Suomen Kuntaperintä Oy (from the beginning of 2021; Sarastia Kuntaperintä in 2019–2020 and Taitoa Kuntaperintä in 2015–2019) is a Finnish company focused on public administration receivables management, combining the expertise of the municipal sector’s financial administration and the collection industry. Suomen Kuntaperintä’s services include all payment control and collection services: payment reminders, voluntary and legal collection and post-collection.

The customer base consists of municipalities, cities and associations of municipalities. Kuntaperintä strives to be a humane debt partner and to take into account the needs of the debtor, with the aim of efficiently returning customers’ receivables.

TOWARDS A MAJOR UPGRADE OF THE COLLECTION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

During 2016, Kuntaperintä was looking for an IT partner specialized in Python and Django technologies to take over the collection management system that it used.

Kuntaperintä was impressed with Anders’ strong technological expertise, especially in Python, and thus Anders was selected as the consulting and development partner for the Anitta debt collection system. From the beginning, the system has been developed in close cooperation with Kuntaperintä’s internal IT team, so the information flow has been made as seamless as possible.

The problem with the collection system was the lack of automations and integrations connecting the data, the complicated user interface and the illogical background system. Anders took up the challenge and, together with Kuntaperintä IT experts, the team began to envision solutions.

THE SOLUTION WAS A CLEAR PLAN

Kuntaperintä wanted Anders to provide a comprehensive plan to upgrade the existing system, as replacement with a completely new system would have been would have been too large an operation.

Automation of the repetitive tasks was the most important goal, which would increase the efficiency of operations and reduce human errors caused by manual work. In addition, Kuntaperintä prioritized integrations into the system to facilitate data management and flow. The project started with clarifying the user interfaces and simply rewriting the system code.

Numerous new integrations have been built into the system during the development work, including the customer data register, the electronic distraint system and the court decision database. In addition, clarity and consistency were improved in the user experience. Automated testing was also significantly increased.

Current state analysis gave guidelines for the future planning

In 2020, the management of Kuntaperintä requested an analysis of the current state of the system and its technologies to assist planning and budgeting for the next few years.

The analysis also called for an assessment of the system’s operation and scalability in the years to come, including recommendations for any updates and areas of development deemed necessary by Anders. Based on the analysis, a comprehensive view of the goals for the next few years was gained and a plan for development work was created.

“It has been really pleasant to work with Suomen Kuntaperintä, which genuinely wants to develop its own operations in the long term. Together, we have set out to solve challenges, and here is a good example of a customer who is willing to question their own operating models and reform their business. We have come a long way together and it has been great to see the significant progress we have made in the development of the company’s core system, ”says Mikko Kivistö, Anders Country Manager.

THE SATISFACTION OF KUNTAPERINTÄ’S OWN CUSTOMERS WAS THE BEST POSSIBLE OUTCOME

Anitta’s user interface has been streamlined, which has improved the usability of the system for different user groups. As a result, the user experience of the control panels has improved considerably.

Integrations have made it easier to manage receivables, since one no longer has to gather information from different systems manually. The automated testing coverage of the system has been raised to an excellent level and the stability of the system has thereby improved considerably.

The current status analysis provided a clear view of the current status of the collection system, the target and the options for taking steps to achieve the objectives. Based on the analysis, collection system’s state was found to be at a good level, so the development work can be said to have been successful.

Kuntaperintä’s own customers have been satisfied with the system, especially that their requests have been noted in development of the system.

Banner image by Tapio Haaja

Cooperation with Anders has gone very well over the years. It is easy for our IT experts to communicate and agree on the next steps. We also receive quick feedback on ad-hoc development needs or help with new, large-scale projects.

Christian Sjöstrand, CEO of Suomen Kuntaperintä Oy