A business consulting firm for accountants has suggested the commercial environment created by the coronavirus pandemic has identified particular procedures required to ensure offshoring services are viable for practices using them.
“If you’re a firm that’s looking at offshoring, or currently offshoring, it is clear now that a detailed risk management plan needs to be in place for offshoring,” Smithink founding director David Smith said during his organisation’s latest webinar.
“[Doing so will] ensure that should something [untoward] happen, not necessarily some sort of contagion but any sort of disruption to the offshoring staff’s ability to work, a plan [will be] in place to say ‘what are we going to do about that should it happen’, because it was quite disruptive for some firms.”
Smith pointed out the experience of organisations using offshoring services during the COVID-19 pandemic has been varied, with some witnessing significant disruption and some having minimal disruption to their businesses.
However, he emphasised having a risk management plan was applicable even to the businesses that suffered the least amount of disruption from their offshoring facility during the coronavirus because this result had been achieved due to sheer luck in some instances.
The COVID-19 shutdown has also reinforced the value of unprompted client communication, now made easier through the use of technology, he said.
“Because of all the government stimulus there has been a lot of proactive firms contacting clients regularly and that has paid dividends in terms of building much closer relationships with clients,” he noted.
“[In fact] many firms are reporting they feel their client relationships now are even stronger than they were.
“Many firms have said they’ve got a lot of referrals from clients from that increased closeness of relationships.
“So one of the things which I think firms need to think about going forward is developing plans to ensure that they make this regular, unprompted contact with clients.”
