From visionaries to victors: Docue's ambition to boost accountancy businesses globally fuelled by Scandinavian success stories

From a listed company to an international startup 

Asko Schrey, renown as the "grand old man" of the accounting services business, Accountor Group in Finland, transformed his single-office company, in the '80s into the national +200 million euro group it is now. Accountor Tower now stands as a prominent landmark in Helsinki's business region. After leaving his operative role in Accountor, Asko's dream of international expansion in the same segment is becoming a reality with Docue.

Asko emphasises:

The role of a traditional bookkeeper is evolving as automation and AI take over routines. Docue provides a safe concept for bookkeepers to adapt and help SMB entrepreneurs with new ways of doing business.

Asko highlights that traditional bookkeepers typically don't view themselves as providing consultative services to clients. However, there's a clear need for SMB clients to receive guidance and assistance from their bookkeepers. This gap can be bridged with technology. Some bookkeepers have recognised the win-win scenario of using technology for accounting services, as it is beneficial for their business and also for their clients.

That win-win scenario also was the motivation also for Camilla Skoog to join Docue as an Advisor. Camilla was the accounting services Business Manager at Fortnox, Sweden. Camilla departed from her previous company after achieving market leadership in the sector, with revenues surpassing 1 billion SEK and a significant surge in Fortnox stock prices. Now, Camilla envisions a parallel trajectory with Docue, stating, "It will take time but the bookkeepers' business sector is growing towards consultancy and Docue is the perfect tool to do it.”

Antti Seppä, the CEO of Docue, previously held the position of CEO at Admicom, a Finnish stock rocket recognised by the European Small and Mid-cap awards in 2019. Observing the high automation level in financial services during his tenure at Admicom, including an unofficial world record in the speed of financial reporting, Antti identified a similar potential for innovation in legal documentation. Antti shares, "I was using Word files to issue shares manually until I came across Docue. I immediately realised the disruption in old ways of working and wanted to scale this internationally."

Now, Docue operates in Finland, Sweden, the UK and most recently, Germany. Docue will continue to develop it’s business model with accounting service providers globally and welcome new service providers in doing that. “We have hundreds of partners helping their SMB customers with Docue already, which is a good start”, says Antti. “Also AI is working in our favour, as people are adapting to new ways of working with technology”, comments Camilla.

Building an enterprise product without high thresholds

Docue's ambition is to empower anyone to create high-quality legal documents at the click of a button. The platform contains 100+ dynamic legal document templates, along with a contract management system that is integrated with the company's e-signature solution. Our legal experts in each country have meticulously designed and continuously maintain these templates to ensure compliance with local laws. They can be easily customised to suit your business needs. This approach makes it effortless to generate lawyer-grade agreements quickly and efficiently, all at a fraction of the cost of traditional legal solutions.

 "The core of our product is high-quality legal content that can be easily customised based on the user's wishes. Despite the emphasis on our platform's intuitive and 'simple' interface, a significant effort on the UX side ensures a seamless experience for our users. Our system must always be easy to navigate and clear so that anyone can quickly produce documents without manual onboardings, integrations or cumbersome add-ons," says Antti.

With Docue, the company keeps the entire contract process in one place: allowing users to create, e-sign and store all it's contracts efficiently. Docue also helps companies digitise old paper archives, so that entire archives of paper documents can be imported and digitised.

 Companies that do not have lawyers in-house, or that may only have one or two stressed corporate lawyers, can make significant time savings with Docue without spending days on implementation workshops and briefings. They can streamline and automate their contract management in half an hour, at a very affordable price tag.

Safe and accurate implementation of AI

Many companies are rushing to AI solutions and AI will be introduced as part of Docue's platform in the future. Antti explains, however, that the company does not want to apply AI without the customer benefit actually being concrete:

"We are looking forward to the implementation of AI services. At the same time, you see examples of "AI washing" on a daily basis - companies that talk loudly about AI but in fact engage in completely ordinary programming and classic automation. We do not want to engage in those kinds of tricks. Also, our assessment is that our clients still prefer legal products created by lawyers, rather than AI."

"However, where we see that AI can provide our users with a significantly better experience than what we currently produce, in a data-secure manner, we will introduce AI-based features. Our first AI features are likely to be introduced in the first half of 2024. Our priority, however, continues to be to develop the market's best UX and to secure our users' data; we are not stressed about being the first with AI", concludes Antti.

Docue's customer base today consists of small and medium-sized customers, as well as listed companies across Europe. 

To find out more about the benefits of Docue and what our customers love about the platform, you can read our reviews here.