Outsourced accounting services and outsourced supply chain services have changed the game when it comes to business. Where businesses used to spend exorbitant amounts of money to onboard professionals in accounting and supply chains, the advent of outsourced accounting services and third-party logistics providers has made these tasks far more cost-effective. At the same time, quality is hardly ever sacrificed when hiring outsourcing accounting services or supply chain services, as these firms are completely dedicated to providing these specialized services and have the infrastructure and quality control that a business typically does not have.
So, why not learn from the best, and see how some of the biggest names in the business world have made outsourcing an invaluable asset?
Of course, we would also love to cover the success stories of small businesses that have made it big with outsourcing. Unfortunately, there is not enough data available to definitively make that claim. So, instead of trying to make up stories, let’s look at the hard facts. Corporations like Google and Meta are huge today, but they all started somewhere. Genius ideas and concepts aside, executing these ideas was no small feat, and maintaining operation and innovation for over a decade now is in no small part thanks to outsourcing.
So, with that out of the way, let’s see how some industry behemoths seem to leverage outsourcing to their advantage and see if we can’t emulate them to a lesser degree, shall we?
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Google: Outsourced Accounting, Customer Service, and Everything Else
Google is by far the most inspiring example of what can be achieved with outsourcing. The behemoth corporation is known by children and adults alike across much of the world. We have reached the point where the idea of searching for something online has been replaced by the term “googling”.
And this hyper-success is in part thanks to Google’s outsourced team. The corporation boasts a massive team of over 90,000 employees today, but what is even more surprising, or not so surprising, is the fact that in 2018, Bloomberg reported that Google’s contracted resources outnumbered their in-house staffing.
This behemoth of a corporation was, in short, leveraging around 100,000 outsourced employees across the world. Dealing with areas such as outsourced accounting services, outsourced customer management services, and many more back-end roles, this outsourced team is what made Google what it is today. They achieved massive savings by hiring remote, international staff, which can be evidenced in the 2023 tech lay-offs. After these layoffs, companies like Google, Meta, and many more began advocating for more work visas to be given to remote talent, as per Business Today.
Now, think of what a small business can achieve if it scales down Google’s situation to its context. For example, if you own a small tech start-up, and desperately need more coding and IT staff, what do you do?
Your choices are to try and either hire college coders on internships and put your quality standards at risk, or ensure quality by contacting an outsourced IT services firm. The latter is what Google opted for, and look where it got them.
Walmart: Outsourced Accounting Services
This partnership will further accelerate our digital transformation and unlock potential savings for reinvestment in innovation and growth
These were the words of Clay Johnson, Walmart executive vice president, and enterprise chief information officer, when asked about his move towards outsourced accounting services for the company
Walmart is a household name in the US and is one of the biggest retail chains on the planet at the moment. Now, imagine how much accounting and paperwork must go on at the back end of Walmart every single day. Nothing short of a building full of accountants would do.
And that’s exactly what they did. Their partnership with Genpact in 2018 was a momentous occasion for the company when it onboarded over 500 professional accountants via outsourced general accounting and bookkeeping services to helm the company’s aims for growth. Speaking of which, if you thought this was interesting, you might find our previous publication “Successful Businesses and Their Inventory Management Strategies” worth a read as well.
The main takeaway here is the cost-effective nature of outsourced accounting services. A company of this scale needed a building full of accountants, and what would normally cost millions of dollars in-house was achieved with what they claim to be substantial savings. Now imagine your own small business, which is a one-man operation where you are the CEO, CFO and COO. All because hiring someone to do that is too costly. But it is not, if you think smart like Walmart, and leveraging outsourcing.
You do not even need some fancy building or office space like Walmart uses. Even their accounting outsourcing services provider is a global corporation that leverages remote talent across seventy different countries. What more proof is needed that remote professionals are the best hiring method for many, if not all businesses? If the big guys are all doing it, there has to be something there, right?
WhatsApp: Outsourced IT Services
Before being acquired by Meta, folks would remember WhatsApp as being one of the hottest new social media apps in the market, especially in South Asia. But little do many know, the company was the definition of a rags-to-riches story.
Started in 2009, the company was nothing more than a concept in the minds of two ex-Yahoo employees. In fact, the first-ever coder for the app was someone that the duo hired through RentACoder.com.
The company and app were built on the back of an outsourced programming professional, Igor Solomennikov. WhatsApp continued after its initial success to supplement its team with more remote professionals, and went on to become part of a historic $19 billion acquisition by Meta, then known as Facebook. Today, WhatsApp is used by over 2 billion active users and reported a revenue of $906 million in 2022, according to Priori Data.
Two people with an idea managed to build their way to one of the biggest deals in tech history, all thanks to their openness to working with outsourced services. Imagine what could have been lost if they had scrapped the idea for lack of a programmer?
Imagine how many start-ups and small businesses have shut down because they refused to leverage outsourced services. For every WhatsApp, there is a business that closes its doors because of some outdated notion of hiring. The lesson here is that talent is universal, and quality is not limited to in-house operations. A remote professional from Russia, Pakistan, or the Middle East can be every bit as capable of delivering top-notch services. So do not fall for this trap, and use outsourcing to your advantage. Otherwise, this competitive landscape will leave you behind.
Outsourced Accounting Services: EA’s Story
Of course, these huge corporations and their success stories might feel like empty words, so we thought it appropriate to leave off with a success story of our own accounting services for CPAs, to balance things out.
EA CEO Haroon Jafree worked extensively with 37th Street Bakery on a myriad of their back-end accounting processes, as well as helping optimize and make decisions. Here’s what they had to say about the experience.
The point is, that it does not matter how big your business is or how far you have come. There is always more to do and further to go, and outsourcing and staff augmentation are an avenue that every entrepreneur should explore. Even if you ultimately decide against it, there is no harm in staying informed, and maybe even giving it the old college try. You never know, something great may just come out of it!