For accounting firm owners looking to expand their teams internationally, most turn to the vast web for materials and resources.
But despite the overabundance of information online, the ones that actually bring you value can be scarce.
But not this one!
What we have for you aren’t just recycled or regurgitated “hacks” — this blog offers proven strategies drawn from over a decade of experience in the offshore accounting space!
Selecting Your Offshore Partner Firm
Many offshoring providers are generalists, catering to various industries like customer service, IT, and healthcare.
However, generalist offshoring companies don’t offer the same level of employee expertise as an accounting-focused partner firm.
Niche providers like TOA Global exclusively serve the accounting industry. This singular focus allows them to refine and tailor their strategies for the unique needs of accounting firms worldwide.
Trusting Smart: Onshore/Offshore Team Collaboration
Ever heard of the concept of smart trust?
The late author of the highly acclaimed book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey, along with Greg Link, introduced this concept to the world in 2011.
It basically means extending trust wisely and balancing your team’s propensity to trust the people around them.
This is especially applicable to firms managing offshore teams.
The selling point of tapping an accounting offshore team is the specialized skill sets and expertise that aren’t readily available in your locale.
When your onshore team trusts its offshore counterparts smartly, you strengthen team collaboration, build chemistry, and break language and cultural barriers.
Balancing the Equation: Onshore and Offshore Teams
Generally, the secret ratio is 1:2 — for every onshore team member, there should be 2 offshore staff.
But it doesn’t stop there! There’s still so much you should fill yourself in on.
While the onshore/offshore ratio depends on your scale, budget, processes, and overall business needs, here’s a little cheat sheet from one accounting firm owner (turned seasoned business coach) who cracked the code for you:
- Less than 5 onshore team members = up to 10 offshore team members
- 6 to 20 onshore team members = 1:1 ratio
- 50 or more onshore team members = between 30% to 50% offshore
Getting the ratio right between your onshore and offshore staff requires strategic thinking and planning, and a whole lot of patience and dedication.
Unfortunately, some accounting firm owners don’t bother strategizing.
There are unwanted outcomes that you should watch out for, and deliberately avoid:
- Too many offshore team members = unsustainable talent size, slowed business growth
- Too many onshore team members = untapped offshore staff potential
Needless to say, balancing that offshore/onshore equation is critical to your success. The secret is giving it time, investing in your assets (i.e. your team members), and focusing on your long-term goals.
Tools for Successful Offshore Team Management
Relying on your talent team alone is a recipe for burnout.
Especially with today’s demands, it’s rather wise to let technology rescue your accounting firm from the pileup of tasks that come with the seasons (and client requests).
Here’s a quick roundup of the most widely used offshore team management tools for businesses around the world.
- Managing Offshore Teams with Communication Tools
Nothing beats efficient and synchronized comms when managing an offshore team. Especially with varying time zones, you need communication tools to bridge that gap.
For collaboration tools, some of the most popular ones include Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet.
- Using Time Tracking and Productivity Management Tools
With the right time and productivity management tools, you can get a clearer picture of how your onshore and offshore staff are making use of their time and pay them accordingly.
Whether it’s hourly, weekly, or monthly payments, tools like Time Doctor and Bill4Time allow you to track your offshore team’s billable hours, assess their day-to-day productivity, and develop the best possible framework to optimize your team’s work hours.
- Leveraging Project Management Tools
Software like Slack, Asana, and Trello are project management tools that don’t just help track progress on tasks — they also help define project scope, allocate resources accurately, and maximize efficiency.
This is especially helpful when keeping scope creep at bay, giving team members the resources they need, and maintaining high-quality output no matter the season or situation.
- Management Frameworks and Methodologies
In erecting a building, you need steel frames, concrete, and wood. The same applies to managing offshore teams: you need scaffolding.
Managing offshore teams should be organized and systematic, and what better way to do it than to employ tried-and-true management frameworks and methodologies, such as Scrum, Agile, Kanban, Waterfall, Six Sigma, Porter’s Five Forces, and PRINCE2, among others.
Managing Offshore Teams: The Step-by-Step Process
- Hiring Offshore Teams
You can either let your onshore team handle the hiring process entirely or partner with an offshoring provider to help you build your global team.
Choosing the latter accelerates the hiring process while freeing you from the hassle of recruitment and rising training costs. Why?
Because leading offshoring providers like TOA Global maintain a talent pool of job-ready accounting professionals that can be deployed immediately.
While your offshoring partner takes care of the busy work, you still get to interview the candidates they endorse so you can make your evaluation. By tapping the expertise and resources of an offshoring provider, you’re essentially bypassing the burdensome and rigorous steps of building an offshore team.
- Onboarding Your Offshore Team
Congratulations on taking your first step to building an offshore team!
So, now what?
To get your offshore team members started, give them an induction proper, which typically consists of the following:
- "Welcome aboard" greetings and huddles
- Mandatory training videos
- Mandatory physical/virtual manuals
- One-on-one walkthroughs with current team members
While there are no hard and fast rules, it helps a lot if onboarding is methodical.
A good onboarding process gives offshore team members a good understanding of what type of work they will be doing and a high-level overview of your business’ workflow and house rules.
But most especially, a clearly documented onboarding process gives your offshore team that needed push to sort out their own areas for improvement, get past the learning curve, and even develop a closer bond with the onshore team.
- Training Offshore Team Members
Managing an offshore team means going beyond rules and protocols: you need to invest in your current talent roster.
Investing in your offshore team boosts your company’s retention rate and reduces hiring-rehiring costs.
To optimize your experience with your partner offshore team, you need an onshore champion to ensure hands-on mentorship, quality instructional materials, and consistent training programs for your offshore team members and their personal and professional development.
Onshore champions are the ones assisting with complex questions, employee reviews, and consistent retraining especially for your offshore employees.
The best ways to approach this are the following:
- Checking in with your offshore team's progress through project management software
- Face-to-face training for touching base
- Spearheading webinars for supplemental training and mentorship for offshore team members
- Knowing your team members' strengths and areas for improvement more intimately
- Providing professional and constructive feedback to team members
- Setting up regular meetings to address individual concerns
- Building a Strong Team Culture
You know you’ve established camaraderie between your team members successfully when they’ve moved past individual differences — operating like a well-oiled machine.
But if you’re not there yet, don’t give up hope!
Building a strong team culture often takes a lot of patience, enthusiasm, and time. Fortunately, there are multiple ways to achieve your goals for your offshore team by carrying out certain activities and/or programs, like the ones below:
| ACTIVITY | GOAL |
|---|---|
| Orientation on core company values and goals | Alignment of company's goals and values with offshore team members |
| Team huddles or meetings | Gathering and generating ideas Touching base with team members re: goals, tasks, and projects Getting general updates |
| Achievement announcements | Recognition of offshore employees Team recognition across departments |
| Real-life team building activities | Promotion of team cohesion Building/addition of skills for team members |
| Virtual team building activities | Promotion of team cohesion Enhancement of team communication |
Goals and Milestones in Managing Offshore Teams
| ISSUE | SOLUTION | TIME |
|---|---|---|
| Language barriers | English language training | Somewhere between 100 to 500 hours (depending on initial English proficiency level) |
| Productivity level | Comprehensive mentorship | Approximately 3 months |
| Differences in time zones | Setting clear expectations Strategic scheduling Leveraging technology |
Usage of overlapping work hours (for countries with more proximal time zones) Shifting (for countries with less proximal time zones) |
| Different cultural norms | Boosting cultural awareness Exposure to different cultural practices |
Webinars on addressing cultural differences |
It’s good to note that professional development is continuous improvement. There can be goals to set every time your team members upskill, but there is no rigid end goal.
Every meeting, every activity, and every webinar adds up. Step by step, your team members can improve both their hard and soft skills for every task and project they take on.
It may not show up right away, but you’ll see your team members’ gradual progress when you zoom out of the picture.
Choosing the Perfect Accounting-focused Partner Firm
As the need for offshore accounting teams continues to grow, the competition grows tougher among offshore providers as well.
We want you to leverage the booming offshoring industry and work with a dedicated team that knows the accounting industry from the inside out.
But how do you know you’re working with the right offshore team?
For starters, your partner firm should understand the nuances of the accounting industry from the inside out, providing both strategic and tailor-fit solutions to your company’s unique pain points, as well as pressing industry concerns that you may not even realize that your business is suffering from.
Looking to Partner with Elite Accounting Offshore Teams?
With multiple market uncertainties on the rise, tapping an elite accounting offshore team is no longer just an option for your firm. It’s key for future-proofing your practice against both its short-term and longstanding concerns.
Beyond slashing costs and bridging skills gaps, you need an offshore provider to connect you with elite talent to help you scale up, boost operations, crush competitors, and drive business growth unseen in past years — just like countless clients worldwide have enjoyed and can vouch for.
For accounting-focused business strategies that are tailored to your firm, get started here.
