Bohu Digital’s Virtual-First Workforce Made Manageable And Scalable With Milestone

“Prior to engaging with Milestone, I was worried about the level of control I would have over my business. In reality, I now have confidence in the accuracy of my back office and the decisions I’m making based on the data I’m looking at. I am way more confident than I ever would be if I controlled it from A to Z.”   Ian Brown, Bohu Digital – Founder & CEO

Situation

Bohu Digital found early success in growing its business through its expertise, but the growth put pressure on the back office infrastructure to match the trajectory of the business.

Solution

Bohu Digital hired Milestone to provide full-service back-office functions (accounting, HR, and payroll). Milestone leveraged best-in-class technology with thought leadership around modern workplace functionality. 

Outcome

After engaging with Milestone, Bohu Digital received executive-level strategic leadership to make informed decisions about the immediate needs of decreasing day sales outstanding, benefits, and payroll in multiple states, along with the support for long-term decisions. Milestone’s back-office infrastructure continues to support its rapid growth trajectory and virtual-first work environment. 

Bohu Digital was founded by its CEO, Ian Brown, in 2022. The company is a full-service marketing firm that specializes in content and SEO. Bohu Digital helps companies of all sizes build their organic channel and demand generation engine that is sustainable and drives a positive ROI. 

Brown is an experienced business leader and expert in marketing. He worked as a marketing consultant before formalizing his practice after discovering a content strategy process that transforms a business’s marketing efforts. This led Brown to start Bohu Digital. While Brown’s marketing expertise pushed his business into early and rapid growth, he soon realized he was “woefully unprepared to use our financial and accounting apparatus to make meaningful decisions.” Brown turned to fractional services because he understood that each decision had “greater and greater ramifications for those that work for the company,” and he wanted expertise to help guide him through those data-backed decisions. 

“The fractional model being able to provide an executive level of strategy over top of the execution when I need it where I need it as I scale is extremely valuable.” – Ian Brown – CEO Bohu Digital

Bohu Digital originally engaged Milestone for HR projects and accounting work. Milestone became a trusted partner of Bohu. As Bohu began to scale, they engaged with all 3 of Milestone’s service lines (accounting, HR, and payroll). On the accounting side, Brown leveraged Milestone’s ability to grow with him. He expanded his engagement to include forecasting and a financial review meeting to increase the financial clarity around his business. Specifically, Bohu Digital needed to decrease its day sales outstanding. Milestone was able to recommend technology to address this issue and oversee the implementation of that technology. 

Bohu Digital’s employee demographic is virtual in multiple states. Brown described managing payroll in multiple states as “incredibly cumbersome even if we use best-in-class technology.” Milestone took over this function which Brown describes as a “huge benefit to us, and specifically my time.” He added, “I’m not even sure I would’ve been able to hire across state lines without Milestone.”

The HR function of Bohu Digital equaled the difficulty of payroll. Brown described his HR function prior to Milestone as “piecemeal.” The difficulty of the piecemeal approach was all communication depended on Brown. At the onset of the engagement, Brown had a list of 5 different projects that needed to be knocked out. The Milestone team catered to the needs of Bohu during implementation in a way that valued what Bohu’s employees needed, when they needed it. Since then, Milestone has overcome the warming period of integrating HR and built trust with the Bohu team. “We really do view the Milestone HR team, although part-time, as a part of our internal team,” said Brown. 

Milestone’s takeover of Bohu Digital’s back office function has transformed into a competitive advantage. Brown notes that he is able to have a modern, virtual workspace with infrastructure to rapidly scale because of Milestone.