How Officeheads transitioned to remote work, consolidated their tech stack, and strengthened company culture
Officeheads is a straight-shooting, fearless financial management team, committed to providing their clients with the tools, processes and expertise they need to succeed.
Specializing in the small business and entrepreneurial space, the Officeheads team position themselves as the perfect partner for creative-minded, tech savvy business owners with a competitive streak.
“The perfect client for us… is hungry for more,” explains CEO Rebecca Berneck. “They have that winner’s mentality, they're open to change, and perhaps just a little bit scared.”
Prior to Officeheads, Rebecca spent 15 years working for a strategic management consulting firm, cultivating invaluable experience at Fortune 500 companies. And this experience, combined with a fiery passion to win, is what helped her build the foundations at Officeheads.
And maybe this competitive streak in her business is as a result of her years as a vintage motorcycle racer. Although now retired from the sport, Rebecca is still driven by the same hunger to win.
“There are a lot of analogies between winning on the racetrack and winning in business. Our clients are going for the goal, they’re winners—they're just trying to go and win. In my opinion, the winning is having a financially healthy company. So we want to support [our clients] in winning the race, whatever the race is that they're trying to win.”
Understanding and building the long-term race plan
The team at Officeheads believe that every entrepreneur should have the freedom to walk out from behind their desk and live their passions.
“They come to us and we help them understand the words behind what their numbers say. And through financial management, we’re doing all that work [so] they can get out from behind the desk. That’s our vision,” explains Rebecca.
“We educate and coach entrepreneurs and creatives to release their fear of finance, operate financially healthy companies and transition into strong leaders and CEOs.”
And they understand that to enable their vision, they need to harness the power of well-documented and refined processes to drive efficiency in fast-paced situations with clients who, more often than not, are moving quickly.
They’re committed to providing scalable solutions that are designed to grow with their clients.
Rebecca explains how she and the Officeheads team built scalable processes for a client that began at $0 revenue and are now at $10 million:
“We have a client—they’re real estate brokers—they're moving fast all the time, and they came to us brand new, so we set them up from scratch.
“We built processes that scaled as they grew. They’ve been with us for seven years, gone from a team of two to 13, $0 to $10 million revenue and they’re across multiple cities and states. But the processes have had very little tweaking. And as they’ve grown, our monthly invoice to them has pretty much stayed the same.
“So we’re really, really proud of the scalable processes for money-in, money-out that we developed.”
It’s their ability to listen to their clients and understand, from an operational perspective, exactly what they need to do to win. And that not only helps build a solid race plan, but also helps them build long lasting relationships.
The winning tools and processes
When you’re building specific processes with longevity in mind, for a growing client base of fast-paced entrepreneurs, you need a solid practice management solution to get you through.
Consolidation
Karbon offers Officeheads consolidation—they’re able to use fewer systems that perform multiple functions well, rather than a myriad of different tools.
“We were utilizing a number of digital tools to operate the business and Karbon came to the table being able to consolidate it all. It even consolidated things I didn't know needed to be consolidated.”
Culture and community
When COVID-19 hit, the Officeheads team went from sitting in a 2,000 square foot office to being dispersed across the United States. Five months later, Rebecca introduced her team to Karbon.
It was at this time when Rebecca was dealing with two issues that, at first, seemed separate:
Keeping her business running effectively in a remote setting
Keeping the company culture strong in this setting
Thankfully, Karbon enabled Rebecca to overcome both of these issues by maintaining high levels of visibility and collaboration across the team, even though everyone was distributed.
But it was the ability to @ mention in Karbon that helped solve both challenges at once.
“The ability to add little notes here and there and communicate in Karbon—it helped us with our communication, our culture and just being connected,” says Rebecca.
Time savings and self-management
For Rebecca, it’s clear when her team doesn’t use Client Tasks in Karbon, simply because client response times are longer without them.
“From my employees’ perspectives, Karbon saves them time chasing clients down. There are times when an employee might send an email rather than a Client Task, and of course, three weeks later they still haven’t received the information.”
Plus, time saved searching for client communication helps keep the team’s productivity firing.
“Now, with Karbon, there are fewer times where we ask each other if a client was called, because you can just go in and look at the notes in Karbon.”
“All communications being documented and associated with organizations, contacts and work items in Karbon is phenomenal.”
Rebecca also highlights how Karbon helps team members better-manage themselves and their own time.
“It’s easier for them to manage their tasks, and my managers have more transparency in the event someone needs assistance. That’s something we didn't have before Karbon.”
Executing the race plan
When you have a race plan, you know each turn in the track and everything you need to optimize in order to take on your competitors. And that’s what Rebecca and her team at Officeheads provides their clients—an agile, informative race plan that will grow with them, and edge-out the competition.
Having the right tools and processes to execute their clients’ race plans is critical to Officeheads’ success. And having all the information they need in one place makes it that much easier for them.
“Karbon is the one-stop shop. I don't have to go to other places. The fact that it has everything I need to manage my firm—I think that's great.”
Key results
Transitioned a team of 13 employees from on-premise to remote while strengthening company culture
Consolidated their tech stack
Increased visibility of, and consolidated, client and internal communication
Improved employee autonomy and productivity
