Without a standard way of doing things, there’s no baseline to use when you want to measure how your team is using their time. There’s simply no way of knowing if they’re being as productive as possible or if they’re reinventing the wheel each time they complete common tasks.

And if you can’t measure, then you can’t improve.

It might be as simple as decreasing the time spent collecting client information during onboarding, or it might be as complex as reducing the entire time spent onboarding them altogether.

Either way, if each of your employees are performing these tasks in different ways with different tools, there’s no way of understanding how overall efficient and productive they’re being.

Leverage standardization to measure productivity

On the other hand, if your processes are standardized, over time, you can paint a picture of how well your staff are performing. You’ll gain insights into bottlenecks and roadblocks and what is causing them.

From there, you have a baseline to measure process improvements against. You might try to reduce friction during your weekly payroll process by introducing a new tool, or by reordering some of the key tasks. Whatever the change is, you can now measure how effective it is against your baseline.

And if your trials fail, you can always revert to your original standard way of performing the process and try another tactic.

Standardize first, then measure, then improve

You can only increase your accounting firm’s productivity and efficiency if you can understand your current situation. And that understanding is difficult to capture in a team that performs tasks in different ways, at different times, and with different tools.

If each of your team members are using different methods to perform the same tasks, you’re running an unwinnable race.

1. Standardize your process: get everyone walking to the same beat