2008 Year-In-Review & 2009 Executive Predictions

If anyone ever needed more proof of the dynamic world in which we live, 2008 has been perhaps one of the best examples in decades. With hurricanes, a tumultuous financial market and an historic election, we’ve gotten more than our share of change lately.

In addition to these notable, perhaps seismic, social events, the year 2008 has also provided us with notable events in technologies that hold the promise of reshaping workflow practices in professional tax and accounting firms. While most of these new innovations have been under development for years, the widespread adaptation of them in the profession shows that tax professionals and accountants aren’t as curmudgeonly regarding technological advance as many observers suggest.

The most notable of these new technologies are part of the larger movement toward greater efficiency in the public practice, with “workflow optimization” being the key defining phrase. In this arena, we’ve seen the near universal addition of scan-and-fill and scan-and-populate technology to professional tax preparation systems. These utilities take much of the manual data entry out of tax preparation by automatically detecting forms and using optical character recognition (OCR) technology to extract data, which is then routed to worksheets or the actual form in the professional’s compliance system. These programs were also accompanied by more robust workpaper automation systems that help to reduce the tedious work involved in organizing and bookmarking client documents.

The next step in the process, then, was implementing data management systems that offered intelligent control over data in a manner that promoted integration with the other programs a firm uses to service clients. As such, document management systems also continued to grow in professional use, with expanded capabilities far more advanced than systems that simply store documents.

But as professional practices continue to adopt these paperless technologies and evolve into truly digital environments, major changes to workflow processes are necessary in order to provide senior staff with productivity management and the ability to ensure practice efficiency. In a digital office, old methods of managing engagements are no longer applicable; the way review functions are processed is inherently different; management functions have changed. In short, the paperless revolution has brought new challenges and new opportunities to further increase productivity and enhance efficiency.

As Executive Editor Gregory L. LaFollette, CPA.CITP, noted regarding our annual Tax and Accounting Technology Innovation Awards, “The movement toward the paperless accounting and tax practice, which professionals have been undertaking for nearly a decade, is well on its way to completion. The next step in the continuing evolution of the professional digital environment is rethinking workflow processes to maximize productivity, and each of the products selected for awards this year approaches various workflow processes with the goal of streamlining tasks and management functions.”