The conference on the Outsourcing of Business Processes held by the Moscow Times newspaper

At this time, outsourcing is becoming a key element of success in business many companies no longer can imagine functioning without. It allows them to cut their costs, save time and have things done by professionals. Yet regretfully, many heads of companies are still distrustful about outsourcing. The participants of this recent conference tried to find ways of discovering the pros and contras of outsourcing as seen by general directors of companies.

The event was moderated by Lyudmila Shusterova, a deputy general director, marketing and business development, of the BDO outsourcing division. During the first session, the participants busied themselves with the preparation and certification of personnel by outsourcing offices and with many other things. Sergey Makedonsky, President of the ASTRA association of strategic outsourcing related the overall tendencies of the markets of outsourcing in Russia and elsewhere. Lyudmila Shusterova discussed the problems companies may encounter when first outsourcing a number of their functions, the ways of alleviating transition pains, the analyses of business processes and the advisability of using outsourcing.

Maxim Alexeichuk, financial director of Gigaset Communications, Ltd. related his experiences dealing with a provider of accounting and personnel administration outsourcing services. Gigaset works according to European standards, being the regional representative of a German company in Russia. The Russian office of the company outsources practically everything not directly related to its principal activities, partially through the BDO outsourcing division. Mr. Alexeichuk explained how to correctly select outsourcing providers and work with them.
Dmitry Prizhimov, financial director of the International Grain Company related another practical example of inner outsourcing, which greatly interested the audience. He contributed a report on the creation of the Shared Accounting Service Center servicing various departments of his company. Dmitry detailed the situations that existed at the International Grain Company before and after the implementation of the project and shared the story of the problems the company faced when reorganizing processes. One of the serious problems in such cases may be the resistance of the management refusing to accept the new work model. He also told about the advantages of the new system. Further, Victoria Kruchinina, general director of the RAIDEN company, explained the particulars of the outsourcing of transportation.

During the second session, two more examples of the use of outer and inner outsourcing were presented. Alexei Grebeniuk, general director of AG Finance described the "Drugstore 36.6" project implemented with the participation of the BDO group of companies. And Dmitry Kozlov, personnel director of Tele 2 Russia, detailed the project, launched last year, involving the transference of all the financial accounting functions of the company with its offices in 39 regions to a single servicing center located in the city of Voronezh. The audience noted that Dmitry shared a great number of important details of the project, which, along with the other reports delivered at the conference, helped many its attendees to change or newly form their opinions of the inner and outer outsourcing of business processes.