WHAT I CAN DO FOR YOUR COMPANY (THE VIDEO)

WHAT I CAN DO FOR YOUR COMPANY

- Reorganize your overseas finance functions into a virtual regional shared services center so you can expand, have segregation of duties and be SOX 404 compliant in your foreign reporting entities without adding any staff. I can also do this on a global basis.

- Manage your overseas operation or financial organization on an interim basis in a period of transition. This will assure you of good governance while you take the time necessary to choose and train the right candidate.

- Apply my international experience in global cash management and establish processes to deal with currency exposure around the globe, set up global cash management systems in liaison with banks and utilize techniques such as pooling to minimize exposure to entity liquidity issues, foreign exchange and conversion risk.

- Implement processes and systems such as Virtual Trader to help you execute your inter company billing more efficiently, reconcile your intercompany accounts in minutes and close your international books in one day.

- Prepare or help you prepare budgets, financial forecasts, strategic plans, and road show presentations to make sure you have all the tools to effectively plan and monitor your progress.

- Document processes in foreign subsidiaries in accordance with SOX 404, ensure they reflect and are compatible with the home office accounting policies, train the staff and implement the processes.

I am a leader, an original thinker and team player; happy to be hands on yet simultaneously capable of taking a step back and overlooking the whole playing field. I know and understand the many functions and disciplines in a corporation and the way they are interrelated. I know how to connect and coordinate them so that all of them work efficiently as a unit.

I hold a Dutch passport and speak many European and Asian languages; I am used to traveling constantly.

In summary I am able to help you and your Company in a number of processes and functions in the international arena. I am and have been successful in the role of a consultant and have always left an organization in better shape than when I first joined it. I am experienced in most management disciplines and able to operate at all levels within a corporation.

Best regards and I look forward to hearing from you,

Bou van Kuyk
972 771 9887

Surely You Outsource

Almost every organization is outsourcing something even though they may not realize it. Most are at least outsourcing their payroll administration and have the paychecks of their employees prepared by some payroll bureau.

Why? because they cannot do it any better or cheaper than the payroll bureau, at least not if they intend to comply with all the payroll/tax regulations and filings that accompany the employment of personnel. The bureaucratic and administrative burden for a limited number of employees is too great and the expertise required too specialized to be able to do it oneself.

In addition it is not productive to spend the time worrying about and generating paychecks and filing taxes/withholdings etc for a limited number of employees or add an employee simply to do this strenuous task in house, when others can do it for you.

It is much more important that the company focus its resources on generating the sales and the income so that it can pay the employees every month as without the business there will be no paycheck.

So there are a number of important reasons why a company should outsource a function like payroll administration to an outside contractor for a fee.

• The contractor can do it more efficiently, better and cheaper than the employer.
• The employee will get more accurate and timely paychecks from the bureau and both the employer and the employee will have all of their monthly filing requirements taken care of by an expert in this field.
• The employees and company will be better able to focus on the main activity of the company which is to generate sales and profits, so that the employee can get paid their salary by the bureau.
• There is no need for the employer to invest in infrastructure to provide the function.

Although it seems intuitively obvious why the bureau can do this function better and cheaper than most companies could do this in house, I believe it is worth enumerating them in detail as it is important in making the case for outsourcing.

First the bureau serves more than one company, probably hundreds, and does nothing else but administering payrolls and generating paychecks for those companies. This means the bureau has critical mass and is an expert at it. A Subject Matter Expert (SME) as it is sometimes referred to.
They maintain payroll records for thousands of people and know what to file for what type of employee and where.
Invariably the bureau is certified and has person to person connections with tax authorities, insurance companies the social security people and so on, allowing them to resolve issues faster and better than an individual can do.
Very important with the advent of Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) they are most likely compliant and carry a certification to that effect this helps management of public companies with their audits and SEC filings.

All this is important as this applies to most vendors of outsourcing services and this will be a recurring theme.

• They are SME’s or experts in their field/domain, so they can do it better and hit the ground running.
• They have critical mass, so they can do it cheaper
• They are SOX certified, so you do not have to worry about controls
• There is no need for the company to set up its own infrastructure or staffing to perform the process.
• They allow the company to concentrate on what is important to its business, its core competencies.

I started with a payroll bureau as that is probably the earliest and most common and recognizable form of business process outsourcing (BPO) and most people are experiencing it on a daily basis.

The next logical step after payroll outsourcing involves another of the employee related services, employee administration or better known as Human Resources (HR).
HR outsourcing not only eliminates the burden of generating paychecks and compliance issues, it also adds another layer of service to your employees and your company.

Again these companies that provide HR services add value because they are experts, hit the ground running and provide critical mass. One of the major benefits of using an HR outsourcer is that, in addition to performing HR administration functions, they tend to provide a wide selection of benefits which the small Company will find hard to deliver at the cost that the HR outsourcing company is able to.

Why? because the HR company has critical mass. When the HR Company goes shopping for benefits they represent the cumulative total of employees of all their clients. So instead of shopping for benefits for say 200 employees they go shopping for 100,000 employees or more and the Insurance companies all of a sudden listen and provide competitive bids.

So now not only has the small Company been able to get their payroll done for their employees they can now offer them fortune 500 Company benefits, profit sharing and all!
And do not forget that the small company can do all this and still concentrate on what it does best, executing its business model.

I hope it is becoming clear that outsourcing business processes is not just for the larger corporations but has always provided benefits for small to medium sized companies also, except that no one ever thought about them in that way and did not call it outsourcing.

As illustrated above, although a function or process is critical to a Company's functioning (employees should be well provided for and paid), it is certainly not a core competence of the Company and definitely not one where most of its time and effort should be spent, especially not when there are many service providers that can do this process better, quicker, more efficiently, cheaper and often provide benefits better than any small or even medium sized company could provide on their own.

There are many other functions or processes in a Company necessary for it to execute its business model, which are not its core competence and potentially could be outsourced so that management can focus its attention on the processes that are critical to the success of the business.

We know a company needs people to function (HR process), it needs to buy materials, office stationery, equipment, travel, space and so on (Procurement process), It may need to manufacture stuff (Manufacturing process), It needs to Sell products (Sales process), it distributes what it sells (Logistics and distribution process), It needs to account for all its transactions (Accounting process), to do all this it most likely will need Information technology, (IT process). There are many more such as product design and development, research and we can subdivide these processes, but you get the drift.

There are many vendors around that could take care of many of those processes. We discussed the HR function and know that there definitely are vendors around to whom you can outsource that process.
We also know that there are plenty of contract manufacturers around ever since the OEM era, in China, India, Indonesia and other developing geographies.
DHL/FedEx/UPS are all familiar names in the logistics and distribution processes and there are many other transportation companies that now do logistics for you.
And then there are all the call centers that have sprouted up all over the world, performing back-office processes such as customer service, sales support, help desk, airline reservations and so on.
Not to forget the IT service providers, like IBM/EDS/Perrot Systems and so on and do not forget the software code writers in India.

I am sure you have noticed from the list above that there are very few business processes left that a company has to perform in house that are not outsource able.

All these opportunities to outsource enable a company to concentrate on what it is best at, its core competencies. For example, a hi tech product company can focus on design, engineering and product development (Apple, I-pod, I-phone. Logitech, mouse, webcam). A restaurant chain can focus on developing better or healthier menu's and better ways of preparing or delivering product (McDonalds, Coffee, all day Breakfast).

One of the best examples of how outsourcing liberates a profession/organization to focus on what it is supposed to do and is best at can be found in the medical profession.

As we all know, the core competence of a medical professional is not billing, not filing claims, not any clerical or administrative process, but their core competence is treating and healing patients. This is a classic example that illustrates that outsourcing of clerical and administrative functions allows an organization to do what they do best, without them having to worry about all the administrative chores and distractions.

There are more and more service providers with deep domain knowledge in the entire suite of administrative processes that allow the medical profession to outsource virtually all its admin functions to a service provider.

Taking this logic one step further, if this outsourcing of administrative and financial functions helps doctors to focus on their prime core competence what is there to stop this same logic to be applied to small companies and even large corporations?

And as you might have guessed, Finance and Administration on a grand scale is the newest discipline and process to be added to the outsourcing band wagon and for obvious reasons.

So should you or your company jump on the outsourcing bandwagon? Many companies complain that it was not what it was cracked up to be when they first started. They do not get all the services they expected and any time they ask for another feature the service provider considers that an upgrade or increase in scope and they increase the fee.

That is a subject for another edition, where I will discuss how to avoid the pitfalls and the way an outsourcing contract should be approached. The preparation involved, including
• Determining the strategy of what processes are key to the organization and which are candidates for outsourcing, precise descriptions of the functions to be outsourced
• Preparing an extensive Request For Quote (RFQ) so you get the best price.
• Writing up extensive Service Level Agreements (SLA) so you get the service you expect and avoid all these rate hikes and so on.
• www.visioneuropa.com are experts in this discipline and would gladly help you with determining the right strategy, do all your write-ups, RFQ’s and SLA’s to take the worry and the stress out of your outsourcing.
• Call toll Free 866-972-8899 for a free consultation.

Outsourcing and Transaction costs; The West’s Achilles heel?

Today the value chain in a typical business has become riddled with transactions due to outsourcing.

Product is transferred from raw material provider through the outsourced value chain to the end customer.

Each of those transfers generate transactions such as ordering, shipping, billing, receiving, customs clearing, settling and so forth.

A simple transaction such as billing triggers a number of multiple transactions.
On the shipper’s side, generating an invoice, booking the sale, delivering the invoice, receiving the payment, booking the payment and so forth, and on the receivers side, receiving the invoice, registering the invoice, receiving the goods, booking the receipt goods, generating a payment and so on.

I can mention many more transactions but you get the idea.

So with the advent of outsourcing, as the number of functions outsourced increases, so do the number of transactions multiply because each of the outsourcers will perform al these necessary reciprocal functions which generate transactions and the costs associated with them.

A traditional value chain used to consist of, for example, a supplier of raw materials, a manufacturer, a wholesaler and a retailer each generating a number of transactions as the product gets transferred from one to the other. Today each of the players in this value chain will have a number of its own internal processes outsourced, thus generating more transactions as they do so.

As more is outsourced, more transactions are generated.

Current studies indicate that up to 70% of the cost of a product in a long value-chain are transaction costs (see the purple shaded area in the chart above). This is an enormous slice of the pie that some competitor inevitably will be able to take a bite out of if he/she solves the issue of transaction costs and either reduces the costs considerably or takes many of them out altogether.

The dominant factor in global trade is Transaction cost not Labor Cost.

A reduction in the transaction costs is where the greatest damage can be done to the West’s economies and where it is most vulnerable, a veritable Achilles’ heel.

So how do you reduce the transaction costs in this equation?

Ensure that your transaction costs are the lowest in the current environment through increased investment in Information Technology thus maintaining a sufficiently steep barrier to entry for any competitor.

Reduce your existing transaction costs by outsourcing transaction processing to a Subject Matter Expert (SME), whose critical mass and expertise ensures a reduction in these costs.

Shorten the value chain by vertical integration and thus eliminate most of the external transactions generated by outsourcing.

One part of the solution is to have superior and efficient Information Technology that reduces the costs of these transactions thereby keeping them lower than your competition, making it difficult for them to compete.
A perfect example of a company that understands the basics of information warfare is Wal-Mart and the way it uses information technology as a weapon. Its competitors are unable to match its transaction costs. Wal-Mart has other cost advantages such as, huge volume/critical mass, its own distribution system and so on.

Due to its enormous investment in IT and the lead it has in information management the threat to the West is relatively low in the short run, however they must maintain their technological edge in information management in order to avoid becoming vulnerable in this race. Many emerging economies are rapidly ramping up to come to do battle with the Western economies in this area.

Smaller companies with high transaction costs and not enough capital to invest or insufficient critical mass should be scrambling to outsource their Information Technology and Business Processes to an SME. With their superior system integration skills and critical mass these SME’s will reduce their customers’ transaction costs.

Another option is to eliminate the number of transactions involved in the value chain through vertical integration and by eliminating a number of links in the chain. An attack like this is much harder to defend against as it takes considerably less investment than maintaining a superior Information Technology infrastructure. This is the real threat to the dominance of the West.

The internet has always been a threat to some players in the value chain and will continue to be a real leveler of the playing field as technology improves its performance and more and more people start gaining confidence in performing transactions over the web.

The internet has taken out many middlemen that used to be in the value chain and has started with the retailer. Look at what happened to the travel agencies, Travelocity, Hotels.com, Expedia have all taken an enormous chunk of business away from the traditional Travel Agent. That is just on the retail end. Phase two is already underway. There is a threat to that model with the arrival of YTB and various other turnkey secure hosted travel portals where the end consumer is the travel agent.



When have you last ordered Anti Virus software in a shop, or Adobe Acrobat software, or Microsoft software and upgrades or for that matter car insurance from Geico? What I am trying to say is that selling on the internet through internet storefronts is already a reality.

Now, once these contract manufacturers from China and India and other emerging countries move up in the value chain and are able to bring the products, they currently manufacture so cheaply on an outsourced basis, directly to the consumers through vertical integration by acquiring distributors or a mail order houses in the West, God help us.

So what does this mean?

Information Technology should be used as a weapon in Information warfare. We must become system integrators encompassing the entire value chain. IT budgets should increase not decrease and should be based on its effect on the entire value chain. CIO’s must view themselves and become enterprise economists not just corporate CIO’s.

Optimize other phases and disciplines in the value chain, as competitive advantage is provided by many factors, business processes, volume or critical mass, distribution techniques, utilizing the Internet, as demonstrated in the Wal-Mart example.

The winner of Information Warfare will be the entity that understands that Information Technology is the weapon of choice and is capable of integrating the information that encompasses their entire value chain.

Transaction Costs must be reduced to the point where they are equal or less than those of a vertically integrated value chain, or else the ability for emerging countries to beat the West to the consumer through vertical integration with lower transaction costs and lower prices will become a reality in the long run.