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Is it true that outsourcing is just for minor companies?
That’s not true at all. Unicon Outsourcing’s clientele includes both small enterprises with nearly 10 employees, and major holdings employing dozens of thousands of people. Outsourcing model’s advantages for small companies are in opportunity of using experience and expertise of the best specialists without actually hiring them. For major enterprises, outsourcing is the solution to standardize processes and cut their costs by using scope effect.
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Is it true that outsourcing companies will be solving all problems on my behalf?
Not quite. Indeed, a provider, like a genie, may fulfil nearly everything you may wish. But, just like a genie again, we will have to understand exactly what is it that you want. You can’t just say “Do my accountancy.” You have to explain the tasks your company seeks to solve, say whether you need recommendations on tax load, who is the consumer of your financial accounts (domestic or foreign owners), and so on. You will have to provide all the data required for processing and calculating to the outsourcing company; otherwise you may agree that those data will be collected by the provider, as the case may be. Thus, one of your employees will be acting as goal setter and project manager. Therefore, if you wish the results to be great, you just can’t outsource a process and forget about it. If you sign a contract with a babysitter, you hardly expect them to educate your child. More likely, you’d prefer to keep your finger on the pulse, right?
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How can I be sure my financial or personal data will be safe all the time?
IT infrastructure and staff policy at Unicon Outsourcing are organized in compliance with information security standards of ISO 27001. All employees, when hired, have to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Financial and HR data of our customers are stored in a centralized system accessible only to the teams working with respective customers. Moreover, each team may access only the data of the customer they’re servicing, and cannot look through other companies’ data.
Experts working with personal data of the customers use virtual machines that can’t be infested with viruses or allow copying. Using any devices for copying is strictly regulated and controlled by our IT department. Paper versions of documents, once processed, are transferred to the customer or to the archive, while copies thereof are stored for a pre-arranged time, and then destroyed with a shredder. More details on information security are available here.
- What happens if an outsourcing company makes a mistake, and tax authorities fine my company?
In case it’s Unicon Outsourcing experts who make a mistake, our company will reimburse your company to the tune of the fine. Unicon Oustourcing’s responsibility before our customers is insured by Ingosstrah Insurance Company.
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Is outsourcing illegal?
It’s totally legal. Currently, there’s a partial ban on agent labor aka outstaffing in Russia. The ban may apply to providing temporary workers to companies. However, outsourcing has nothing to do with providing workers; it is transfer of business processes. In the first case, a company gets a performer responsible for the job and its results. In the second case, the provider is responsible for the entire scope of tasks. Say, you may have an IT expert under an outstaffing contract, and they will just do what you order them, or just do nothing if managers failed to organize their job. On the contrary, under an outsourcing contract, your provider will organize an IT support service, and will service all applications from your users within the time agreed with you (for example, from 9 to 5) with a pre-arranged speed. You see the difference?
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What will happen if I decide to terminate the contract and start working on my own?
Unicon Outsourcing will just download all the data required for the work from our system and provide them to you, be it an accountancy base or payroll calculation base (in most cases, in 1C or Excel formats).
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Is outsourcing more expensive or cheaper than hiring your own specialists?
The answer depends on many factors.
The correct answer requires understanding that the cost of your own specialists isn’t just their wages, but also leasing of premises, infrastructure, taxes, and social packages. You have to remember that employers have to pay for the entire working day regardless of whether there is a scope of work sufficient to fill that time.
Working with an outsourcing company means that you pay only for the hours that had been actually spent on the specific work. A customer doesn’t have to invest in their own infrastructure, and they may use the available resources of the provider. For instance, Unicon Outsourcing provides access to our own 1C cloud system to our customers, so that they don’t have to deploy the software at their company.
Additionally, outsourcing companies make efforts to automatize all operations and thus cut personnel costs. For the same reasons, processing centers are located beyond major cities, somewhere in the regions where labor is cheaper.
Still, you have to realize that by hiring an outsourcing company, you pay for its knowledge and experience, and for consulting from highly professional methodologists in the first place. So, there still can be a situation when salary of an ordinary accountant somewhere in Kuban is lower than the cost of hiring an outsourcing company. But will the service be as qualitative?
