Tuesday, July 17, 2012

The Mother of Invention

The first (well, second) question that came to mind after the Supreme Court upheld the 2,700-page colossus known as ObamaCare was how and when the accounting profession would react to the ruling.

No doubt there are hundreds of firms out there whose clients will inevitably be impacted by the High Court’s decision and will quickly turn to their financial and legal professionals for guidance not to mention a lot of hand-holding.

Although the price tag for ObamaCare is now approaching $1.6 trillion (depending on which report you read), the irony of this exorbitantly expensive legislation is that it stands to open up scores of niche opportunities for proactive CPA firms.

Recently, high profile turnaround firm Alvarez & Marsal hired the former head of Global Healthcare for Bank of America Merrill Lynch to help usher the firm and its clients through the pending changes in the healthcare landscape.

Closer to home, Top 100 Firm Eide Bailly has debuted a new Employer Health Reform Analytics Service in an effort to help its business clients respond to ObamaCare.

According to the firm, the new client service was created to help owners make “informed decisions” on whether to provide insurance to their employees or pay the penalties and send their workers to local regional or federal health insurance exchanges.

And I sincerely doubt that Eide Bailly will be the only firm that embraces the time-honored mantra of necessity being the mother of invention with regard to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act – ObamaCare’s official moniker.

But that speaks to one of the evolving trends in public accounting, that of specialization and niche building.

Rather than perform 10 or more services competently, scores of CPA practices are recognizing the market value in offering, say, five client niches serviced excellently. For the past several years, I’ve both heard and given presentations about the importance of establishing niche practices to complement the traditional service twins of tax and audit. Not only does carving out a unique niche position a firm as the market expert, it may go a long way toward winning engagements over the competition, not to mention helping the bottom line.

If you build it they will come. If you don’t, your competition surely will.

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