How Core Group took a forward-thinking culture further into the future

Core Group was usually ahead of change

Chelsea attributes much of Core Group’s forward-thinking attitude to the founder Christian Brim.

“He’s a visionary,” she says. Christian had encouraged modern ways of working long before they became necessary. Chelsea points to COVID as an example. When many accounting firms suddenly had to work out how to operate remotely, Core Group had already been working remotely and on a hybrid basis for years. So the transition was relatively straightforward.

Another example is their Results Only Work Environment. If anyone finishes their work accurately and on time, the company is less concerned with how many hours they spent at their desk. “As long as their work is done timely and accurately, that’s their business,” says Chelsea.

They weren’t tied to traditional ways of working, and Core Group wanted to take a similar attitude with AI and automation.

Chelsea jokes about telling people that one day they’ll wake up and AI will be “ruling the world” and they don’t want to be caught off guard.

Ultimately, Core Group would rather start adapting early than make major changes under pressure later. The firm had already experimented with developers and automation, and Christian was speaking with Opzer founder Isaac Perdomo, exploring ways we could help them.

At the time, Core Group had other priorities, though. “We weren’t ready,” Chelsea says. But in 2025, this began to change.

Eventually, maternity leave put Core Group’s processes to the test

“We had done a really good job documenting our processes,” Chelsea says. “But they were still very manual.”

When the Core Group person who oversaw the onboarding process prepared to take maternity leave, Chelsea was due to cover the Welcome Committee. But it was harder to absorb alongside her existing responsibilities.

“One person was having to go enter the information in this software,” Chelsea says, “and then turn around and enter the information in that software.”

Suddenly, there was a fresh driving force for automation at Core Group. Chelsea wanted, as much as possible, for onboarding to be “running in the background, just happening.”

But former attempts at automation had left too many loose ends

“…nothing would ever actually get fully automated or fully addressed”

Some internal automation projects made progress at Core Group, but rarely for long.

It was clear the automation was a priority. The time processes took was starting to affect growth. “We’ve been trying to scale as a company,” Chelsea says. “While we were able to complete the work that we needed to complete, we knew we could not take on large quantities of clients.”

Developers had let them down

Core Group had hired developers in an attempt to move forward with automation.

However, it was only ever partially successful. A developer might automate one section effectively, but then run into trouble, explaining to the Core Group leadership that full automation wouldn’t be possible.

The developers might end up creating a workaround for a part of the process, but in Chelsea’s mind it was a “band-aid” to the issue. A tool might automate one step, but somebody still had to take the output and move it manually into the next stage.

“No one could ever see it through.”

“They could do little bits and pieces,” says Chelsea, “but nothing would ever actually get fully automated or fully addressed and we would be left with all of these pieces.”

Core Group needed a different kind of support. Remembering his conversations with Isaac, Christian reconnected Chelsea with Opzer, and the teams chose onboarding as the first substantial project.

Would Opzer offer a real change?

Chelsea had reasons to be skeptical about Opzer, based on her work with other automation developers. She had grown tired of automation projects beginning with broad promises and becoming much less certain once technical problems appeared.

But Chelsea tells how an early conversation with us gave her confidence

We were simply explaining what could be automated, and which parts would probably still need some manual input. Our assessment was roughly: “What you just described to us is 90% automatable.”

That was a significant moment for Chelsea. “I appreciated that upfront setting of the expectation, and the honesty,” Chelsea says.

Later, Chelsea discovered the Opzer team would also handle challenges differently when they arose.

“Opzer would spend the time working through problems instead of band-aiding the issue, so the processes still flowed seamlessly.” That sometimes meant a project took longer than first expected, but for Chelsea, the important point was knowing it would be carried through properly.

Everything happened faster than anyone expected, including us

The original estimate for the onboarding automation was around six months. But only three months into the project, Opzer had built the first version of all the workflows.

Part of the reason it could be so fast was because Core Group had good, repeatable processes.

Client onboarding is a good example and it was where they saw the easiest business case for automation. “One person was having to go enter the information in this software, and then turn around and enter the information in that software,” Chelsea says.

After automating onboarding, Opzer built a system that could recognize when documents, organizers and questionnaires had been completed and reflect that inside Core Group’s practice-management system.

Preserving the best of the old ways of working

Later, we turned our attention to bank categorization, a project that centered on one of Core Group’s experienced team members, Gloria.

Gloria had developed an effective way of handling bank categorization in an old system: Excel. In her skilled hands, the process worked extremely efficiently. However, the process couldn’t be replicated by anyone who didn’t have the same Excel proficiency.

At one point during our work, Gloria asked us whether the rules she already had in Excel could be imported into the new system. It was a good sign she was willing to adopt a new way of doing things.

Opzer therefore worked on an application to preserve Gloria’s system, created from her specialist knowledge, but we made it easier for anyone in the Core Group team to use. The application developed over time, expanding beyond bank statements and later incorporating AI recommendations.

Our relationship has changed how Core Group thinks about automation

“Even for myself, who I would say was pretty open to automation and things like that before, I think the perspective has really shifted. And it has shifted overall for our team, which is really impactful for our organization.”

While some employees were initially more cautious about changing established ways of working, seeing effective automations inside their own processes has helped.

It’s also given Chelsea confidence to see what else is possible.

She now brings Opzer into conversations much earlier when an operational problem appears. “Anytime something comes up, I’m like, ‘Oh, let’s ask Opzer. Let’s find out from Opzer.’”

The impact on Core Group

Speed outcomes

• For onboarding, Chelsea believes the automated workflow probably saves around an hour per new client. Previously, somebody could spend 45 minutes to an hour entering information into different systems. Across 100 or 200 new clients, that represents a substantial amount of work.
• As for bank categorization, previously, a bookkeeper would download a statement and then work through the transactions manually, coding them one by one. Now, Chelsea says, “Our bookkeepers can very quickly just upload a bank statement to that application, get it categorized with AI and sorted into the template that we needed for our software within two to three minutes.”

Culture and team outcomes

• Standardization: “The automation has really standardized things across the board for us,” says Chelsea. This makes it easier for another bookkeeper to step into the process when needed.
• Less dependence: During maternity leave, paternity leave and other absences, more processes can continue as usual, and people don’t have a mountain of work waiting when they return. “They step back,” says Chelsea, “and their work has been done for them.”

Growth outcomes

• Space to grow: The firm has gained capacity to scale with the resources and people it already has. As Chelsea puts it: “We can continue growing without needing to hire.”

The next phase is aimed more directly at Core Group’s clients

Core Group’s team has been positively impacted, but now they’re beginning to look outward with automation.

Core Group’s clientele are photographers, videographers and other creative business owners, for whom traditional spreadsheets and financial statements are unlikely to be the most engaging way to understand what is happening in the business.

So Core Group is considering using automation to engage clients differently. In this instance, to create a client portal or dashboard, one Chelsea describes as “very much designed to a creative eye.”

The work is still at an early stage, but Chelsea’s experience with Opzer so far has given her confidence. “I definitely feel confident that they’ll be able to help us put something like that through, and that would have a pretty good impact on our clients.”

Core Group’s journey represents those of firms we’ve worked with again and again.

Their aspirations are initially out of step with their experience of automation. They’re forward-thinking, but while they know what they want technology to accomplish, they haven’t been able to make it happen themselves.

Once they bring Opzer on board, they’re in a position to quickly see what automation can really do.