TietoAkseli, a financial management services provider, competes in an increasingly crowded industry by utilizing its strong expertise and excellent customer experience. As a growing company, it has decided to automate boring manual routines.
TietoAkseli has been modernizing its IT systems for years.
“We concluded that using automation to extend the life of our outdated systems wasn’t the best approach. Instead, we decided to first modernize our processes and systems as much as possible. Once that foundation was in place, it made more sense to build automation on top of it,” says Tero Anttila, COO of TietoAkseli.
The collaboration with Rajobit began in autumn 2021 after they reached out to TietoAkseli. It was quickly clear that Rajobit’s solution aligned well with TietoAkseli’s strategy. The timing was also right, and Rajobit proved to be a good fit as a partner, making it easy to launch a pilot project.
Rajobit’s pricing model also supported a smooth start. There was no need to invest time or money in learning a new automation platform — the benefits became visible quickly. TietoAkseli didn’t need to hire automation experts or acquire new technology. The automation functionality was delivered as a service by Rajobit. TietoAkseli’s role was simply to describe the business process they wanted automated.
TietoAkseli operates in 12 locations and employs about 300 finance professionals. Its group also offers auditing services, tax and corporate legal advice, and business restructuring.
“We leverage the expertise across our group companies to benefit our clients,” Anttila says.
Founded in 1991, TietoAkseli has grown to become one of the largest players in the industry with annual revenue of €20 million. Growth accelerated after private equity firm MB Funds acquired a majority stake in spring 2021.
In spring 2022, TietoAkseli expanded further through acquisitions in Southeast and Southwest Finland. The company aims to become one of the leading providers of financial and payroll services in Finland.
The first automation project focused on setting up new customers in the ERP system. Previously, this took about 30 minutes per customer for the support team. Now, automation handles the task independently, freeing up experts for more demanding work. The time savings are so significant that the solution paid for itself in just two months.
New automation initiatives are started as needed. The goal is to free up people from tasks that can be done more efficiently with automation.
“Improving productivity is essential to our business. As volumes grow, the payback period for automation gets even shorter. That allows us to automate even smaller tasks. We look for opportunities where automation saves the most time or offers other clear benefits,” says Anttila.
In addition to customer onboarding, automation now handles tasks like retrieving audit materials from cloud systems and saving them in a document management system. Another task is reconciling payroll reports from different systems.
These processes involve systems like ValueFrame, email, Excel, Netvisor, Procountor, and M-Files.
Each automation project starts by identifying the systems involved and ensuring access. Then, the task is broken down into detailed steps — such as opening files and launching programs — so that automation can be trained to do what people have done before.
The benefits of automation are visible in day-to-day operations.
“Support services work has become easier. When new clients arrive, we no longer need to handle repetitive and boring tasks. We just check the client’s details and launch the automation. It also eliminates human error,” says Joonas Lehmusjoki, TietoAkseli’s IT expert.
The cooperation with Rajobit has gone as expected.
Lehmusjoki, who was closely involved in the projects, also praises Rajobit’s knowledge.
“The work has been done thoroughly and everything has gone according to plan. The first process turned out to be more complex than we thought, but solutions were found quickly. Rajobit handles issues very efficiently,” Lehmusjoki says.