Houston (March 18, 2010) – EquaTerra, a business advisory firm known for helping organizations optimize internal support functions, today announced a new Outsourcing Audit service offering which helps outsourcing buyers discover invoice inaccuracies and recoup overpayments if they act quickly.
EquaTerra has observed a nine percent error rate in outsourcing service provider invoices. While invoice accuracies are largely inadvertent, they can equate to enormous payment overages. For example, a recent audit helped a top energy company recover $1.5 million, which represented 1.5 percent of its monthly fees. Another audit enabled a healthcare company to regain $1.6 million, 3.2 percent of its first year fees.
Moving rapidly is key to recouping invoice overpayments, according to Mike Beals, vice president of EquaTerra. Said Beals, "Typical outsourcing contract clauses require a client to inform its service provider of invoice errors within 60 days of receipt of the invoice and to recover overcharges within 90 days. After that, the overage cannot be recovered. With such potentially large amounts of money at stake, an invoice audit can be especially valuable for outsourcing buyers going through or just completing an outsourcing transition, facing any significant change in scope or pricing or approaching a negotiation deadline with its service provider."
The Outsourcing Audit process is completed in a few weeks and is comprised of three steps: 1) data collection; 2) data analysis; and 3) presentation, during which EquaTerra provides the client with a full report, including the data to present to its service provider for overage repayment and recommendations for invoice process improvements. For more information on the Outsourcing Audit, please contact Mark Voytek at 513-259-3465.
About EquaTerra
EquaTerra sourcing advisors help clients achieve sustainable value in their IT and business processes. Our advisors average more than 20 years of industry experience and have supported more than 2,000 transformation and outsourcing projects across more than 60 countries. Supporting clients throughout the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific, we have deep functional knowledge in Finance and Accounting, HR, IT, Procurement, Real Estate & Facilities Management and other critical business processes. EquaTerra helps clients achieve significant cost savings and process improvement with internal transformation, shared services and outsourcing solutions.For more information, please contact Lee Ann Moore at +1 713.669.9292; www.equaterra.com.
