Article | Bloomberg SmartPaper

Relationships, not transactions: A better approach to outsourcing tax, accounting and human resources services

Aug. 2, 2023 · Authored by Todd C. Bernhardt, Missy Thompson, Kim Wylam

Business owners can spend more time growing their business and less time running it by outsourcing critical operations, like tax, accounting and human resources.

The pandemic accelerated many trends around the way we work and conduct business. Customer preferences also changed across the board as digital adoption took hold and remote work became the norm, resulting in value becoming tied closer to customer service and quality over just price.

Outsourcing, once viewed primarily as a cost-saving tool, has shifted into an important strategic play as well as a clever way for business owners to enable growth. Companies that outsource critical operations, such as tax, accounting and human resources, have found they are able to run their businesses more efficiently and use the time saved to work on core strategies and growth. In the remote, digitally connected world, business owners are understanding that it can be more effective for them to outsource these functions and have access to important advice, expertise and technology, instead of the costly investment of purchasing software, keeping it up-to-date and hiring people in-house to learn it.

The emergence of the subscription economy, too, has enabled service providers to customize their offerings to meet their clients where they are in their business life cycle. During the growth phase, for instance, companies generally rapidly hire and expand their services or products. That growth, however, can come with problems in core functions like tax, accounting or human resources, especially if those areas are not in the wheelhouse of the owners. This means that service providers need to create solutions specific to the life cycle stage rather than adopting a “one-size-fits-all” approach.

With all these things in mind, Baker Tilly Advantage was created. Baker Tilly Advantage was designed to take the operational complexities and responsibilities related to tax, accounting and human resources out of the hands of business owners and give them the time, space and freedom to get back to working on their core business goals.

What makes Advantage unique is the way it works. It is a subscription-based service model that takes the hassle of multiple engagements out of the picture and instead focuses on supporting a business's objectives through leveraging true relationships and scalable growth. To help achieve this, each Advantage client is assigned a client success manager who gets to the bottom of their business’s goals, helps guide them through their business life cycle and identifies the services they may require, as well as monitors those needs and services over time.