Your Firm Grew. Did Your Processes Grow With it?
Growth can expose cracks fast.
As accounting firms expand through mergers, acquisitions and organic growth, they often bring together different systems, workflows, terminology and expectations. What worked well in one office may not translate cleanly across ten, twenty or thirty.
At some point, those differences stop being harmless variations and start slowing the firm down.
That was the challenge Sorren faced as it brought 30 offices together into one national accounting and advisory firm.
See Sorren's Results
Growth creates complexity
Sorren had strong people and established practices across its legacy firms, but those practices were not always consistent.
The firm worked with Boomer Consulting to create more alignment across roles, responsibilities, terminology, workflows and scheduling practices. The goal was not to make every office identical. It was to create enough consistency that teams could work together more effectively across the organization.
And the impact was tangible.
In some offices, scheduling meetings that once took up to two hours were reduced to roughly 15 minutes. That is not just a shorter meeting. It is capacity returned to the firm.
“One of the beautiful outcomes is that leaders just showed up. People who were involved in the process improvement effort stepped up and continued to excel in those roles.” Ryan Gregory CPA, CEO of Sorren CPAs, P.C. and National Assurance Managing Partner of Sorren, Inc
Standardization makes scale possible
Consistent processes make it easier to:
Shift work across teams and offices
Match tasks with the right people
Improve workload visibility
Reduce unnecessary coordination
Create clearer expectations
Free leaders to focus on strategy
For firms growing quickly, that kind of alignment becomes increasingly important.
One of Sorren’s biggest lessons was that even shared terminology needed to be defined. Legacy firms sometimes used the same words to mean different things. Creating a common language helped teams collaborate more effectively and laid the groundwork for broader process improvement.
The process is only part of the work
New workflows do not create change on their own.
Sorren also focused on helping people understand why the changes mattered and identifying internal champions who could reinforce new practices and support adoption. That ownership helped turn process improvement from a one-time project into an ongoing discipline.
It also surfaced new leaders throughout the organization — people who were willing to step forward, take ownership and continue improving how the firm worked.
Better processes create room for growth
Sorren estimates it achieved roughly 80% of its targeted improvements during the first year. But the work is not finished. And that may be the most important takeaway.
Process improvement is not about creating the perfect workflow once. It is about continually asking whether the way your firm works still supports where it is going.
As firms add people, technology, services and offices, their processes have to evolve with them. Because sustainable growth is not simply about getting bigger. It is about building a firm that can operate effectively when it does.
See how Sorren aligned processes across 30 offices and created a stronger foundation for growth in the full Sorren Success Story.
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