Case studies
CHK is building the future of accounting with Uku
CHK is building the future of accounting with Uku
Published
•
CH Konsultatsioonid OÜ (CHK)
international accounting services, business and tax consulting and business analysis
Employees
60
Using Uku for:
- Task management
- Time tracking
- CRM
- Monitoring
Problem
Organizing the work and management of a fast-growing company
Solution
Uku fits in CHK’s toolbox and can be used to map and automate exactly the processes they need
Value
- With Uku, you can build exactly the systems you need – from work instructions to onboarding customers.
- You can’t manage bigger workloads on spreadsheets and trust. Uku gives completely new information for management – this has improved decision quality and made work easier.
- CHK is still tuning their system and recommends introducing Uku as early as possible in the company lifecycle – this way the system will grow and develop with the company.
Thanks to Uku, decisions have become better and work easier – the tasks are the same, but we’re doing them more and more systematically and better. This is the future of accounting!
Christer Haimi,
CEO
CH Konsultatsioonid OÜ (CHK) is an accounting services, business and tax consulting and business analysis company operating in the Estonian, Lithuanian, Finnish and Swedish markets.
Uku caught their eye and the team approached its implementation very systematically. First, the accountants mapped all the tasks performed for the clients. Then they used this information to create repetitive task plans in Uku. Further, some of the more tech savvy employees in each branch started as pilot users to support other employees later on.
Business consulting is the future of accounting
Today, CHK’s turnover yearly growth is the same size as one average accounting firm’s turnover and it has more than doubled its staff in just a few years. Growth comes mainly from the international market and more complex customers. As a new field, CHK now also offers business analytics service.
"Business analytics makes numbers speak and helps to visualize the company's processes – both for our customers and for us as well.
This is consultancy-based accounting, to which the whole sector is actually shifting. We support companies in increasingly complex transactions and more broadly in making their management decisions,” explains Christer.
CHK has taken on the challenge of developing its own accounting software. In doing so, CHK hopes to address at least half of its organizational concerns, such as cross-border declarations, standardization and harmonization of services, money laundering control and quality control. A year ago, MVP (minimum viable product) was completed, and this year most customers were transferred to CHK software.
A well-rounded system is the foundation of fast growth
When asked if the new software should replace Uku, Christer smiles that the software should rather play together nicely. Each tool has a specific function and they all must form a whole. CHK’s growth is based on a well-thought-out and well-established system that they never stop polishing. Christer jokingly compares their level of proficiency to an F1 changing team.
Uku has evolved over time and, according to Christer, the user’s only limit is their imagination. This is how the future of accounting is built.
With additional fields, it’s possible to build exactly the systems you need.
“We try to make the most of Uku, for example, as a customer management CRM. We keep customer information, work instructions for larger customers, descriptions of customer-specific activities, etc. in one place. We have our own processes in place and we are constantly improving them so that everyone has the information they need at all times – team leaders, leave replacements and anyone else needing them at the moment,” describes Christer.
CHK also has job process descriptions in Uku, such as customer onboarding and offboarding.
10-15 new customers join them each month and in a large office it involves 4-5 people – coordinating that is a challenge. “We want each and every customer to feel welcome and make joining us nice for them. Towards this goal, the work starts right from the sales process,” explains Christer.
They mapped out the onboarding process on a brainstorming session. Then a corresponding sequence of tasks was compiled in Uku, where every step is precisely set, what someone is doing and when, e.g. who is in charge of contracts, money laundering documentation, software setup, etc.
It’s convenient to manage it in Uku, because when one person does their part, the next task moves to the respective person.
After 90 days, they ask each customer for feedback on the onboarding, and for the most part it has been very positive – it shows that they are on the right track. Customer offboarding is arranged in a similar way to make leaving also a pleasant experience.
Uku is the manager’s eyes
Christer says that before Uku, work was based on the trust that employees would complete their tasks. Now that they have more than 800 customers and more than 5,000 tasks each month, it would no longer work:” The company has contractual obligations, each of which must be fulfilled in any case.”
He describes that in Uku, all the tasks are in one place, and as a result, a clear system and understanding emerged for work management: “When the tasks are somewhere in spreadsheets, you actually run the company blindly. Uku creates new information in management.
We understand how much time is spent on customers, the billing became more accurate, and to be honest, it directly helped to increase revenue.
Thanks to Uku, decisions have become better and work easier – the tasks are the same, but we’re doing them more and more systematically and better.”
Finally, Christer suggests that it’s worth introducing Uku in as early as possible in the company lifecycle: “In a one-man-company or even with a few people you can manage without a task management software, but even then the software makes life a lot easier. The later it’s introduced, the more effort it takes. We were already a considerably large company when we started using Uku, and setting up the systems and harmonizing the habits of our employees was quite an undertaking. Now when a new accountant comes on board, they don’t even know life without Uku.”
“However, if the system is introduced from scratch, it will grow and develop with the company. It’s definitely not worth overthinking and making life difficult.
You don’t need to get everything right right away, because experience and needs arise from the work itself.
Our own system is still growing and evolving 4 years later,” encourages Christer.
