When we first speak to most accountants, they can see the advantages of offshoring and are happy to work with an accountancy team member based in the Philippines. However, they are often nervous about their team member working directly with their clients. This is understandable. They believe it is difficult for someone to work directly with their clients when they are continents apart.
The meteoric rise of web conferencing during the pandemic has abated this concern somewhat. When you are working with someone over Zoom or Teams, it does not make a difference if you are one or 6,800 miles apart. Working solely through Teams works well provided the accountancy practice understands how to make it work for everyone including their clients.
Intelligent Outsourcing (iO) is a UK based company with an offshore satellite office in the Philippines. Our Philippines office employs close to 80 team members composed of accountants and admin personnel who serve UK accountancy practices and their clients as well as our core internal team.
Your team member(s) work from 1pm – 10pm which is 6am – 3pm in UK time. On this schedule, your accountancy team member can get through their workload and be available to meet your clients as needed. Equally, your clients can reach out to them whenever they deem it necessary. This is a unique attribute of offshoring with Intelligent Outsourcing. You have complete control over how your team members work, what systems and processes they use, and even how they schedule meetings and appointments.
You can choose to work through your preferred video conference application such as Zoom. Our office uses MS Teams for preference as it is user-friendly and offers workspace chat, file storage and application integration. We also make use of Outlook, mainly for emails, but it is also used for managing calendars, tasks and contacts as well as note taking.
The most common question we are asked is “Is there a language barrier?”.
The Philippines is recognised globally as one of the largest English-speaking nations with the majority of its population having at least some degree of fluency in the language. English has always been one of the official languages of the Philippines and is spoken by more than 14 million Filipinos. Although it is not our first language, Filipinos are very fast learners and can speak English easily.
The iO team recruit accountants and administration personnel who speak and write English fluently. A high level of proficiency in English is one of the key things we test for during the recruitment process. This means there is no communication barrier between your team members and you or your UK clients.
If you are looking to recruit accountants or admin personnel, you are invited to book a meeting with us by sending an email to info@intelligentoutsourcing.co.uk. We are also on the hunt for accountants to join our growing team! You are invited to send your resume to info@intelligentoutsourcing.co.uk.