Kishore Mirchandani has been making rounds, convincing leaders of finance and accounting to outsource their functions. His pitch: No other company can deliver the efficiencies and economies of scale his company Outsource Partners International (OPI) brings to the table. CFOs across verticals are buying into Mirchandani’s pitch. OPI’s ability to handle finance and accounting programs of varying complexities up to end-to-end engagements makes it a new frontier in global outsourcing. Several players in the market claim that they can handle finance Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) better than the others.

“What they are doing is transactional processing,” says Mirchandani. Since its initial days, OPI has truly expanded beyond handling transactional processes. Today, it has the ability to handle tax compliance services, financial reporting, stock option accounting, valuation of businesses and, market research. “Our focus is on complex functions, which are core to an organization. No other company has as many accountants [OPI has approximately 1600 employees] on job as we do.” OPI is perhaps the only niche player in the BPO space dedicated solely to providing finance and accounting outsourcing FAO) services.

This has made them among the strongest candidates to win FAO engagements. For Mirchandani the real expansion engine has been a recent change in customer attitudes about FAO. Today, outsourcing finance and accounting is considered safe, acceptable, and routinely tactic. “Our discussions with several CFOs confirm our views on market penetration and on benefits to be captured from F&A offshoring,” he says. One factor which is fueling the demand for finance and accounting (F&A) business process outsourcing (BPO) solutions is that companies are striving to improve their financial transparency, comply with various regulations, and manage costs while focusing on core competencies.

A greater emphasis on compliance—a fallout from Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulatory measures—is leading finance leaders to consider outsourcing in ways like never before. Facing a shortage in skilled tax expertise, many companies have found that the most expedient way of ensuring compliance is to outsource. OPI has been quick to take advantage of this trend. “While earlier cost savings was the driving factor for companies to outsource, today cost is taking a backseat to capacity and knowledge needs,” notes Mirchandani.Though businesses and CPA firms are struggling to find able bodies to perform these functions, Mirchandani boasts of deep knowledge that they’ve cultivated among employees at OPI.

“And that’s a real value of tax outsourcing,” he notes. OPI has made sizable Investment to educate and train tax specialists in India. Employees are trained to tackle issues on myriad Fronts, spanning local, state and federal. Furthermore, they also have the skill sets to offer services such as payroll tax, sales tax, use tax, and many others. With 400 employees focused specifically on tax issues, OPI is one of the largest third-party tax compliance providers in India. Like tax compliance, for any finance function that OPI takes up, it applies continued process improvement methodologies. The company has developed a proprietary method known as the “90 Day Challenge” to continuously align improvement focus and performance.