Business challenges – Why outsourcing matters?

ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, is a political, social and economic union of ten member states in Southeast Asia that was formed on 8 August 1967. As one of the founding members of this trade bloc, Thailand's exporters have access to a market in excess of 600 million people as well as millions more through free trade agreements with 14 other countries. The Kingdom's customs duties are imposed under the Customs Act and the Customs Tariff Decree and are collected on both imports and a limited number of exports.

With all international travel restrictions lifted and most nationwide public-health measures relating to Covid-19 relaxed, Thailand fragile economy has started showing signs of recovery. One sector that is seeing significant growth is foreign direct investment (FDI), which increased by 32.3% quarter-on-quarter and 63.7% year-on-year in Q1 2022 to 15.9 billion Baht, according to figures from the Bank of Thailand (BoT).

As one of the most popular capital cities in the world, Bangkok attracted over 22.78 million visitors in the year before the pandemic according to the Mastercard Global Destination Cities Index*. Many of these unique visitors to the Thai capital regularly take advantage of the multiple high-end shopping malls and the 7% VAT tourist refund, spending over US$20 billion as stated in the same report.

As one of the leading economies in Southeast Asia, Thailand continues to be a major investment destination for many of the world's leading retail corporations wanting to establish physical retail stores in the Kingdom. But as large retailers from Britain, France, Japan and elsewhere will attest, it takes more than a good product to stay the course in the 'Land of Smiles'.

With Covid-19 now fading into the background in most Western countries and coming under control elsewhere around the world, the focus of many business owners, CEOs and CFOs is shifting to how can they transform their finance operations and capabilities. One key area of interest is payroll, where increased flexibility, accuracy, confidentiality, and control by a centralized team with global reach helps decision-makers reach their profitability goals.

For many of today’s business owners, outsourcing payroll is viewed as an affordable, secure and time-saving option. Whereas the thought of calculating wages, paying employees, filing tax returns, and performing various other account-related duties may give some people a headache, one misplaced decimal point or an incorrect tax filing can lead to a full-on migraine or worse some form of corporate financial penalty.

Once you’ve made the decision to go down the payroll outsourcing route, you can rest assured that tackling your monthly payroll management task is taken completely out of your hands. This means calculating how much staff are due to be paid (both local and expatriate), including complex statutory payments, commissions, travel expenditure, overtime, Social Security Fund (SSF) contributions as well as sickness payments, and more is done for you.

The past two years have really shaken up the corporate landscape and how employers and employees are looking at their roles within the organization. For many companies, remote working or working from home (WFH) has become the order of the day and companies such as Zoom and CrowdStrike have benefitted enormously as they tailored their platforms to meet surging requirements.

Today’s challenge for small business owners and mid-sized companies is making sure that every employee contributes to the ongoing success of the company. In many instances, this includes either the business owner or another senior member of staff taking on at least two roles, such as a secondary function as HR manager or accountant. While this ancillary position may only need to be filled for a few days out of each month, the fact remains that a person taking on an extra workload often does so without the proper training.