When I started my firm eight years ago, I’d already worked in a smaller firm and a Big Four firm. I hadn’t really enjoyed what I was doing – ticking boxes. That changed when I realised there were businesses behind my work – it changed my thinking,” he explained.

Van De Beek and his firm undertook soul-searching of who they were as personalities, and who they wanted to work with. “It was a transition from ‘pretending to be an accountant’ to ‘here’s Andrew… who is good at accounting’,” he said.

His official ‘work photo’ was him in a suit and tie. “I asked myself ‘why am I putting this shirt on?’ The branding was this picture while I was really [a guy in a t-shirt drinking whisky],” he said.

“In other words, the branding was the guy in the suit, but when clients interacted with us they got something different.

“If we’re pretending to be someone else, act a certain way, do things a certain way… it won’t hit the mark,” Van De Beek added. Accountants often present themselves in a similar way, providing similar services in the same style – “it just won’t hit the mark”.

Karen Reyburn, founder of accountancy marketing agency PF, carried on the thread. She said accountants feared being themselves, but making such a move towards fully representing yourself in your work normally required “small changes over time”.

However, such a move was important in terms of winning and working with clients. “Your brand is not for you, it’s for clients,” she said. “They will ask, ‘is this real? Are these people for real?’.”

When there’s a mismatch “they will hesitate to work for you”, Reyburn added.

The step towards online communication precipitated by the coronavirus pandemic has seen accountants behave more as they are, particularly where they talk to clients from their home environment.

“I hope that those moving through this see one of the big lessons that ‘me and my firm need to be who we are and show it’,” said Reyburn.

Building that authenticity is an aspect of setting out how to understand what value is in terms of clients, said James Ashford.

“Accountants do amazing [technical] things: balance sheets and P&Ls, but I only care
about what’s going on in my life. I want to be able to pick my kids up from school and my wife be safe, along with a storm-proof business. That’s where accountants can have an impact,” said Ashford.

On pricing, Ashford said you should be “consistent and profitable in what you need
to deliver”.

“And compliance isn’t dead,” he added. “It’s our most profitable work [at the accountancy practice where he is a director] because of how we charge it, manage our efficiencies and deliver.”

View the webinar by clicking here.

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