Together 4EVA: Offshore & Automation.

You Can Do It All

As a CFO partnering with privately held companies for over 20 years, I’ve been asked countless times whether sending work offshore is safe (yes), cheap (maybe), and should it be done (maybe). Early in my career, I oversaw an AP outsourcing initiative that promised 75% labor savings—and it taught me a costly lesson: low-cost labor alone often brings hidden headaches. But when paired with automation, it can be done well and is worth it.

You can have it all.

Invisible Costs of Outsourcing

Outsourcing might seem like a quick win due to the costs of labor in the US and other developed nations and the Rest of the World. However, quality issues often offset savings. As Harvard Business Review warns in “Getting Offshoring Right,” error rates climb when teams follow scripts without context, leading to invoice mismatches and missed approvals. When you outsource you also loose an important part of your business - control over the culture and the conection with the people who do the work. Offshore centers can suffer annual attrition rates over 25%, forcing repeated training cycles that dilute your institutional knowledge, drag down your on-shore team's productive, and just sucks to train on basic tasksover and over again. Add to this the challenges of managing across time zones and you’re looking at late-night or early-morning calls that drain executive bandwidth and inflate hidden costs, especially if the resorces do not work in the same time zone as you.

How Automation Changes the Game

By contrast, automation delivers reliable throughput and governance. McKinsey’s report “AI in the Workplace: A Report for 2025” shows that bots can handle repetitive tasks with up to 95% accuracy, operating 24/7 without fatigue. Additionally, automation often provides greater audit trails and visibility, simplifying problem resolution and solving for training gaps when things go sideways. Organizations that deploy robotic process automation see a 50% reduction in transaction processing time, freeing staff to focus on analysis, vendor strategy, and exception management instead of rote data entry.

Build for Resilience, Not Low Labor Dollars

Rather than choosing one over the other, the most resilient finance operations blend outsourcing and automation strategically. Use automation platforms for high-volume, rule-based processes, such as OCR-based invoice capture and matching functionality, while delegating low-complexity, non-core tasks like vendor setup or routine data cleansing to real humans in a lower cost of living area. They save your onshore labor dollars for the more senior, high-value roles you need to talk to and collaborate with every day. Forrester’s research on hybrid work underscores that this balanced approach cuts costs by 30% while maintaining quality and flexibility. By keeping a powerful and lean in-house team to oversee exceptions, refine workflows, and manage relationships, you harness the best of both worlds: the efficiency and scalability of automation, plus the judgment and adaptability of human expertise.

Start at the Beginning

When I am building a new workflow for financial operations or the deal desk, I start by mapping my client's current process: identifying error hotspots, cycle times, and manual handoffs. I pilot automation in a single area—perhaps PO matching or expense processing—then measure cost reductions and quality improvements before scaling. If certain non-core, low-complexity tasks still make sense offshore, blend them with automation. But always calculate the total cost of ownership: include management overhead and the true price of unexpected late-night interventions.

Bottom Line

I’ve learned that chasing the lowest hourly rate is a short-sighted strategy. As CFOs, our mandate is to build resilient, high-quality finance operations and high-performing teams that empower growth. By investing in technology and offshore lower-cost processing together, we free our onshore teams to focus on their highest and best use. Plus, we CFOs get to protect a little bit of our personal time by not having calls at all hours of the day chasing basic information about the business.