With the rapid evolution in the workforce realized over the past 24 months, the economy of employment is destined to continue to evolve. As companies struggle to attract and retain talent and gig platforms like Fiverr and Upwork allowing more options to potential employees, one may wonder where the accounting profession will go.
With CFA-in-a-box solutions and the explosive expansion of Client Accounting Services (CAS) some of these new working models are already here. Further decentralization and commoditization of accounting and audit functions may create new and unprecedented freedom for accounting professionals. As process management and workflow automations tools continue to mature, we may see companies begin to outsource accounting functions not just to an accounting firm, but a flexible team of remote workings who are unaffiliated with an accounting firm. Individual accountings, from their home office or kitchen table, will be able to work through work item queues of granular items, predefined and with reference material to support and complete work incrementally. Accounting professionals will be able to set their cost and compete in a marketplace for work, provided and receive direct feedback (much like an Uber ride) and develop short- or long-term relationships at their discretion.
Crowdsourcing and Mechanical Turk solutions exist for a reason. Computers cannot automate the work to be done, yet the job at hand is discrete and well defined with clear criteria for success. Each task is done for a fixed cost and a pool of workers deliver the work. Quality control is an important part of testing the results and many novel solutions exist for accomplishing this.
This shift would work to the benefit of small and medium businesses as employers and many accounting professionals and CPAs. The business has lower total overhead costs for recruiting and providing real estate for workers while saving over all by only paying for capacity needed. They benefit from the marketplace dynamic of individual workers while maintaining integrity and proper indemnity. Workers, the accounting professionals and CPAs, benefit from tremendous flexibility and independence while being provided direct feedback on their professional performance. Contributors and Employers both could find the best fit through marketplace dynamics.
To realize this future, where small and medium companies engage in a free market, processes must be well defined and codified into process management tooling that is both easy to use and secure. Companies must endeavor to define their workflow, all the individual yet discrete work items needing attention with criteria for completion and manage a prioritized list of work items with clear deadlines, as well as a process to manage the completed work.
Jira, Asana, Trello or other general purpose accounting task management software tools are capable of this and leave accounting teams to manage their own security. Onboarding and offboarding team members to process tools and materials creates considerable operational overhead and lack of precision in removing credentials creates a massive security headache. How can companies simplify management of access to workflow and related documentation? A single integrated solution is the only way to realize the potential financial upside of this emerging market. Anything less and the effort to manage the new way of working offsets the savings of the new way of working.
If your internal accounting team is interested in being stronger than ever, working better in a hybrid work environment than ever before, talk to us about how Dash360 can make working together towards a shared outcome simple.