BKL is a fast-growing professional services firm, specializing in accounting, audit, and tax and advisory services. It has expanded from around 140 people to 500 over the last four years.
Supporting that growth is BKL’s People Services team, which manages many of the processes that keep the business running, from payroll and benefits to reporting and compliance.
“We’re the behind-the-scenes people,” says People Services Senior Manager Kester Giltrow. “We make sure the systems are running: payroll, pensions, benefits, and reporting are ticking along, giving the wider People & Culture team the time to support the business.”
“We’re a very data-driven team,” says Kester. “We don’t like to make decisions unless there’s evidence behind them. But we also try to take a really human approach, because HR shouldn’t just be seen as policies and procedures.”
As the business grew larger and more complex, it became harder to combine trusted, evidence-based decisions with the human approach the team valued.
When disconnected systems stopped supporting growth
Before adopting Bob, BKL’s people technology landscape had become fragmented.
“We had a lot of legacy tech that didn’t really speak to each other,” says Kester. “There was so much manual work, manual keying, and cross-checking. It was disjointed, it caused errors, and there was a lot of repetition.”
The team even maintained spreadsheets outside the HR system just to verify the information in it.
“We had a spreadsheet outside the system that mirrored everything in the system,” says People Services Assistant Manager Elena Souto. “We were effectively having to duplicate and cross-check our own work.”
“We didn’t trust the information that came out of the old system,” says Kester. “That made it very difficult to do reporting or analysis, or really get into the detail of our people data.”
Answering requests from Finance or leadership often meant opening multiple spreadsheets, manually checking information, and piecing together reports that took time to produce—slowing the team down and making it harder to give the business timely answers.
Creating one connected people hub with Bob
Rather than replacing every system, BKL built a connected people ecosystem with Bob at its center.
Today, specialist platforms still support recruitment, background checks, learning, and business analytics, but they all connect with Bob, allowing information to flow automatically across the employee journey.
BKL connects Microsoft Teams, Active Directory, Power BI, and other specialist platforms with Bob, automating handoffs between teams and making workforce insights easier to access across the business.
For example, when a candidate accepts an offer in Teamtailor, their profile is automatically created in Bob. Background checks completed in Zinc are uploaded to the employee record, learning profiles are created automatically, and connected systems trigger onboarding tasks without manual intervention.
“It’s a lot more joined up for everyone, including us,” says Elena.
The same principle applies throughout the employee lifecycle. Team members securely update their own personal details in Bob. Holiday requests, time off in lieu, maternity and paternity leave, performance reviews, and engagement surveys all take place in a single platform.
“It’s become the norm,” says Elena. “For certain things, you just do it on Bob.”
Instead of acting as the link between multiple disconnected systems, the People Services team can now rely on automated workflows to keep information moving.
“IT doesn’t need us to tell them when somebody is starting,” says Kester. “Bob tells them, and finance gets what they need. We don’t have to think about all these little things that used to take time, and we’ve reduced the margin of error as we scale.”
Trusted data, less admin, and faster answers
For BKL, the biggest benefit has been confidence in its people data.
Instead of questioning reports or manually validating information, the team now has a single source of truth that both People Services and the wider business trust.
“And because we can see the data before it’s exported means we can make sure it’s relevant before we take it out of the system.”
That confidence has transformed how BKL approaches reporting. Automated reports are delivered to teams weekly and monthly without manual intervention, while dashboards help leaders understand workforce trends, engagement, chargeable work, and other operational metrics.
“The information that comes out of Bob is a really fundamental part of how the business understands what’s happening,” says Kester. “Having instant real-time access to data in the dashboards is really useful for senior leaders to understand trends in the business and areas to focus on.”
The team estimates that Bob saves at least an hour every day, per person, by eliminating manual data entry, duplicate work, and repetitive tasks. Just as importantly, it removes the need to remember dozens of small administrative steps.
Kester agrees. “You don’t realize what you were doing until you don’t have to do it anymore.” Gaining that time back allows the team to focus on supporting a growing business rather than maintaining disconnected systems.
Laying the foundation for continued growth
Bob has helped BKL manage organizational change, including integrating a business of around 140 employees following a merger.
“Bob made it less challenging. It gave us a clear structure for the information and where it needed to go.”
Rather than deploying every capability immediately, BKL has gradually expanded its use of Bob, introducing new modules and automations as the business evolves.
“Automations are a constant part of the conversation in our team,” says Kester. “We’re always asking ourselves, ‘Is this working? Can we do it better? How can we get Bob to do it for us?’”
For a business that continues to grow through acquisition, BKL now has a people platform that can evolve with it—connecting systems, reducing manual work, and giving the business data it can trust.
Main takeaways
- Bob saves BKL’s People Services team at least one hour a day per person by reducing manual admin and duplicate work
- Bob gives BKL one trusted source of people data, helping the team provide faster, more reliable insights to the wider business
- Bob connects BKL’s people systems so information flows automatically across recruitment, onboarding, learning, IT, finance, and reporting
- Bob gives BKL team members one familiar place to manage key people processes throughout their employee journey.
