Back-office outsourcing portal gives businesses a well-earned break
An innovative online portal enabling businesses to easily and cost-effectively outsource their financial and administrative back-office functions is rapidly gaining traction in the Australian small-to-medium-enterprise sector.
Launched in October, Your Portal (www.yourportal.com.au) already boasts 75 clients, including the likes of well-known franchises such as the Athletes Foot and King of Knives, and entrepreneurial companies such as 3 Minute Angels and Workplace Incentives. Your Portal has also developed strong referral and communication ties with major accounting and financial services group PriceWaterhouse Coopers as well as various accounting bodies such as the CPA.
“Your Portal has really taken off,” says company founder and managing director, Ken Lipschitz. “We’re filling a very important niche in the market for small businesses, who simply do not have the time or expertise to do what are fairly complex and specialised tasks, such as accounts and cash flow management, payroll, telecommunications, internet management, and IT maintenance. All are things that they need and that don’t generate money directly, but if they didn’t have them their business wouldn’t run.
“There are immense pressures on business in terms of cash flow, technology, managing staff, new legislation, and other things that surround them on a daily basis. Anything they can use to relieve some of that pressure has got to be a good thing.”
Mr Lipschitz says Your Portal is effectively a one-stop shop for businesses to outsource their back-office functions, backed by its own in-house staff of bookkeepers, accountants and IT professionals. They effectively function as outsourced financial and technology departments for businesses who generally would not have the financial capacity or need to hire them as full-time employees.
“Small businesses need to focus on what they do best, and let the experts take over the specialised tasks such as accounts, IT and telecommunications management,” Mr Lipschitz says. “Your Portal offers a professional, trusted, secure environment to do all those things for them on a very cost-effective basis. Clients are achieving substantial savings on their bookkeeping, accounting and IT management.
Mr Lipschitz says Your Portal customers are taking advantage of value-added services, such as access to qualified accountants, who provide advice in areas including tax, cash flow management and budgeting.
“The essence of what we do at the front end is to find out what is concerning the business in the current environment, and what their real needs are going forward. Once we’ve agreed on the way forward, and they want to become a customer, we will then go through the process of bringing them onboard.
“Our clients put a huge amount of trust in us. We tend to be co-signatories on their bank accounts, and are highly responsive to their needs. We know what tasks need to be done for all our clients, and they provide us with access to their financial information through a secure direct link to their computer system. They also have access to our system from any computer.”
Mr Lipschitz says it generally takes three to six weeks to bed down the processes with each client. “Thereafter, everything should be a lot easier than it was before.”
For further information, contact:
Andrew Ward on behalf of Ken Lipschitz
Your Portal
02 8214 2533