The Universal Group are actively seeking Notary, Solicitors and Accountant partners in many jurisdictions around the world to meet the needs of our existing partners.

Why join the Universal International Partner Program?

The legal services and accounting industry has been starting to feel the impact of outsourcing and centralisation for some time. As has been the case with many industries, clients have a strong need to drive greater efficiency and performance. In legal and accounting terms this has been strongly evidenced by growing centralisation of many tasks and a general drive by customers to reduce the number of vendors that they do business with. The inevitable result is that it is becoming harder for a company operating in a single or limited number of countries to retain multinational clients.

Companies based in a single country are also highly focussed on reducing costs and also look to outsource and consolidate vendor relationships. If one partner can be found to support the work of 3 existing relationships then savings can be very significant. Never has it been more important to ensure that the full range of services your client requires is being addressed within your service portfolio.

The Universal Group have a solution for local companies who wish to avoid customer attrition due to outsourcing and offer a multi faceted approach to enable our clients to achieve more than they can as a local or even a regional company working in isolation.

• Close the open door to competition
• Increase existing client revenue
• Increase client value perception
• Engage new clients and opportunity

The Universal International Partner Portfolio – We are stronger when we work together.

Understanding why a client is going to outsource legal or accounting services:

Many of us are aware of the recent economic challenges experienced in many countries around the world, but the motivation to centralise and outsource were already well understood by businesses significantly prior to this. Recent worldwide economic conditions have accelerated the process beyond the initial areas within which many businesses initially marked as potentially viable for outsourcing.

The huge increase in outsourcing was largely driven by the technology boom and begun to gain serious momentum in early 2001. Initially this was often driven by companies in the I.T and Customer Service industry who, after achieving what appeared to be easy savings for an initial project acquired a taste for outsourcing. Companies then began to review their businesses with an eye for savings and without the traditional need for in house control which they may have had in previous decades. This trend has continued to proceed through departments and across a wide range of customers in a wide variety of industries. In 2009 and 2010 we have started to see the results of the specific recruitment and training programs relating to an expansion of outsourcing to include legal services. Outsourcing companies now have legal services capabilities with human resources trained specifically in the UK, France, Germany, Brussels and Switzerland among others.

Many local practises and partnerships have great relationships at the local level with their clients, however in many cases the reasons for change are so compelling in the way that they are presented to a client that the perceived benefit will outweigh local concerns or even strong local vendor relationships. The ever present need to reduce the number of vendors and achieve maximum value with a smaller number of high value relationships is leading companies to make some tough but often in financial terms, very straight forward decisions.

An outsourcing partner should ideally, be able to provide cost effective access to a range of skills and services and do so in a way that is flexible and as comprehensive as possible. As a client solution this becomes incredibly compelling in the case of specialist legal services and even more so as part of a combined package. Lower cost, improved service and priority access to expert and flexible resources within a known and easily understood framework with a single point of accountability. It is not hard to see why in a recent survey over 80% of businesses had already outsourced or were actively investigating the opportunity to outsource. However, outsourcing has now evolved with companies now recognising the opportunity to complement their in house expertise, not only in terms of high volume repetitive activity but also by engaging high value or “niche” expertise which may not be 100% utilised in house due to seasonality and/or changes in their own market.

How will the Universal Group support my businesses?

The Universal Group can help you survive and thrive, turning challenge into opportunity and making your business the keystone of any clients outsourcing strategy. The international business partner program is about giving our select partners the opportunity to fulfil local services as part of a global solution and offers our legal services partners a set of services and capabilities which are both international and complementary to the capabilities that you have available today within your own organisation.

We believe in the adage “together we are stronger”. In terms of the change in business model being driven by customer demand in our sector this has never been so true. Our activities are all designed to address how we come together and do it in a way that benefits our partners and their clients to maintain a mutually profitable and effective relationship achieving all the clients outsourcing and business wide objectives. We are legal professionals, Company Secretaries, Translators and experienced Outsourcing Consultants with a proven history of managing vendors and client relationships and developing robust business processes enabling efficient client service delivery.

Please contact us to help us understand how we can benefit you and the services and let us know about the capabilities you have today which could be useful to our business partners and clients around the world. Its free to enroll and there are no hidden costs of any kind involved in joining.

Enter the world of intelligent outsourcing, talk to Nina or Simon at The Universal Group on:

UK +44 203 287 7663 or email: [email protected]