There are five common mistakes when planning to adopt finance
and accounting business process outsourcing (BPO), says analyst
Gartner.
The analyst has provided CFOs with a formula to avoid them:
Mistake 1 - Providing insufficient funding for the
internal sourcing management team
Many organisations fail to dedicate experienced staff to this
initiative, leading to multiple problems in the early years of the
deal. Gartner recommends creating a mixed-discipline team
comprising sourcing experts, IT and HR personnel and legal and
operational members of the finance and procurement teams.
Mistake 2 - Not including the IT team in the early
planning stages of the F&A outsourcing project or in the
transition planning stages
The IT layer is often overlooked by the business process manager
in terms of the overall impact on the organisation's IT and
business intelligence strategies. Gartner advises the early
inclusion of the IT team, including the software contracts manager
as well as IT ERP and security specialists who can ensure that
unnecessary delays in accessing internal systems are avoided.
Mistake 3 - Racing to issue a request for proposal
(RFP), instead of conducting research to learn about the
market.
Gartner advises buyers to ask the BPO providers for clear
guidance on how they will use the latest tools for automating
F&A processes to enable the IT team to evaluate the different
approaches. The best-practice use of sourcing and research
consultants is also recommended, together with gaining insight into
the latest inshore and nearshore issues that have arisen.
Mistake 4 - Asking the BPO provider to monitor too many
service-level agreements (SLAs)
The more mature adopters of F&A BPO have established fewer
service-level agreements (SLAs) and not more than 15 key
performance indicators (KPIs), even for complex work, making for
more meaningful evaluation of providers. The CIO's team can help
the finance team to prioritise which agreements to focus on and how
to blend these with KPIs.
Mistake 5 - Failing to get sufficient acceptance and
collaboration for a project from business divisions and country
locations - at the financial and technical support levels - and by
the inability to obtain documentation about existing process
activities.
Integration with existing processes must be costed-out and
agreed with the provider in advance. The CIO and team should be in
a position to help the business make the optimal decision to pursue
an internally managed shared-service centre or outsource to a
business process provider.
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