[1] The Great Debate is brought to you in conjunction with accountsIQ, the outsourcer's first choice for intelligent accounting online.

This month saw the first Great Debate [2] on AccountingWEB, where our guest speakers argued whether outsourcing was an entirely good thing for British accountants. Here’s what they had to say.

Jim Brown, director of BRAL, was our opening speaker. He kicked off the first round [3] by making the obvious argument that outsourcing saved on cost, but followed up with some interesting observations specific to the profession. Namely that outsourcing should free up managers and partners from time-consuming recruitment, training and compliance duties, leaving more time for client service. Brown also argued that attracting and retaining good staff is becoming more difficult (something that has been reported elsewhere on AccountingWEB), and outsourcing will make this easier. The theory is, trainees who no longer have to work on boring clerical duties, which will now be outsourced, can work instead on interesting value-added services, which will be more profitable for the firm. Lastly, Brown suggested that the time saved by outsourcing will allow firms to branch out into areas other than accountancy, such as IT support or HR consultancy.

Our opening speaker for the opposition was Paul Windsor, managing partner of Windsor Stebbing Marsh. Windsor argued against the line of thinking that saw accountancy as a commodity, as it leads only to low margins and undervalued services. He also expressed his belief that outsourcing jeopardised the “trusted advisor” status accountants strive to achieve. Of course, while outsourcing is chiefly argued for on costs terms, often these savings remain to be seen. Windsor highlighted that prices for IT infrastructure, set-up and error correction could all erode margins. There was the loss of control and opportunity costs to be factored in as well. Those who retain all their accounting functions in-house can give clients a quicker turnaround and a better service, said Windsor, who suggested that outsourcing was at base unprofessional.

Jim Brown was supported by Tony Connolly in our second round [4], managing director of accountsIQ, as his seconding speaker. Connolly pointed out that the online nature of modern outsourcing has changed the landscape somewhat. Outsourcing now means that information can be processed and accessed quick enough to form useful management dashboards for decision-making, whereas before leaving it until the month-end was often too late for a savvy client to do anything useful with it. Outsourcing can also get accountants away from transaction entry and into the valuable knowledge processing roles where they belong.

The final speaker was Michael McKerlie, chief executive of RAN ONE International. He put paid to a lot of scaremongering that had been going on about outsourcing: that it would cost jobs, that it would commoditise accountancy, and that you needed it to be profitable. In truth, he argued, offshore outsourcing has been getting more expensive and will continue to do so, accountancy is being commoditised anyway, and that there were different types of profitable firms, so not all would benefit from outsourcing. He cited David Maister in saying that firms generally traded off expertise or efficiency, and it was the latter model would benefit from accountancy. He closed by saying that accountants need to be close to their clients in order to make strategic decisions about their firm.

Thank you to Steve Pipe, Mark Lee, Shaun Crozier, Jonathan Vowles, Robert Harper, Susan Mason, Steven Holloway, and Vipul Sheth for participating in the opening rounds.

The debate is now open to the floor. If you want to add to the discussion, there is a fine bottle of Rocca 1997 to be won for the member with the most interesting contribution to make.