Irish accountants are always under pressure. Every year feels the same. Deadlines loom. Client expectations rise. Hiring can be slow and is always time consuming.
What follows is a practical guide of the options available to you and what you should think about if you want to have success in outsourcing. Just because it didn’t work before, doesn’t mean it doesn’t work at all.
It does, and here’s how those making it work, make it work.
There is one model of outsourcing that works really well, will give you extra capacity, more predictable cost, and room to grow. It also protects your team in Ireland from constant overload.
There are two common models.
One is a ‘ticketing’ model where work is sent to a shared pool. This is what we all think of when we think ‘outsourcing’ and we all (me included) have various stories to draw on as to why it won’t work, though the key one tends to be quality.
The other is a ‘dedicated person’ model where specific people become part of your team and work to your standards. Many firms prefer this because offshore staff operate as part of the delivery team, not a separate factory.
Teams PLUS is built around the named person model. We call these people your Extended Team. You get to choose your dedicated people. You manage work priorities. Work is reviewed under your normal controls. Client relationships and final sign-off stay in Ireland.
Outsourcing and offshoring have grown in recent years. Drivers include higher regulatory demands and the normalisation of remote working. It can support audit quality as well as cost, if the right controls are in place.
While the costs can be up to 50% lower than a local salary, this is not a case of cheap labour. The benefits here are controlled capacity, so your firm can deliver during busy periods and still have time for higher value work.
Quality issues usually come from poor setup, unclear communication, and weak review processes.
Use an onboarding plan. Use your own templates. Share examples of what good looks like. Run frequent check-ins early on. Keep a clear review process in Ireland. At Teams PLUS we are hands on with onboarding, integration and helping with the culture/communication alignment. We believe this is the biggest part of our success to date.
This is a valid concern. It is also manageable if you treat it like any other risk area. For transfers outside the EEA, many organisations rely on Standard Contractual Clauses. In practice, controls matter as much as paperwork.
You should expect and require:
You only lose control if you outsource outcomes instead of building a working relationship. An extended team works when you treat it like a normal team. You assign work, set deadlines, and give feedback.
Some clients will care. Many will not, as long as delivery is strong and data is protected. Where it matters, be transparent and handle it properly through engagement terms and supplier controls.
There will always be the client exception. Keep that work local. Don’t let the tail wag the dog.
At Teams PLUS we hire people for you to work the core Irish hours of 9-5. However, Ireland and India have useful overlap. Our mornings are their afternoons. If you choose to, you can use the time difference to have work done when you are sleeping, then review later in the day.
There is very little setup work for you. You’ll need about an hour initially for interviews, but that’s about it. At Teams PLUS, we work directly with your IT team or IT service provider to get the correct access and security set-up in place.
The time investment is in the first couple of months where someone on your team in Ireland will mentor your Extended team worker in India training them on your way of working. Very quickly you get added capacity, quality work and attractive costings from a job recovery perspective.
Start with work that is process driven and easy to review (audit, year-end accounts prep, monthly management accounts (think Xero etc.) Payroll). Keep judgement-heavy work in Ireland at the start. Keep client facing advisory in Ireland. Keep final review and sign off in Ireland.
Profitability improves when you stop buying Irish capacity at Irish cost for work that does not need to be done in Ireland.
Growth improves when you remove the bottleneck that stops you taking on good clients.
Capacity is a constraint in many firms. Once you ease it, you can choose what work you want more of.
An Extended Teams also supports retention. When Irish staff spend less time on repetitive prep work and more time on review and client conversations, they are more likely to stay.
How to make it low risk
Teams PLUS was set up by Accountants in Ireland for businesses in Ireland. We want to help Irish firms get the strategic advantage of having their own offshore teams when they don’t have the budget, the time or the experience to do it alone.
This is not an ad-hoc outsourcing arrangement. You’ll get dedicated people. They use your software, follow your processes and learn your way of doing things.
We focus on practical delivery, data security, GDPR compliance and helping you build your own team that starts small and proves itself before it scales.
If you want to explore this, the best first step is a short call to find out more about your firm and the work you would like done. We’ll then figure out if we are the right fit for you.
Contact:
Jimmy Sheehan, Managing Director, email: jimmy.sheehan@teamsplus.ie
Tanmay Singh, Commercial Director, email: tanmay.singh@teamsplus.ie