Stick to your knitting : Outsourcing av ekonomihanteringen hos några små aktiebolag i Västerås

Sammanfattning:

Level:                                 Master thesis in business administration, 15 credits

Date of seminar:                2009-05-29

Title:                                  Stick to your knitting– Outsourcing of the economic function in some small private limited companies in Västerås

Authors:                             Johanna Eriksson 1982

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Sandra Hansson 1982

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Tutor:                                 Leif Carlsson

Purpose:                             From a company perspective describe why the chosen companies in Västerås decided to either outsource or to have their economic function internally, define how the outsourcing process looks like and examine how the companies that have chosen to outsource have experienced their outsourcing situation. Further, we wish to contribute with advice for companies that are considering the option of outsourcing their economic function.

Method:                             An intensive study of existing literature and a pre-study were conducted in order to create a framework for the thesis. The pre-study was conducted with one business counselor and two suppliers of economic services and resulted in local practical examples that supplemented the found literature. The main research consisted of semi-structured personal interviews among twelve companies in different sizes in Västerås. Six of these had chosen to outsource their economic functions while the remaining six had chosen not to.

Conclusion:                       The main arguments for outsourcing were the timesaving and being able to focus on the core business, cost savings and supplier’s higher competence in economics while the main arguments against outsourcing were the loss of control and internal knowledge, the costs and that the supplier does not possess the proper industry knowledge for the specific company. The outsourcing process is short. The choice for or against outsourcing is neither planned nor evaluated or analyzed and the choice of supplier is mostly made based on recommendations from someone they are acquainted with. The implementation consists of the handing over of documents and approximately one day’s work. All respondents are satisfied with their outsourcing situations, in those cases where dissatisfaction once occurred the supplier was exchanged.