The team at global branding consultancy Koto spend their days developing iconic brand identities and assets for many of the world’s top companies, prioritising design, collaboration, and creative flair. So when Koto needed to upgrade its HR systems and processes, finding a platform that aligned with these values was vital.

For Koto's Chief Operating Officer and founder, Caroline Matthews, the goal was clear: harmonising HR processes and strengthening data management across Koto’s five global studios without stifling creativity or local cultural nuances.

Caroline explains how Humaans is helping Koto balance operational efficiency and creative freedom — and why it is the perfect choice for a design-conscious, globally dispersed agency like Koto.

Overcoming disjointed HR data and processes across five global locations

Koto’s employee data was spread across multiple computers and applications, and in various people’s heads. “Our data was all over the place. And that led to a huge amount of wasted time, errors and duplication,” says Caroline. 

Koto’s five studios each stored employee data in different, unconnected Dropbox folders, with different security levels. Answering simple queries involved a disproportionate level of detective work. 

“Every time I needed to access information about an employee, such as start date or salary, it took at least 2–3 conversations till I got it,” recalls Caroline. “And sometimes, that information wasn’t totally accurate.” 

“The bigger we got, the more my frustration grew. I was sick and tired of going to what I thought was the source of truth and then realising, ‘Well, this isn't right.”

Each studio had also developed their own ways of managing foundational HR processes such as onboarding staff and booking holidays. 

“We started to have five different ways of doing things. So all these really important parts of the employee lifecycle were becoming very disjointed,” Caroline explains. 

Improving operational parity across all studios became an increasing priority. Caroline wanted a centralised HR hub that could seamlessly integrate Koto’s global workforce, bringing scattered data under one roof and eliminating manual data management which took staff away from higher-value tasks.

“I knew the disjointed data and processes were holding us back. We're a team of 100 extremely talented, ambitious people across five different locations. I want everyone to be getting on with doing incredible work, not wasting unnecessary time on admin.”  

Crucially, Koto needed a platform that would streamline HR processes and data management without stifling the local cultural flavour of its studios, each shaped by its distinct city location. They wanted greater standardisation and operational efficiencies while still allowing some flexibility. 

"I was very keen not to bring something in which dictated the rules, or didn’t allow people to have their own cultural nuances," Caroline says.

Finding a user-friendly, design-conscious HR platform

Caroline’s initial review of five or six HR platforms proved dispiriting. “Very quickly, I realised a lot of tools just weren’t going to work for us,” Caroline says. 

“The language used and visual design either felt way too corporate and clichéd, or too cheesy — high-fiving your employees and so on. All the total opposite of how we are.”

With a clear idea of the features Koto needed, Caroline also didn’t want an all-in-one tool full of functions they wouldn’t use. “It feels wasteful. And I knew it would annoy people to go into a platform and see a load of redundant features.”

Then, Caroline discovered Humaans. It provides the data and process management functionality she wanted, unbloated by unnecessary features — all wrapped in a sleek, clean, user-friendly design.

“Humaans was like a breath of fresh air. It felt very much like it had the same aesthetic and language values that we have at Koto, and the same collaborative approach.” 

“The Humaans team is very open, very collaborative: very much how we work with clients,” says Caroline. “It felt like a real partnership from day one.”

Humaans’ commitment to design-centric aesthetics and usability was vital for Koto to ensure user adoption. 

“Most of our team are designers and have a very high level of aesthetic taste. They won’t engage with any software that isn’t of top quality — they’ll just ignore it. I knew that wouldn't be the case with Humaans, which was a big plus.”

Implementing Humaans was quick and straightforward, once Koto had completed the hard part of collating and cleaning up all their data to put into the system. “Setup was super simple and really fast,” Caroline recalls.