Special Care

In one of the classic episodes of the 1950s comedy “The Honeymooners,” Ed Norton bemoans to Ralph Kramden about getting how he got fired from his job in the sewer following a failed demand for a raise from his boss. When Ralph asks why he doesn’t get a job with another sewer company, Ed responds indignantly that “Sewer workers are like brain surgeons — we’re both specialists!”

Despite the light-hearted take on specialization, the T-shirt-wearing Norton unknowingly touched upon one of the current and sure-to-be future trends in the accounting profession — that of firms veering into specialty niches in lieu of vying to be a client’s “most trusted Costco” in terms of a number of offerings.

With increasing frequency, firms (at least those with the capacity and resources to do so) have been carving out specialty niches, particularly those that are underserved or are in their infancy in terms of client need and demand.

Case in point: regional CPA and business advisor firm Marcum just this week launched a new Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender and Non-Traditional Family Practice Group, to help LGBT and non-traditional individuals and families navigate changing tax and financial laws. Now, I’ve been involved with the accounting profession in one way or another for more than 12 years and I can assure you there weren’t a whole lot of firms I knew serving that practice area when I began.

And yet over the years, I’ve noticed that a number of firms whose websites at times had a client services listing longer than the voter rolls in Orange County have been scaling back to carve out a particular specialty niche or niches as the case may be. A firm I spoke with recently, for example, decided to concentrate its practice in the bio-medical field, while another opted to specialize in real estate appraisal services.

Operating in a climate dominated by a still-uncertain economy and facing increased competition from above and below, proactive CPA firms have or are mining new niches in order to forge a point of market share distinction from the practice down the block.

They have gone about that in a number of ways, whether training existing partners in the desired field, “enticing” — ahem — an established partner with another firm to come aboard, or merging with another  practice with an established background in that client service.

Like it or not and ready or not, the age of specialization is upon us. Probably the last thing a managing partner wants to hear about his firm is that it’s nothing special.