Richard Taylor, director at DTE Business Advisers (Manchester, England) says the organisation will aim to grow its outsourcing function to £1 million in fees in the next 12 to 18 months. Growth will primarily come from the payroll and accountancy departments of the business where around £600k was made from outsourcing last year.
"We're currently approaching in excess of 10% of our overall business being generated by outsourcing contracts," explains Richard Taylor, director, DTE Business Advisers.
"We experienced outsourcing growth in 2013, especially in payroll where new Real Time Information (RTI) legislation meant that SME's required greater skills and time to manage their own payroll, and consequently sought help from experts, rather than take the task on internally.
"Many SME's often don't have the resources to train staff around the more complex parts of the job - and to invest in training one member of the team would still leave a hole when that person either goes on holiday, is absent or worse departs the company altogether."
The requirements from payroll will get more intense in the next few years as in addition to RTI there will need to be a monitoring role for issues in the pension auto enrolment process. DTE Business Advisers skills as well as it's back office software will provide the monitoring reports that are needed for SMEs.
Richard Taylor concludes: "Outsourcing provides continuity for SMEs, but also provides a wealth of expertise that couldn't be harnessed internally; we are able to identify issues and opportunities within the management accounts, and then be able to advise on the best course of action.
"Outsourcing provides SMEs with the ability to concentrate on their core business, removes the burden of paperwork required by statutory bodies and provides flexibility, scalability and peace of mind."
