Indian companies might soon outsource their finance and accounts functions. Blazing a new trail, consultancy firm Accenture is in talks with about a dozen companies in sectors like automotives, FMCG, telecom, and oil and gas to handle their F&A functions.
"Of the dozen-odd companies, we are in fairly advanced stages of negotiations with around four. We are looking at closing these deals in the next few weeks," Accenture country managing director Sanjay Jain told Business Standard.
Accenture has offered to take over on its rolls all the people in the F&A department of these companies, except employees like cashiers, whose presence is required on a daily basis.
"We tell the companies that while it is a cost pool for them, it is a revenue pool for us," Jain said.
The employees could either be located onsite at the company's office or at Accenture's Bangalore centre.
Accenture claims that by outsourcing their F&A functions, companies can raise white-collar productivity by up to 50 per cent, reduce their lead time by 30-70 per cent and complete their book closures in a week.
"Unlike outsourcing by foreign companies, which helps them cut costs by up to 40 per cent, there is no advantage of labour arbitrage for Indian firms. But it increases productivity along with greater transparency," Jain explained.
Further, instead of charging fixed fees, Accenture has offered to tie its remuneration for outsourcing to certain parameters of productivity improvement and lead-time reduction.
"If we are not able to achieve these parameters, we will pay a penalty; otherwise, we get a bonus," Jain added.
However, Jain admitted that companies were concerned about loss of control and security of data if they outsourced their F&A functions.
"As far as loss of control is concerned, we are only talking about transaction processing and not decision-making," he said.
"We have shown our clients the tight security system we have at our centre at Bangalore, where we process the F&A functions of some multinational corporations."
At the moment, outsourcing accounts for 23 per cent of Accenture's turnover in India. "We plan to raise it to more than 40 per cent in the next three years. Apart from infotech and customer interface, growth will also be driven by F&As," Jain added.