• Increased focus on core competencies
• Cost savings of up to 50%
• Reduced capex
• Accurate, fast, efficient and timely results.
• Obtain outsourcer's processes and advanced technology
• Internal resources are freed-up to focus on core business tasks
• Streamline and improve business processes
• Increases management's valuable time and thus an improvement in productivity
• Allows corporations to get organized globally along business lines
• Off-site backup of vital financial data

An Accenture Report written in co-operation with the Economist Intelligence Unit (2003)

Excerpts from the above Article:

Outsourcing providers pledge to perform back-office functions, including finance and accounting, more cheaply and efficiently than companies can do on their own, thanks to economies of scale, standardized processes and advanced technology.

For many companies, the equation of high-quality services, at lower prices is irresistible, particularly when outsourcing allows them to focus on their core businesses. Cost savings are the main motivation for many executives. The cost reductions of 20-50% reported by companies that have outsourced finance are tantalizing.

 

• "The real advantage of outsourcing is cost savings, cost savings, cost savings,"
  says Kenneth Joyce, CFO of Amkor Technology, the world's largest provider of contract semiconductor assembly and test solutions.

Yet, as this report underscores, cost cutting is not the only story. Some companies are ambitiously using outsourcing as a vehicle to promote change, for instance as part of the transformation designed to shift corporate structure from a more traditional organization divided along geographic lines to one organized globally along business lines.

Finance Outsourcing is primed for growth. Of our survey of respondents:

• 71% expect finance outsourcing to become more prevalent by 2006
• 30% are currently outsourcing finance and accounting functions, and
• 65% think the arrangement has been very successful (8%) or successful (57%).
• 66% saw "lower costs" as the primary benefit of outsourcing
• Rhodia, the French specialty chemicals company, reduced spending by 30% in two years.

Reduced costs are not the only - or always the most significant - benefit.

• Outsourcing enables companies to focus on their core competencies (55% respondents)
• It allows for greater business productivity (32% respondents)
• It relieves financial managers of responsibility for repetitive or generic business tasks.
• It allows managers to concentrate on high-level management and high-value activities.

And by enabling companies to review and reshape entire business processes with an outsider's discipline, it can help companies execute ambitious transformation plans.