Local Companies Provide Money-Saving Solutions For New Businesses

Published by the Columbia Business Times ~ Bertha Evans                                                           March 8 - 21, 2003
Volume 9, Issue 15
           

Local Companies Provide Money-Saving Solutions For New Businesses

Businesses, particularly those that are just entering the competitive marketplace, may find it beneficial to rely on various services to supplement their operations, save money and time and become more efficient with day-to-day details.

Recruiting a Staff
A company is only as strong as its employees, so having a competent, reliable staff is important to any business. Some companies find it to their advantage to use a staffing service, such as Caroline & Co. Inc., to fill those voids.

Often when business owners need to fill a position, they advertise, collect applications, sort through the applicants to select a few who seem to fill the need and then conduct interviews to determine the best choice.  The process takes money for advertising and time to wade through the applicants and check references.

Caroline & Co., owned by Caroline Maher, specializes in doing all the work for the employer.  An applicant's information is kept on file until a job becomes available until a job becomes available that fits his or her experience level.  References are checked, interviews are conducted and applicants are screened to make sure that they present themselves in a professional manner.  Their skill level is verified and a basic criminal background check is conducted.  Drug testing is also available.

"Caroline & Co., is known as an office support staffing service.  It provides temporary, temp-to-hire and direct-hire employees," Barbara Carman, public relations and marketing director of the company, said. "Employees find we can do a great job selecting for them.  It saves them a lot of hassle.  We give them qualified applicants to consider based on the parameters they provide for us and we save them a lot of time.  And time is money."

As the original staffing service in Columbia, in operation for the past 20 years, Caroline & Co. pays temporary and temp-to-hire employees and that cost is passed on to the business until the business owner decides to make that person a permanent employee.  For direct-hire situations, the business is charged a flat fee.

"As a 'rule of thumb,' an employer's cost is in direct relation to the skills and experience required," Carman said.  "Staffing assignment times can vary from four hours to indefinitely.  An employer always has the option of hiring our employees permanently after a pre-set number of staffing hours or any time with a reasonable transfer fee.  Our employer clients tell us time and again our fees are very reasonable and money well spent when they consider all the time and hassle saved and the outstanding quality of employees they acquired."

Providing Better Benefits
Small businesses find it more difficult to compete with larger companies at times because the larger companies are able to offer potential employees more attractive benefits in additions to their regular salaries.  A company like Moresource helps level the playing field by allowing small businesses to band together so they have the same opportunities as their larger counterparts.

Moresource is a systems management company.  Businesses enter into a co-employment agreement with Moresource, which draws employees from many different companies under the Moresource umbrella, opening up benefit opportunities often out of reach for small businesses.

Since all the employees are under the Moresource umbrella, the greater volume of employees gives small businesses utilizing the service the opportunity to provide health and dental insurance packages, 401(k) plans and other benefits to employees.  If they are on their own, the same small businesses may not be able to find a cost-effective way to offer the same benefits to their employees.

"So many employers are paying the same amounts.  The difference in attracting and retaining employees is what other incentives employers are putting on the table," Kat Cunningham, president and owner of Moresource, said.  "When it comes to attracting employees, you better have something more available besides a paycheck,  This provides employers with a tool to help them recruit."

The small business tells Moresource how many hours each employee worked and pays its corporate taxes.  Moresource then takes care of everything related to the employee's payroll up to providing the W-2s for each employee.  The fee varies, as it is a percentage of the gross payroll for each participating company.

Business owners from Missouri and the surrounding states are able to access Moresource and its information easily because the company now has a Web-based reporting system, adding to the efficiency of the process.

Securing Revenues
All businesses that work with accounts receivables experience delays in payments.  To ensure a prompt response to late payments, some businesses may turn to an outside company to collect those receipts due.  The Outsource Group is once such company.

The Outsource Group was formed 25 years ago, originally as a collection agency serving hospitals and physician groups.  The Outsource Group handles collection for all types of businesses, even though its main focus has been to aid medical professionals collect past-due accounts, file insurance claims and do follow up on insurance claims.

"There's an old saying, 'do what you do best and forget the rest,'" George Ousley, chief executive officer of The Outsource Group, said.  "We focus on collecting money for people, billing insurance companies and insurance follow up.  Our focus is 100 percent for getting the money collected for our clients."

Ousley estimated The Outsource Group will do $100 million in business this year, which equals recovered revenue for its clients.

Trying to collect past-due accounts can be a time-consuming and frustrating experience, especially for the small business owner who already has enough details to consider each day.  Using an outside company saves time, eliminates the headaches associated with the process and eliminates the need to hire a person to collect revenues.

There are no up-front costs.  A percentage of the amount recovered is paid to The Outsource Group for this service, but it only receives payment after it has successfully collected  funds for the client.

The fee percentage charged is dependent on the type of service needed and the age of the account in question.  Older accounts are less collectible.  Therefore, the percentage charged is more than those charged on younger accounts.

Ousley said that if a business opts to recruit an employee to do collections for the company, the business can expect to incur costs in training, salary, taxes and benefits, not to mention employee turnover.

"The main benefit is we don't get paid until we collect money for our clients," Ousley said.  "The business owner doesn't have to worry about employee turnover. We've been here for 25 years and we're not going anywhere."