Integrated Accounting Services
The Company
The client is a large New Delhi based pan-India retail chain selling garments, home furnishings & organics with revenues of almost Rs. 2 billion. Accounting functions were carried out in Tally.
The Challenge
The client on a rapid growth path had a decentralized system of accounting. Each of its retail showrooms had one or more accounting staff to do the accounting, in addition to the billing clerks. The accounting records were sent from each of the outlets to the Head Office at New Delhi on weekly / monthly intervals. There are numerous transactions between the head office & other outlets involving inventory movement, expenses and people. Accounting for all these transactions and consolidating the same at the Head Office involved more people and led to time delays. Ultimately, this system was not delivering what was required of it. Apart from the time delays, the accounting teams were occupying expensive real estate within the retail stores-space that could otherwise be used to display and sell more goods. After much debate, they decided to evaluate outsourcing as an alternative.
The Solution
Tandem which earlier had carried out several assignments for the client was approached to study the impact, modalities and costs involved in outsourcing. After deliberations with the the top management of the company, the retail heads and managers of outlets an operations frame work was drafted wherein the entire functions would be handled off-site by Tandem.
A dedicated team including qualified accountants was constituted to offer an end-to-end solution to the client. Key activities like treasury management was left to the client & the rest of the activities – bookkeeping, MIS, payables, compliance's were handled by Tandem. After a one month trial phase, live run started & is running successfully with quicker, accurate turnaround.
The Benefits
Company is now empowered with accurate MIS on payables & inventory that are vital in the retail industry. On-time reports on product-wise/outlet-wise profitability help the company re-align product ranges. Scalability is no more a constraint with the back-end effectively supporting their rapid growth. The company is free to concentrate on its core competency - Sourcing, Selling & Marketing.
Offshore Accounting Services
The Company
A US based software services company, growing at a decent pace felt the need to have a support system in place that gives them instant access to business critical information. Accounting functions were carried out in Quick Books.
The Challenge
The client was executing various software projects concurrently & it was imperative that costs are tracked. Also invoices were to be raised on a periodical basis based on time sheets of the project personnel. Any time delay would hit the cash flow of the company. Much of management time were spent in Invoicing, receivable activities. Though hiring local CPAs worked, it proved to be an costly affair.
The Solution
Tandem proposed an offshore model to handle the entire bookkeeping, payables & receivables functions. After deliberations on technology for information access, document control protocols etc. it was decided to do a parallel run for a month.
A dedicated team started working on this & the project is live with Tandem’s scope growing from mere book-keeping to managing payables through remote cheque printing, online transfers etc. Tandem also tracks the project completion through time sheets & raises periodical invoices on the client’s customers & also does payment follow-ups by way of reminders.
The Benefits
The cost reduction to the client is over 60%. Information gets processed on a day-to-day basis with the maximum turnaround being 24 hours. MIS on payables, receivables reach the management on time. Timely reconciliation of bank accounts & the credit card accounts are done. Company is now free to concentrate on its core competency – Software Development & Marketing.
Offshore Accounting Services
The Company
A UK based Chartered Accountant firm growing at a fairly decent pace with a strong focus on the small & medium business segment.
The Challenge
The Company was providing various services – Book-keeping, Financial services, VAT filing etc. to its clientele. The business was growing rapidly & the company had to hire consistently to keep pace. The challenge was to find people with good accounting/finance skills who would also come at a decent cost.
The Solution
Tandem proposed an offshore model to handle the entire bookkeeping, analysis functions. After deliberations on technology for information access, document control protocols etc. it was decided to do a pilot. After two phases of trial involving different accounting software it was decided to go live.
A dedicated team was formed for the project & Tandem’s scope grew from book-keeping to reconciliation, ledger analysis & finalization of books of accounts.
The Benefits
The cost reduction to the client is over 60%. Information gets processed as per schedule with the turnaround being 24 hours in some cases. Scalability is no more a constraint with the Tandem back-end effectively supporting the growth. The company is free to focus on new acquisitions & given Tandem’s bandwidth can also foray into claims processing & analytics.
Integrated Payroll Services
The Client
The client is a large Chennai based company offering staffing services to one of India’s largest banks. The temps that the company hired for deployment were over 1800.
The Challenge
The company’s client – the bank was on a rapid growth path, aggressively expanding itself every other month. Further, the domain in which these temps worked was so competitive, resulting in a sizeable employee turnaround every month. This meant that the company had to recruit employees on an ongoing basis. Though the company had its system in pace to take care of the recruitment needs, it was getting difficult for them on the payroll part of it. Employee related information on leave, incentives had to come in from over 35-40 locations & had to be processed & pay distributed within 48 hours. Also compliance under Income Tax, Provident Fund & other labor laws, meant them hiring 2-3 consultants in addition to their finance team spending considerable time. All this translated into a huge cost burnout & also led to anxious moments between the company & its client. It was at this point, they thought of exploring outsourcing as an alternative.
The Solution
Tandem, which earlier had carried out several assignments of this nature, was approached to study the impact, modalities and costs involved in outsourcing. After deliberations with the top management of the company, an operations process flow was drafted wherein the entire function would be handled off-site by Tandem.
A dedicated team was constituted to offer an end-to-end solution to the client. Except for the recruitment activity, the rest of the activities – processing, disbursement, and statutory compliance were handled by Tandem. After a one-month trial, live run started & is running successfully for over 3 years now with consistently quick & accurate turnaround.
The Benefits
Company is now empowered with a good support mechanism provided by Tandem, which ensures that all payroll related activity & compliance hassles are off its head leaving it to focus on its core competency – recruitment & marketing. With Tandem’s bandwidth, scalability is no more a constraint. Further the company’s client impressed by the whole process & the objectivity a third party organization like Tandem brings in, have started giving a lot of new businesses to the Company.
