Phil Fersht and Sonal Singla, writing for the Everest Group in globalservicesmedia.com, an outsourcing services consulting firm, acknowledge that early finance and accounting outsourcing (FAO) projects were focused on moving the process offshore for cost reasons. Providers did not bundle technology solutions or provide value options for the buyer so that they could incorporate their outsourced process with other business processes.

Most early adopters of FAO, large global firms, chose to keep ownership and support of their existing finance and accounting systems, and Fersht and Singla expect few to move to an outsourcer’s platform because of issues relating to their systems’ complexity and to compliance, initial cost and loss of control. New business for outsourcing providers will likely come from mid-sized buyers and companies with a history of mergers and acquisitions.

Customers will look for technology that is “additive not disruptive”, Fersht and Singla say, that bundles FAO services with IT services. Buyers will look to manage their business process across customers, providers and third-party outsourcers’ applications, and are likely to adopt Web services such as “customer setup", “deduction calculation” or “create invoice”.

While technology that will enable providers to offer genuine one-to-many FAO products will be years in the making, some providers are developing “pockets of utility" across several industry-specific accounting processes (for example, procure-to-pay processes specific to hospitals), according to Fersht and Singla. Other developments, which will permit application of finance and accounting information to Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, for example, will require Order to Cash (O2C) engines and workflow and document management tools.

More than 65 percent of companies in the Hackett Group study are leveraging the shared services model for their business processes. While these companies expect outsourcing of FAO processes to grow at a modest rate to 9 percent of the market and offshore service center processing to increase to 13 percent, most expect the shared services model to continue to dominate the market.

The Hackett Group study found that 60 percent of the respondents were concerned about risk from accounting and finance outsourcing. Compliance and control were seen as the most significant risks, followed by security and culture, globalservicesmedia.com reports.