{{quote1}},
Enabling Innovation and Digitalization Projects
The Company
The consulting firm Futurice is dedicated to results-oriented digital transformation, helping organizations take control of their digital future. By combining strategy, design, technology, and data, Futurice creates the conditions for its clients to solve pressing challenges and make a measurable, sustainable impact on society. To achieve this, the team develops new digital business models and supports clients throughout their innovation and digitalization projects.
With Nordic roots—Futurice was founded in Finland in 2000—the company now has offices in Berlin, Munich, and Stuttgart, as well as Helsinki, Tampere, and Stockholm. The team consists of over 800 diverse design, technology, and strategy experts representing more than 60 nationalities. Global thinking is therefore inherent to Futurice.
Futurice and Circula share a long-standing, trusting partnership. Just as Futurice supports its clients, Circula assists Futurice in the digital transformation of its own business processes. The collaboration is defined by close cooperation: Circula works closely with Futurice to further develop its solutions, actively incorporating the company's requirements and feedback.
Streamlining Processes, Fostering Company Culture
The Motivation
Futurice works with clients to develop innovative, sustainable business models, digital products, and services, while rethinking the customer experience. As experts in digital transformation, they provide companies with the technology and data platforms needed to optimally position their businesses. Within its own organization, Futurice also prioritizes making processes as efficient and user-friendly as possible, continuously working to uphold this standard.
The collaboration with Circula began in 2019 when Futurice needed a modern solution for travel expense reporting to drive its digital transformation. Christian Ehrling, Director of Operations at Futurice, and his colleagues had identified significant optimization potential, as there was no unified platform for expense reporting. Instead, Futurice relied on Excel sheets and custom-built wizards that guided users through a rigid sequence of steps. Employees found this approach burdensome, as it was time-consuming and plagued by process and media discontinuities. Valuable time was lost that the team could have otherwise spent on client work. Furthermore, reporting was still paper-based and lacked any connection to the payroll system. The entire process failed to meet the standards Futurice would recommend to its own clients and urgently needed to be replaced.
Moving away from paper receipts toward fast, simple expense reporting—this was also what Futurice aimed to achieve for credit card expenses in 2022. The primary driver for seeking a new solution was the high level of dissatisfaction among employees at the three German locations regarding the existing process. Reporting was cumbersome and, much like the travel expense process before it, took far too much time for both those submitting receipts and those processing the reports.
Convenient travel and expense reporting are building blocks for an optimal work environment and contribute significantly to employee satisfaction. This is highly valued at Futurice: employees should enjoy coming to work, feel welcome and at home, and be part of a community. This is an elementary part of the company philosophy. Accordingly, Futurice considers team feedback when developing benefits. Both employees and applicants showed great interest in mobility benefits. For Jeanette Matheis, HR Specialist at Futurice, this was the deciding factor in seeking a solution that suited both users and the company while creating incentives for office attendance.
{{quote2}}
Easy-to-Use Tools and Integration into Existing Systems
The Challenge
To make their employees' work as easy as possible, Futurice wanted to implement a suitable digital end-to-end solution for the entire expense reporting process. Christian Ehrling had a clear vision: the goal was to complete previously time-consuming and burdensome expense reports in less than five minutes. To ensure the tool fit the working methods of a digitally savvy team, it needed to be available as a smartphone app. Another requirement was a guaranteed end-to-end workflow, specifically including integration with the DATEV payroll system and the ability to map German tax requirements.
However, it wasn't just the solution itself, but also the provider, that needed to be a good fit for a partnership with Futurice. The partner needed to have a start-up character, be similarly agile and lean, and offer local proximity to Futurice's Berlin office to best support the digital transformation of their processes.
In competition with large, established providers, the decision favored Circula. Their expense and outlay management tool offered the most convincing concept for meeting the requirements defined during the selection process for the German locations. The existing interface to DATEV, the intuitive operation, and the availability of the solution as an app for Android and iOS, as well as on the web, were key factors in Circula's favor. This also applied to the Circula team's dedicated commitment to finding and developing the best possible solution in partnership with their customers—an approach Futurice also pursues. The desired geographical proximity was also present: less than ten kilometers separate the two Berlin locations. These were ideal conditions for a sustainable partnership, which both sides still consider a valuable asset today.
When the decision for a new credit card solution was due in 2022, Christian Ehrling and his team included Circula in their selection process. They defined the following requirements: the submission of paper receipts had to be eliminated to achieve significant time savings and simplify the process. Furthermore, it was important that the management of employee-related expenses could be fully integrated into Futurice's workflow. As the only provider, partner company Circula offered a solution that met all of Futurice's requirements: the smart credit card, developed by Circula together with corporate credit card specialist Pliant, enables credit card reconciliation in the shortest possible time. Integration with DATEV significantly reduces manual work.
When searching for a suitable mobility offering for employees at the Berlin, Munich, and Stuttgart locations, HR Specialist Jeanette Matheis also included Circula in her selection due to their existing close collaboration. The requirement was for an offering that would make the commute to the office attractive, thereby contributing to a company culture that values exchange and community. The benefit needed to be tax-advantageous for employees and offer high flexibility regarding the modes of transport used. For Futurice, it was also important that the solution involved the lowest possible administrative effort for the HR department.
The frequently used job ticket proved unsuitable. The necessity of concluding separate framework agreements at all three German locations, fixed terms, and the restriction to public transport spoke against it. Instead, Circula's mobility offering was convincing and has been offered as a benefit since May 2022. It is available without a fixed term for anyone employed in the Berlin, Munich, and Stuttgart offices. Employees can conveniently use it via the existing Circula app and choose the mode of transport that best suits their needs, from bicycles to subways – for both professional and private use. Thanks to the tax advantage offered by the mobility package, it is an attractive benefit in addition to salary. The interface to the HR management software Personio, which Futurice uses, significantly reduces the administrative effort for the HR team, which is another crucial advantage. The costs of the solution were also lower than comparable offerings.
{{quote3}}
Successful Implementation Through Joint Commitment
The Implementation
When searching for an expense management tool, it was clear to Futurice that not only the solution but also the partner company itself needed to be a good fit – equally agile in its working methods and communicating on an equal footing. That Futurice had chosen the right partner in Circula became evident during the implementation phase in 2019. Thanks to close personal exchange, this process ran smoothly. Futurice employees actively used the opportunity to address their requirements for the solution and implement them together with Circula. From Christian Ehrling's perspective, the onboarding was successful not least because the size, dynamism, and working style of the two companies aligned well, and Futurice always felt its concerns were taken seriously.
The consistently positive experiences regarding the implementation and the performance of the Circula platform continued when Futurice expanded its collaboration in 2022, introducing both Circula's credit card solution and its mobility offering. Like Christian Ehrling, Jeannette Matheis, as the person responsible for benefits, evaluates the collaboration with Circula as very pleasant and effective. Whenever employees had questions during the introduction of the benefit, she could always rely on her contacts at Circula. Furthermore, optimization requests are addressed and promptly implemented even after the initial rollout.
{{quote4}}
Processes Automated, Time Saved, Employees Delighted
The Results
{{quote5}}
Processing expense receipts with paper and Excel spreadsheets is a thing of the past, and the time commitment for employees has significantly decreased. With the old, paper-based system, creating an expense report sometimes took more than 30 minutes per trip. Today, this only takes five minutes, and the time saved can now be used for working with customers. For Christian Ehrling, the greatest compliment from employees is that, after successful implementation, expense reporting is no longer a topic of conversation. This is the best proof that the desired simplification of work has succeeded and that the app is easy and intuitive to use. Employees submit between 100 and 150 receipts in total per month. The automated process, the connection to DATEV, and the ability to map German tax requirements significantly reduce the effort for office managers responsible for accounting and disbursements. They now only need to perform a preliminary check of the receipts.
The Circula credit card, which all 130 employees at the German locations possess, is also simple and time-saving to manage. Complaints about cumbersome processes are a thing of the past. Circula automatically generates expense reports for all payments made and automatically assigns the correct receipt from the archive. Since the introduction of the credit cards, Futurice has observed an 80% saving in time, costs, and effort. The third solution from Circula's portfolio, the mobility budget, is also extremely popular with employees. After the announcement of its introduction, they approached the HR department with many questions – a sign that a need was being met.
Futurice found the ideal partner in Circula to drive its digitalization process. What's more, the two companies now see themselves less as provider and client, and more as a team that not only collaborates but also grows together. Futurice views Circula as part of a larger digital transformation within its own company and therefore continues to play a significant role in the further development of Circula's technology. Futurice benefits from the continuous optimization of the solutions used, tailored to current needs. At the same time, Circula gains deep insights into customer wishes and needs through the close contact between the two organizations, allowing it to expand the platform accordingly – a win-win situation for both sides.
