You’ve decided that outsourcing your accounting was in the company’s best interest and have built an offshore team. But what happens now?
It’s important to be partnered with an outsourced company who knows what its responsibilities are in order to ensure the success of your business. They need to properly train and manage your team, with a focus on a competitive management structure to oversee the offshore workers.
Here are five things that we ensure in order to manage your offshore team better:
1. Hold Regular Meetings
By holding regular meetings with your offshore team, we are able to train them and to review their work. This helps your offshore team to become more familiar with the work their doing and simultaneously build an understanding between them and your in-house employees.
In order to increase team productivity, holding micro meetings on a daily basis can help to check-in on each of the member’s project and its status. This allows everyone on the team to know what the common goal is. The goal of these micro meetings is to share information, not to problem solve.
2. Share Vision
It’s important to create an environment for your offshore outsourcing team so that everyone understands the big picture. This can be done by explaining to your offshore team how each of their projects fits into the bigger picture of the company. We suggest giving them business justifications as well. Once your offshore team understands the vision, they will be able to solve their problems through a different perspective.
3. Ensure Communication
Since our offshore outsourcing teams are located in the Philippines, some financial professionals may think there would be a language barrier. This is not the case.
Filipinos’ proficiency in the English language is remarkable since they have a strong liking towards the Western culture. However, there is always a chance of misunderstanding because of their tendency to be indirect with their answers. For example, ‘yes’ to us is an affirmative that the message has been understood, but they could have meant ‘maybe’ when they said it.
In order to avoid the miscommunication with your offshore team, let them explain the task back to you. When there is clear communication, responsibilities are better understood and everyone knows what is expected from the start.
4. Focus on Iterations
By going through a quick repeat, it will allow your offshore outsourcing team the chance to experience what needs to be done a smaller scale. This can be done in the training stages and after it’s completes, roles, tools and dependency issues will begin to lower. This will ultimately lead to more wisdom for future projects. It will also give you the opportunity to see what each of the offshore team members’ capability and see who needs more help.
5. Treat Them Equally
Rather than treating your in-house team and your offshore team as two separate teams, it is crucial to the company’s success to treat them as one. The positive relationship between the teams flows over into the results and continues onto making a positive relationship with the company’s clients.
And happy clients are what business is about at the end of the day.
If you have any other questions about outsourcing your accounting, get in touch!
