-
Business consulting services
Our business consulting services can help you improve your operational performance and productivity, adding value throughout your growth life cycle.
-
Business process solutions
We can help you identify, understand and manage potential risks to safeguard your business and comply with regulatory requirements.
-
Business risk services
The relationship between a company and its auditor has changed. Organisations must understand and manage risk and seek an appropriate balance between risk and opportunities.
-
Cybersecurity
As organisations become increasingly dependent on digital technology, the opportunities for cyber criminals continue to grow.
-
Forensic and investigation services
At Grant Thornton, we have a wealth of knowledge in forensic services and can support you with issues such as dispute resolution, fraud and insurance claims.
-
Mergers and acquisitions
Globalisation and company growth ambitions are driving an increase in M&A activity worldwide. We work with entrepreneurial businesses in the mid-market to help them assess the true commercial potential of their planned acquisition and understand how the purchase might serve their longer- term strategic goals.
-
Recovery and reorganisation
Workable solutions to maximise your value and deliver sustainable recovery
-
Transactional advisory services
We can support you throughout the transaction process – helping achieve the best possible outcome at the point of the transaction and in the longer term.
-
Valuations
We provide a wide range of services to recovery and reorganisation professionals, companies and their stakeholders.
-
IFRS
The International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) are a set of global accounting standards developed by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) for the preparation of public company financial statements. At Grant Thornton, our IFRS advisers can help you navigate the complexity of financial reporting from IFRS 1 to IFRS 17 and IAS 1 to IAS 41.
-
Audit quality monitoring
Having a robust process of quality control is one of the most effective ways to guarantee we deliver high-quality services to our clients.
-
Global audit technology
We apply our global audit methodology through an integrated set of software tools known as the Voyager suite.
-
Corporate and business tax
Our trusted teams can prepare corporate tax files and ruling requests, support you with deferrals, accounting procedures and legitimate tax benefits.
-
Direct international tax
Our teams have in-depth knowledge of the relationship between domestic and international tax laws.
-
Global mobility services
Through our global organisation of member firms, we support both companies and individuals, providing insightful solutions to minimise the tax burden for both parties.
-
Indirect international tax
Using our finely tuned local knowledge, teams from our global organisation of member firms help you understand and comply with often complex and time-consuming regulations.
-
Innovation and investment incentives
Dynamic businesses must continually innovate to maintain competitiveness, evolve and grow. Valuable tax reliefs are available to support innovative activities, irrespective of your tax profile.
-
Private client services
Our solutions include dealing with emigration and tax mitigation on the income and capital growth of overseas assets.
-
Transfer pricing
The laws surrounding transfer pricing are becoming ever more complex, as tax affairs of multinational companies are facing scrutiny from media, regulators and the public
-
Tax policy
Tax policies are constantly evolving and there are a number of complex changes on the horizon that could significantly affect your business.
Francois Pons says outsourcers need to become true business partners
Companies outsource back-office business processes mainly to boost efficiency and reduce costs. Payroll, HR and accounting processes – the most common to be outsourced – are heavily transactional, and many companies determine that external specialists can execute these far more cost-effectively than they can themselves. It might therefore be expected that providers’ mastery of the relevant technical skills is the critical success factor in any relationship. Insight from Grant Thornton’s International Business Report (IBR) reveals something different, however.
The intangible aspects of these relationships – a partner’s reliability, trust and other 'non-technical' skills – count as much as (or even more than) harder factors, such as their specialist capabilities, in making outsourcing relationships work. Consider, for example, the important step of selecting an outsourcing provider. Given the overriding objective of boosting cost-efficiency, businesses might be expected to focus on provider cost as the main selection criterion. However for business leaders, cost comes second to service reliability. Trust is the other factor in the top three selection criteria.
Of course, businesses need to be sure that providers will deliver on time and to the required level of quality. But it goes further: many companies are dependent on their outsourcing provider to remain compliant with regulatory requirements. The UK government, for example, recently imposed tighter payroll requirements on companies, and the latter frequently pass that burden onto their external provider. Tough new tax reporting rules in Brazil and Argentina are leading foreign and domestic firms there to do the same.
This dependence helps explain why trust is such an important factor. In Asia’s and Latin America’s emerging markets, for example, this trust is usually built through personal interaction, the basis of any good business relationship.
Communication matters
Communication is integral to building high levels of trust. In fact, businesses told us it is the single most important ingredient of a successful outsourcing experience. More important even than the provider’s pedigree, and considerably more than project governance, resource management and scoping of specifications.
Communication between client and provider needs to be good at many levels. Regular status meetings organised by the provider should be a standard feature of any engagement. In some markets, such as in Latin America, clients may prefer these to be frequent and face-to-face. But providers should also recognise when busy clients may prefer to reduce the frequency of meetings. Good communication practice also means being ultra-responsive: three quarters of business leaders say it is important that their lead outsourcing provider be able to meet with them at very short notice – within 24 hours – should an issue arise.
Being proactive is another part of the trust and reliability equation. Companies want their outsourcing providers to be looking for ways to streamline processes. Good providers also listen to clients to improve their service. Ever tougher competition in this digital age means that companies look for every possible means of boosting their cost-efficiency, and they increasingly rely on their suppliers – including their outsourcing providers – to help them design better business processes.
Extending the check-list
The high value businesses place on these non-technical attributes of an outsourcing relationship pose what may be unfamiliar challenges to outsourcing clients and providers alike. Whether outsourcing for the first time or looking for a new provider, companies need to find ways of assessing how providers perform in areas such as reliability and communication. Reviewing provider testimonials and arranging calls with a provider's other clients are a couple of steps that could help. Clients should also develop metrics to capture these areas of performance, against which their provider can be measured.
Providers themselves need to ensure they have the right account managers and staff able to provide the 'human touch'. Finding professionals with the requisite technical skills, the ability to communicate effectively and build personal relationships with clients is no easy task. But it is clearly critically important so outsourcers need to be measuring the performance of their people in these areas and provide on-going training. They can be sure of one thing: the criteria their clients are judging them on are evolving. Those that can adapt may just create a new point of differentiation with their rivals in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
Francois Pons is a partner and head of business consulting & outsourcing at Grant Thornton France