OFFSHORING AND OUTSOURCING PHILIPPINES

Transcription

1 OFFSHORING AND OUTSOURCING PHILIPPINES NICK SINCLAIR PODCAST INTERVIEW HENRY: Hi. This is the offshoring and outsourcing Philippines podcast. My name is Henry Acosta and I am your host for today. Our guest today is the CEO of The Outsourced Accountant. His name is Nick Sinclair and Nick is an intrapreneur by heart and he is one of the first and foremost experts in the offshoring industry for accounting firms in the Philippines. The Outsourced Accountants boast over 500 specialist accountants and support staff that has helped them succeed and unlock their business potential. They focus on helping firms that are in Australia, US and New Zealand. With all that said, thank you so much for coming on the show Nick. We're glad that you can join us today. Thanks for having me Henry, appreciate it. HENRY: Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and how you discovered the Philippines as a place for business. Definitely. So, I'm a financial planner by trade so I also owned a financial planning and accounting practice in Australia for bit over 10 years and I was in the Philippines for a global board retreat for a group called Entrepreneurs Organization and I was sitting on a board for that. My time in the Philippines for that, I met one of our members who from Brisbane and he had some staff operating as a back office in Makati. He invited me to go and have a look at what he was doing, just to really show us what he was doing. I went and saw that he had 30 staff generating 3,000-4,000 leads a day for his business back in Australia and it just really opened my eyes to what was possible and I saw such a variety of skills and roles that they were doing there and I really looked in them. Our business is very compliance heavy in Australia, particularly for financial planning. You're looking at three or four administration staff to every income producer and I looked at what he was doing from a marketing point of view and I looked at how I could apply that but also how could I make my farm a lot more efficient in a lot more cost-effective way. After that, we ended up incorporating and setting up our own back office team. We put on 30 staff to start with, the aim was for us to be doing it for our own business. But within three months, I had other accounting firms that were friends of mine or knew of me in the industry, asking if they could go into our facility because they didn't want to have to go and replicate the setup and the cost and everything that we did. Almost overnight, it turned into a business. We've been running now for three and a half years after nine months. We had 90 staff and we were all 210 staff. Last year, we went up to 410 staff. As of today, we're sitting at a bit over 550 staff at 100 in recruiting. We ll end up at the end of this calendar year at about staff.

2 We've had some solid growth around that. It's just a fantastic place to be operating and accounting firms globally are really taking this whole new model and building global teams as opposed to teams that are just based in their own country and own areas where they operate. HENRY: That sounds impressive. You guys sound like they're very great firms for employees and clients. You wouldn't get that much employees and those many clients if you weren t so great. There's a huge talent pool in the Philippines particularly the accountants. There s a significant talent pool coming through universities. There s over 100 million people living in the Philippines. But, you know we're getting over 15,000 applications a year from accountants to come and work for us. There's no shortage of quality people and equally I suppose the reason why we're growing the success we've had to date has really been because of the people that we employ are good at what they do. So, it's easy for our clients to be able to grow with competent people which means that they put on more people. It's a blend of good clients and a good blend of quality of staff that are coming through. HENRY: With regards to starting out an outsourcing and offshoring firm in the Philippines, how did you end up with an accounting firm? A lot of foreigners go here to make contact centres or a back-office centres. I had an accounting firm in Australia, so when I was looking at that EO member s office and operation what I was doing, I was looking it directly for my own accounting firm and financial planning business. That's why we originally started with those roles. Then, it turned into a business and we're just very niche focussed. We only deal with accounting firms and financial service firms. We're very focussed on that. We have a real structured training team like no other provider has, no one can do that. We've got relationships with CPA in Australia where we can train our staff in the Philippines so that they get an international CPA accreditation on top of what they already have in the Philippines. We've recently built relationships with the PICPA which is the equivalent of the CPA in the Philippines where we have tied in with our local chapters to be able to provide internal training to our staff. Our whole business has been designed for our clients and employees. We are set up for accountants. We are a workplace for accountants. Everything that we do, every policy we have, every process we make is built and designed for accountants because accountants don't want to work in a call centre. They don't want to go and work in a BPO. We're in the middle of 500 people that are on phones. Accountants are professional people. They need bigger desk, they need dual screens, they need quiet space, they need breakout rooms. The facilities need to be designed with them in mind, so very much focussed on our employees because we know that ultimately, they will then deliver for our clients. HENRY: Do you have any comparison with regards to how the BPO model works in the Philippines compared to maybe other countries that serves BPO also? The whole outsourcing model has traditionally been in the accounting space predominately around India and even Vietnam. A lot of the models that work there is that the accounting firms from around the world will send the accounting work there. They will then do the work and then send it back, so it's true outsourced model.

3 To our models very different to that where it is what we call an offshore model where we're providing people that work dedicated for those clients. They work full time for that client whether it be one employee or 50 employees. They solely work for that client and the benefits of that is that they get ingrained in the client's culture. They learn the client systems and processes, the clients responsible on a daily basis for communicating and working with them. So, they have a lot more direct contact with their client. To a traditional BPO is you have a major client that you will never have any interaction with them because you're just basically doing the work that you are given. Our models very much saying to the accounting firm. What roles do you want? Here are the people now they're your responsibility. They're basically your employee but we provide the office, the environment, the HR, the IT. We provide all of those but very much they work solely for that client so they need to fit within their culture. Last year we had 20% of our workforce travelling overseas to America or Australia for training. A significant amount of our staff gets to go international whether it be Australia or US or New Zealand for training in our client offices, so it's one of the big pluses for us. Equally last year, we had 150 client visits. More than 150 of our clients came over to the Philippines to spend a couple of weeks at least training their staff, getting to know them and really building that personalised relationship with them because they're just another employee, they're just working in a global office as opposed to their local domestic office. HENRY: I like how you describe that as a global office, how you describe the BPO as a global office. As part of our mission is Revolutionizing Global Accounting Teams. We see the future of the accounting space that they will have global teams spread across the world. It's not going to be the traditional accounting firm that is in the corner of this suburb and that's where they operate. Now, they're going to have global workforces and getting the right people at the right price with the right skills. I mean, they could be anywhere in the world. HENRY: Where are your offices here in the Philippines? We've got an office in Ortigas, in Manila. We've also got three offices in Clark, down in Pampanga. And, we're currently investigating three other regions or areas to move into in early Our model is around spreading out our office and workforce across the country to get the best accountants in each of the locations that we operate. HENRY: Can you describe to us, who your ideal client would be? Our ideal client is pretty simple. It's an accounting firm that wants to build a global workforce that wants to really focus on providing more efficient and better services to their clients. The ability to build out a global workforce allows them to be able to provide a lot more cost-effective services to clients that are a lot quicker rate. We don't mind if the accounting firm is a sole practitioner or they're a second-tier firm with 800 people in Australia or 4,000 in America. We can help all types of firms. It's a matter of what's their strategy to build out and grow their business. HENRY: For your clients, what do you think has been different with The Outsourced Accountant. Why have they been staying with you?

4 I suppose why we attract so many and why we get the best accounting firms coming to partner with us is our whole business is built for accounting firms, our training offering, our linkage with the CPA Australia where we can train our Philippine staff and the CPA and have an international recognition, our tie-ins with the CPA in the Philippines with the universities and the scholarships that we provide, everything we do is designed for our employee and our client being accountants. Other providers can provide accountants but they're going to be stuck in the middle of graphic artists, engineers, designers and whatever else. They're not in a business has been built for them and for the environment that they need to work the best. We also provide significant training, team building events are all focussed around their profession, so they're not just big parties, they're really tailored around how do we make our people better people outside of work so that they can then become better people at work. Everything we do is tailored towards accountants and the financial services industry because that's what we know, it's what we understand and that's what our business is. HENRY: What would be your advice for people who are interested in offshoring with you? By biggest advice is that it's a long-term strategy, it's not a short-term workflow fix. You're building a global workforce which brings into account so many different dynamics -- your systems, your processes, your communication rhythms internally. There's a lot of things that get exposed when you start building an office that is a global workforce that's eight-hour flight away. They're not right in front of you to be able to just come and ask you questions. The biggest thing that we say to all our new clients and even existing clients is we really need to work on your strategy and really need to work on how to make maximise the efficiency of having a global workforce. There's a lot of systems and tools and processes that we do help our new clients and existing clients to maximize that -- utilising technology, utilising systems. We have strong alliance partners with all the product and software in the industry. We re probably the only provider globally that is able to do a lot of that training of the software that the accountants were using in-house. We also work and partner with those companies. If they're an Australian firm currently utilizing the software, are they getting the full benefit out of it? Because a lot of people use software but they don't get the full benefit out of it because I only use certain features of it. We have a strong relationship where we will work with them to try and make them utilise the technology as much as possible and a lot of those task will then be driven by the offshore team. So, it goes beyond just saying here's your new team member. It's around how do we make you become more efficient. We understand how you do and what you do all day every day because we live and breathe in the same thing. How do we make you a better practice overall and really build out your global workforce? HENRY: For interested people who are already visiting in the Philippines or already here, what can you recommend about the Philippines to them?

5 It's an amazing country. I love the place, I love being there. My recommendation would be just getting around in the culture. Don't fly in and sit in a five-star Western Hotel. Get out. It a beautiful, brilliant place. The people are so friendly and there's so many islands that are just absolutely amazing. From a holiday point of view and in some downtime to recharge, it's a brilliant place to come for not only work but for pleasure and relaxing and it's just a phenomenal player. So, get out of your hotel and try and get to know the people and the country. HENRY: And for those interested in The Outsourced Accountant, what s the best way to get in touch with you? The best way is just to go to our website which is Send us a message, we re more than happy to chat to anyone around how we can help them with their offshore global team. HENRY: For our last question, what would be our final takeaway message for all our listeners right now? The main thing I would say is that, don't discount. A lot of people have negative perceptions of building a global workforce and the challenges around it. It's not as hard as what people think. It's just the process and it's the system and it's just really partnering with a provider that can hold your hand through that journey and really get it up and running as fast and efficiently as possible as well. HENRY: Awesome! Thank you so much for coming on the show today. That's all my question for the day. Thanks so much for having me. HENRY: And, that was Nick Sinclair, CEO of The Outsourced Accountant. We just finished talking about how he spearheaded and became one of the first and foremost experts in the offshore industry for accounting firms in the Philippines and yeah, The Outsourced Accountants.