Treuhand Hannover: Modern communication channels in tax consultancy

About Treuhand Hannover

As a nationwide spread tax consulting firm for medical professions Treuhand Hannover has been helping doctors, pharmacists, and other clients coming from the medical sector with their tax, financial accounting, and wage handling for over 60 years. André Kies has been working for Treuhand Hannover for 32 years and has been head of the IT department for 12 years.

The initial situation

Before Stackfield was introduced to Treuhand Hannover, the firm was struggling with cumbersome ways of communication and a few inefficient channels. Communication was mostly handled traditionally via email and telephone and project work was mostly done face to face, for example through team meetings. Several tries working with a rudimentarily used share point platform within departments were without any success. In early 2020 the corona pandemic finally forced the tax consultants to look out for a spatially inclusive and comprehensive tool that could enable communication and task and project management, even across different locations and departments.

Why Stackfield?

Especially as a tax consultancy firm Treuhand Hannover wants to and has to watch out when it comes to data security. As a pleasant surprise, Stackfield perfectly matched the firm's requirements. German hosting, data processing in the EU, ISO 27001 certification, and various functions like end-to-end encryption in rooms or two-factor authentication when logging into Stackfield were convincing for Treuhand Hannover.

In addition, being an all-in-one tool, Stackfield was able to provide an impressive pool of functions. As Stackfield was initially intended to be some kind of "Whatsapp replacement" the firm was searching for a tool that could offer multiple ways of communication. With Stackfield's private and team chats, the topic-bound communication in rooms, and the telephony functions Treuhand Hannover was more than satisfied and decided to go with Stackfield and offer the tool for optional use across locations.

Stackfield's user-friendly interface allows an easy start

Communicating the offer to everyone but letting the teams decide whether and especially how they want to use the tool seemed to be a good strategy, especially with people that are struggling with collaboration tools. André Kies recounts: "We told them: 'Of course, you can still use your Excel tables but please use them in combination with Stackfield. There, the tables should be stored and made accessible for everyone.' Like this, we managed that almost everybody gets along well with the tool." Especially Stackfield's user-friendly interface helped with that. The users got used to the platform very quickly and thus, the first steps didn't acquire a lot of work. "The simplicity and being able to work intuitively was kind of what convinced us right from the beginning and finally very quickly led to many eagerly wanting to work with Stackfield."

Project work in tax consulting

Rooms in Stackfield aren't only used as communication channels at Treuhand Hannover but also to manage projects. In the module Tasks every work step of the project can be managed, information can be stored in the modules Files and Pages and the module Timeline offers a Gantt diagram for the team and visualizes all tasks in dependency to each other. When a project is being mapped on Stackfield the entire project management and all affected sub-projects are monitored on Stackfield.

To keep an overview of all projects, the IT created a room called "IT Project Portfolio" where the management of all IT projects takes place. Each project is added as an individual task. Especially in combination with the Gantt diagram the Kanban board is a big help and supports André Kies, for example, in keeping an eye on each developer's workload. André Kies explains: "We hold a pitch workshop with the management body three to four times a year. There we consider which IT projects will be realized, which will be put on hold, and sometimes even which will be stopped entirely out of time reasons. Here, we basically manage every IT project."

Integrating market partners into Stackfield

Another Stackfield feature Treuhand Hannover regularly benefits from: the different user roles. "We have a few projects where we need to create interfaces to business providers. What we do is we add our market partners to our rooms in Stackfield and like that, we can integrate them into our projects", explains André Kies. However, to not provide the users with the same amount of information and rights as the Treuhand Hannover employees they are being assigned the user role External. Like this, they can only see and edit contents that have been shared with them - true to the "need-to-know" principle.

Information storage and file versioning

Before Stackfield was introduced to Treuhand Hannover, managing documents and files was exhausting and barely existed. Files were often sent via mail which was sometimes confusing, André Kies recounts. Especially when multiple people were to give feedback on the same document it was cumbersome combining all wishes and keeping an overview of the current version. "Naturally, here and there something fell by the wayside at times and now, we can prevent that. In Stackfield, we always have the newest version." All documents are stored in the module Files, where their versions can be managed. Here, everything is accessible to everybody that wants to retrieve any kind of information.

Chatting, having a call, screen sharing: Everyone gets their money's worth

Like it was intended to be right from the beginning at Treuhand Hannover, Stackfield is mostly used for communication: whether it's between different locations of the firm or between the employees that work from home and the ones that stay in the office. Especially more tech-savvy colleagues like to pick up the Stackfield-phone: Using the telephony functions, feedback can be exchanged quickly and problems can be discussed, especially in combination with the screen sharing function.

Conclusion: Routine, transparency, and further development

All in all: André Kies is thrilled. Today, Stackfield is an integral part of his day and is automatically started on his computer each morning. "It's like brushing your teeth", he says. When asked what the greatest benefit is, Treuhand Hannover gets from Stackfield, he doesn't hesitate: transparency, especially in projects, for the whole firm, whether it's with the management, a team leader, or other employees. In the end, André Kies compliments the constant further development of the software and the numerous updates.