Introduction
For highly regulated industries like finance, healthcare, and legal, every action must comply with strict regulatory standards. Whether it is how client data is used or how tasks are recorded, compliance is not relevant, but compulsory. This is why outsourcing often feels risky. However, if you go about this right, contracted-out services can potentially leave you with less compliance to deal with.
The trick is knowing when to outsource, whom to trust, or how anyone can work with external teams and remain in control.
Why It Makes Sense for Regulated Sectors to Contract Out Services?
Contracted Out Services in these industries don’t mean cutting costs; instead, it keeps you efficient and on point, rather than burdening internal staff unnecessarily.
Common outsourced tasks include:
- Healthcare: Medical billing, insurance claims, transcriptions.
- Legal: research in case law, e-discovery, and legal documents formatting.
- Finance: Accounting, Tax Preparation, Payroll, KYC/AML Documents.
These services keep operations running, allowing in-house staff to focus on strategic tasks.
What Not to Outsource
You have some more sensitive or client-interfacing responsibilities that are just not something you want to hand off. Some tasks should be done in-house:
- Direct-to-patient communication, or diagnostics.
- Controlled, attorney-client, or legal counsel discussions.
- Financial portfolio decisions or investment advice.
What Should You Be Looking For in a Compliance-Centric Vendor
Not all vendors are ready to work on regulated tasks. Vet thoroughly and look for:
- Experience in your industry.
- Knowledge of certain compliance regulations (HITECH, GDPR, FINRA).
- DLP and data handling/GitHub/git-lfs protocols.
- Audit-ready documentation and reporting.
- Clear SLAs with compliance built into them.
Demand for certifications, and walk through their onboarding and quality assurance processes.
Maintain Control When Contracted Out Services
An external task, of course, does not mean that it’s out of your hands. The Gainsight marketing services team is there to support your implementation process with best practices, but with the right safeguards in place, you can maintain control over quality, security, and compliance.
Best practices for oversight:
- Leveraging secure cloud platforms with proper permission controls.
- Have scheduled checkpoints budgeted in for outsourceable deliverables
- Keep internal compliance staff in the loop with all communication
- Ask for Audits or Requests-for-Dashboards regularly
Where outsourcing is considered a shortcut, like in regulated industries. If you can find the right vendor and get through the contracting process, contracted-out services offer a way to stay CMS/HIPAA compliant and scale up while keeping your team focused on their strengths.
It is not about outsourcing responsibility; it is about outsourcing execution, while maintaining ownership where it should be.
Where Outsourcing Does Work?
Not all business functions are the same in terms of compliance (e.g., healthcare, legal, and finance). Certain tasks make perfect sense for this, of course. Others, if tossed off the wrong way, can land your business in hot water.
The more process-driven, repeatable, and not strategically judgmental or needing to be the one that touches a client decision (calls, etc): this is where we outsource.
Read on for a more in-depth look into what works and what should remain in-house:
1. Healthcare
Providers are overwhelmed with paperwork. Most of these tasks, which we all need, do not need a doctor’s touch. That’s where outsourcing makes sense.
Tasks commonly contracted out:
- Processing medical billing and coding for insurance reimbursements.
- Revenue Cycle Management and Claims Processing.
- Transcription of physician notes.
- Follow-up calls to schedule or remind.
- EHR (Electronic Health Records) systems IT support.
Tasks that should remain in-house:
- Direct-to-patient care or treatment discussion (real-time).
- Clinical decision-making and diagnostics.
- Any legislation affecting medical liability.
Making matters more complicated is that all of these functions require adherence to HIPAA and other data security laws, so anyone handling patient data must be seasoned and have the necessary certifications.
2. Legal
Firms are often overloaded, and not all of it requires an attorney with a law license. However, Contracted Out Services’ routine legal processes are a viable option for firms to save time, cost without compromising the legal integrity.
Tasks suitable for outsourcing:
- Legal research and citation checking.
- Document review during discovery.
- Drafting or formatting agreements and legal documents.
- Filing a dispute and preparation of court documents.
Tasks best kept internal:
- Strategic legal planning.
- Attorney-client communications.
- High-stakes litigation work.
Those vendors in this space need to have a strong grasp of confidentiality obligations, NDAs, and the ethical lines between support and legal representation.
3. Finance
This could take the pressure off in financial services, and especially during peak reporting or tax seasons of transactional tasks.
Commonly outsourced functions:
- Bookkeeping and monthly reconciliations
- Payroll tax filing and payroll processing
- KYC/AML document collection and verification
Back Office support to assist with checking the paperwork for your compliance checks.
Keep these internal:
- Financial Advising (with no license & client-facing)
- Investment Strategy or Portfolio Management
- Advanced Financial Forecasting and Risk Planning
There are several compliance standards: FINRA, SEC regulations, and GDPR if you operate internationally, for example, the vendor needs to be conversant in these.
Meaningful Contracted Out Services in a highly-regulated industry is not about letting go of control; it’s about intelligently selecting what can be done more effectively elsewhere while preserving the trust and compliance that your clients require of you.
What Features Matter in a Compliance-Ready Service Provider?
In the world of big data, a highly regulated environment and demanding clients, an ideal technology outsourcing vendor is not one that ensures speed or a better deal but one that follows with trust, precision & accountability. Regulated sectors like finance, healthcare, or legal may not enjoy this level of vendor rapport.
Compliance is part of the outsourced services type of work, but only if the vendor has a compliance-first approach and experience with the industry. Choosing a vendor is not only the exercise of purchasing; it is also a risk control.
What to Look for in a Compliance-Ready Outsourcing Partner:
1. Industry Experience
Pick vendors that have orchestrated orders for businesses akin to your own, and not only in size or scale, but moreover along the consumer lines. You do not have to teach a new hire in the IQ Corefinity app what HIPAA, FINRA, or GDPR are and why they matter before you can tackle your tasks.
- Seek industry-specific client references or relevant case studies.
- Determine whether they have any experience with processes that are similar to what you are seeking from them.
2. Knowledge of Specific Compliance Standards
Do not expect every provider to know your regulations. From day one, whether that involves those who will be handling your patient records, your financial disclosures, or even the confidentiality of your clients, your partner has to operate within those guidelines.
- Look for internal compliance officers or certifications like ISO 27001, SOC 2, or HIPAA training.
- Pay close attention to how they keep up with regulatory changes and request all the documentation.
3. Strong Data Security Infrastructure
Data privacy is non-negotiable. Not just vague assurances from a vendor that has well-defined security protocols in place!
- Zero-knowledge file transfer with end-to-end encryption.
- Role-based access controls.
Storage solutions that are secure and compliant ( this one is particularly important for cloud workflows)
4. Detailed Service Level Agreements
A good SLA should clearly define what is expected, including turnaround minutes, error rates, deliverables, and compliance requirements.
- Define compliance clauses clearly.
- SLAs must also explain what kind of audits will be conducted and provide for liability in the event of a violation.
5. Transparent Reporting and Audit Support
You need to know everything that your outsourced partner is doing
- Do they have access logs or performance reports?
- Are they supporting internal audits and self-reviews?
6. Dedicated Support and Account Ownership
Steer clear of resources that treat you as a ticket. Seek out teams that provide you with a dedicated account manager who knows your operation, workflows, and compliance focus.
- Direct escalation point for immediate resolution or escalations as needed.
- Inquire about the onboarding process, training, and communication flow.
The level of legislative compliance readiness is an essential part of the equation, but not all there is to it. With a strong base, outsourcing is not the final solution in itself, but it serves as a boon to your in-house team.
Ask if you want to see this as a checklist or a vendor evaluation template!
How to Stay in Control While Outsourcing Without Losing Control?
This is particularly relevant in a compliance-heavy industry, as outsourcing a business process will never mean surrendering control. What we are talking about is moving around who does the work, not how it is governed. However, your internal processes, governance, and audit on the team can still create all-through-the-board compliance, on-brand compliance with reduced stress.
Ready or not, the organizations that thrive with outsourced services are those that set solid, clear processes upfront. More than passing along tasks, you delegate tasks, creating a structure to maintain the alignment of your team.
If you want to keep outsourcing but still be in control and clear, this is what you can do.
1. Set Up Internal Review Protocols
The work done by other members of your team should be reviewed, even if someone else is creating the output for you, to ensure it aligns with what has been scoped by consultants, especially in the first few months.
- Designate one team member to test and audit deliverables.
- Perform periodic spot checks and quality reviews.
- Ensure feedback loops are fast and clear to allow course correction in real-time.
2. Use Secure, Centralized Systems
Prevent External Teams from Working in Isolation. Instead, integrate them into your ecosystem with cloud-based tools that offer visibility and control around data privacy.
- Use platforms like Google Workspace, Microsoft Teams, or role-based access to industry-specific software.
- Create Shared Dashboards or Project Tracking Tools (Asana, Trello, ClickUp).
- Never give up complete control to third-party users at the admin level.
3. Implement Regular Performance Reporting
Visibility builds trust. Hold vendors accountable by asking for regular performance reports with both a set of performance metrics and any red flags.
- Task status, turnaround times, compliance checks, and error rates should form part of reports.
- Where possible, establish such reports to occur automatically weekly in any of your extant systems.
- Maintain performance appraisals to ensure they are available for re-audits or inspections later on.
4. Train Internal Teams for Vendor Collaboration
You should have an internal team that knows how to work with an external team; they do not disappear after handover.
- Deliver briefings on communication tools, handover protocols, and points of escalation.
- Ask your employees to consider vendors as part of the extended team, not outsiders.
5. Assign One Point of Contact
An internal owner is the heart and soul of any successful outsourcing relationship. What this does is it correlates the two so that there’s alignment in what we are doing to make sure that there aren’t big issues that are bugs down the line.
- Operational competence and people skills should be present in the chosen personnel.
- And ensure that this person is an effective decision maker and can work well with a cross-functional group of department heads.
Structure, clarity, and visibility consolidate control; micromanagement does not. When the proper systems are installed, Contracted Out Services are less of a leap of faith into a strategic expansion of your enterprise.
Conclusion
For certain industries, such as healthcare, finance, or law, the mere idea of Contracted Out Services was enough to induce panic. It used to be, but with more intelligent systems and experienced vendors, contracting out services is no longer a gamble; it is an essential competitive advantage. Managed strategically, they can be used to scale, alleviate internal stress, and keep you focused on the core business, all within what is possible without falling foul of compliance issues.
The secret is not to have it all done for you. What it does is know what you should keep inside and what you can leave out there without losing your quality. In addition to task execution, they offer accountability, security, and assistance that adheres to the requirements of your industry.
Pro Tip: Outsourcing is simply outsourcing. It does not mean surrendering the reins. That involves creating robust walls and aligning with partners who are verticalized in your field up to these steps.
If your team is overworked and the compliance responsibilities are not going away, outsourcing may be a solution that makes sense. And not as a shortcut, but rather to maintain your operations being the sharpest, focused, and latest interpretation of regulatory demands.
Reach out to Tasks Expert for professional help with Contracted Out Services.
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About Author
Gary Katz
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