How finance outsourcing is set to protect companies from future resource shortages
Summary
A business is constantly vulnerable to external threats, from global crises like COVID-19 to changes in the financial market.
While a company may not be able to prepare for or protect itself from every crisis that may come its way, proactive steps to ensure lasting efficiency and mitigate rising risks can create a more crisis-ready business framework.
Outsourcing is one such step that can insulate a company from the threat of resource shortages and the risks this poses.
The threat of future resource shortages: Resource shortages will disseminate challenges across a company’s operations, leading to issues in many areas of a business that may seem far removed from the direct impact of the shortage. It is inevitable that resource shortages will become a persistent risk in the future, which is why companies must be prepared with a flexible framework to preserve resource efficiency and drive up the ROI of their investments.
The role of outsourcing in sustaining efficiency: Outsourcing immediately alleviates pressure off finite resources by freeing up internal space for higher value-added tasks. This accelerates the timeline to the achievement of goals, lowers costs, boosts the value and quality of the final product, and makes room for internal specialisation that has long been known to support resource efficiency and productivity.
For a critical function like finance, outsourcing provides a pathway to more proactive business growth and crisis-ready operations.
The current business landscape is one that understands the necessity of preparing for external impacts. External circumstances ranging from climate change, natural disasters, and global health crises like COVID-19 are all unprecedented events that can alter the course of many businesses across industries and regions.
In the midst of this change, finance outsourcing has rapidly emerged as a popular source of securing corporate futures.
In the years ahead, corporations are bracing for a landscape that will evolve faster than they can keep up with. The tumultuous events that were regarded as one-off, unlikely events up to now will become more common over time and companies must prepare their operations to hold up against what is to come.
One event that is quickly becoming a rising concern in the market is the inevitable shortage of resources.
The rising threat of resource shortages is hardly a surprise. For several years now, companies, industries, and nations alike have been well aware of the precarious nature of resource availability.
The European Union sounded the alarm about critical raw material shortages brought on by the pandemic and the Union’s dependence on certain supply chains. If the Union fails to resolve these shortages, it will likely threaten its ability to reach its target of becoming climate-neutral by the year 2050.
The threat of future resource shortages
For many companies and individuals, resource shortages remain a possibility in the future, but for many others, it has become a current risk.
Needless to say, these shortages will have a ripple effect that will ultimately have a much wider impact than many will anticipate. If companies do not have a framework in place to mitigate the risks of shortages—and respond to the challenges that shortages will indirectly cause—the impacts of the crises ahead will be far more catastrophic.
The question is no longer if resource shortages will come to pass, but rather how the global landscape will hold up against these shortages when they do arise.
The course of action that is left to many of these companies is how to allocate their resources as efficiently as possible to cut down on wastage and derive the most value from their resource investment.
Contemporary businesses are currently at a crossroads in their strategic outlook.
On the one hand, survival has never been more of a challenge than it currently is. On the other hand, building a sustainable, crisis-ready, value-added, and resilient operation that is capable of innovation has become a necessity for survival. Achieving the latter also requires a significant and necessary investment in order to implement the structures that are required.
No matter what a company’s goals may be as they look towards the future, it is clear that finance functions will need to be performed as efficiently as possible to support a company through an ever-evolving landscape.
The role of finance outsourcing in sustaining efficiency
Finance outsourcing has risen through the ranks to become a popular method of supporting companies throughout a crisis and beyond.
The finance outsourcing industry that was once valued at US$37.9 billion in 2020, is estimated to reach a value of US$53.4 billion by the year 2026; a massive rise in value that showcases the role outsourcing will play in the global financial landscape.
For a company looking to benefit from the advantages of financial outsourcing, the immediate benefit is moving lower value-added tasks off company resources and freeing up time and resources for higher value-added tasks. This, in turn, accelerates a company’s timeline to reach overall business goals.
In a landscape that is threatened by resource shortages, finance outsourcing helps a company ensure that its resources are dedicated towards specialised tasks, and that its lower value-added tasks are also completed by specialised, external professionals.
Specialisation is a sustainable method through which companies make better use of their resources and lower both costs and wastage. This means that the final product a company produces is automatically of higher value and quality as a result of the specialisation it benefits from.
It also means that these companies are better positioned to meet future resource shortages due to the strategic allocation of their available resources.
Prepare for the uncertainty ahead with proactive transformation
The global landscape is evolving at a much faster pace than ever before. This means that even if your company is not grappling with resource shortages at present, it will very likely be impacted by shortages in the future.
Waiting for a crisis to take place before taking action will leave your business and future success vulnerable. This reactive course of action will lead to a delay during which your operations will be destabilised.
Proactive, progressive finance functions are the ones that will survive the uncertainties ahead without needing to deviate from their short and long-term goals and objectives. These finance functions will leverage outsourcing and create a lasting framework that benefits from more efficient and value-added processes long before a company relies on this value to survive.
Include outsourcing in your company’s finance strategy and make impactful, lasting moves towards a more sustainable, ethical, and crisis-ready business outlook in 2022.
