Nearshoring: How it works in practice

Nearshoring: How it works in practice

Outsourcing financial processes means transferring responsibility for critical tasks to an external provider. Nearshoring is one of the choices you make when deciding where that provider operates from — and that choice has greater practical significance than many realise.

Unlike offshoring processes to a low-cost country far away — with large time zone differences, cultural barriers, and communication challenges — nearshoring means delivery from a nearby country with a similar working culture, overlapping working hours, and easy access to dialogue. For Nordic companies, Lithuania and Poland have become preferred nearshoring locations. Not because they are the cheapest, but because the combination of expertise, capacity, and proximity actually works in practice.

Proximity is more than geography

What makes nearshoring a good choice for finance functions is not just cost. It is that you can actually collaborate. Shared working hours mean that an urgent request at 9:00 on a Monday morning does not end up in a queue that won’t be opened until ten hours later. Cultural proximity means communication is direct and precise, without intermediaries interpreting and translating. And geographical proximity means that a meeting, a visit, or a joint review is achievable without logistics that make it impractical.

For ECIT NORIAN, the Vilnius team has been built with exactly this in mind: Norwegian-speaking resources at every level, industry experience from Nordic clients, and a delivery setup dimensioned for high volumes and tight deadlines.

One team — all of the Nordics

One of the most underrated advantages of a nearshore model is the scaling opportunities it offers across countries.

Companies operating in multiple Nordic markets — or across Northern Europe more broadly — avoid having to set up separate supplier relationships, different systems, and parallel processes in each market. With one delivery setup in Vilnius, the same team can handle accounting processes for multiple countries and entities, with access to broad expertise on local requirements, currencies, and reporting structures.

This delivers not just efficiency, but consistency — the same standards, the same control routines, and the same reporting logic across legal entities. For a CFO with responsibility across multiple markets, that is a significant simplification.

Lina Maroscikiene, Country Head Vilnius ECIT NORIAN

Capacity that does not grind to a halt

Another critical point is capacity during peaks and absences. Many companies find that the biggest risk with outsourcing is not day-to-day operations — it is what happens when two key people are off sick at the same time, or when period-end closing falls in the middle of the summer holidays.

In Vilnius, the delivery setup is dimensioned for peaks, not averages. For every critical process, at least two people are able to perform the task. Planned training, job rotation, and documented procedure descriptions ensure that knowledge does not sit with a single individual — and that a new resource can take over without any drop in pace or quality.

This is supported by a broad professional environment with deep expertise across the most widely used ERP platforms in the Nordics — including SAP, Xledger, Microsoft, Visma, and others — so that delivery adapts to the system the client already uses, not the other way around. The combined capacity and breadth of expertise is difficult to build internally or with a small local provider.

How exceptions are handled — in practice

It is in exception situations that the difference between a well-functioning nearshore delivery and one that merely looks good on paper becomes clear.

For inbound invoice processes, this means monitoring the interface between invoice reading and the system, swift handling of import errors, and systematic analysis through an incident tracker tool — not to solve the problem once, but to prevent it from recurring. For accruals and provisions, it means monthly reposting and reconciliation in a standardised format, with checks to ensure provisions are correctly reversed in the following period.

Fixed asset maintenance follows the same logic: a clear capitalisation threshold, periodic monitoring of interim accounts, and monthly reconciliation — supplemented by an annual confirmation from operating units that capitalised assets are still in use.

It is structure and documentation that makes a nearshore delivery predictable over time. Not good intentions.

The response structure that makes outsourcing transparent

When processes are moved outside your own organisation, the structure around communication and follow-up becomes critical. Requests are prioritised by severity and handled through agreed, defined channels — for example, a ticketing system or shared inbox for all processes, Teams for quick clarifications, and phone for urgent matters. Critical process stoppages or deadlines at risk are escalated and responded to within agreed timeframes based on the client’s priorities. Predefined and standardised — enabling efficient collaboration.

All cases are logged for full traceability. Monthly service meetings review KPIs, exceptions, and action plans. Quarterly meetings address efficiency improvements, automation, and forward priorities. It is not up to the client to chase for status updates.

Automation that is maintained

Automation is a means, not an end in itself. RPA and scripts are used for invoice handling, VAT reconciliation, and clearing of interim accounts. Automated alerts handle exceptions and missing documentation from operating units. All implemented solutions are documented and included in a monitoring and change control regime — so that the effect is maintained over time, not just at the point of implementation.

A high degree of automation is not a figure that maintains itself. It requires ongoing monitoring of the assumptions underlying the process and the system.

Nearshoring that works goes unnoticed

The best proof that a nearshore delivery is working is that it goes unnoticed in everyday operations.

The finance department operates with the same availability and response times as if the team were sitting in the same building. Deadlines are met. Exceptions are caught and closed. And when the business expands into new Nordic markets, the delivery scales with it — without building new infrastructure from scratch.

That is what a well-functioning nearshore team delivers: stable, predictable, and auditable operations — day after day, market after market.

Curious about nearshoring?

Want to know more about how ECIT NORIAN organises nearshore delivery for Nordic companies?

Get in touch — we will show you concretely what it means for your organisation.