The accounting profession will never resemble an automotive production line, perhaps for no other reason than we don’t look good in steel-toed boots.
We’ll never be widget producers and, from my viewpoint, that’s a good thing. However, our position among the professional class shouldn’t blind us to the benefits of standardizing many of the services we offer.
Anyone who has been an accountant for any length of time has certainly seen enough to eliminate the need to reinvent the wheel every time they start a new engagement. An entire firm has even more institutional knowledge to draw from. By capturing this institutional knowledge, you can come up with reliable and repeatable recipes for different services and deliverables. This is standardization, and it makes your service offerings more efficient, cheaper, consistent and predictable – all good business practices. You’ll be able to predict with better accuracy the time frames required for new projects and you’ll be able to scope out exactly what will be required to bring the project to a successful conclusion.
