Help people do their best work.
Develop people and make finance easier to work with, so chefs, managers and finance teams can focus on the work they care about.
A personal introduction · Stockholm, 2026For Urban Italian Group
More time for
what people
love doing.
I'm Johan. I've worked in finance for more than 15 years, and one thing has always driven me: finding smarter ways to remove unnecessary administration. I know the financial work well. I just don't believe talented people should spend so much of their time feeding systems. AI gives us an opportunity to rethink that — with strong controls, clear responsibility and more time for food, guests and the business.
Finance & AI Transformation Lead · My perspective
01 / MY FOUNDATIONInternational finance operations, budgeting, forecasting and board reporting
02 / MY CURIOSITYMaking work simpler, developing people and building with AI
03 / MY AMBITIONLead change towards an AI-native finance function that gives people time back.
Chapter 02 / The opportunityUnderstanding a growing restaurant group
As restaurants grow, finance should help them grow smarter.
Urban Italian Group creates restaurants with distinctive personalities. As concepts, locations and countries multiply, the financial challenge grows too: planning investments, managing cash flow, understanding performance and keeping reporting reliable across the group.
My approach is to simplify the work itself, not just digitize the paperwork. Let systems exchange information, let routine controls happen automatically, and let people contribute through channels that fit their day — without compromising financial oversight.
Make better decisions.
Reliable reporting, budgets, forecasts, cash-flow visibility and clear accountability — at restaurant, country and group level.
Redesign how work gets done.
Change the process before automating it. Make it easy to provide information, automate the checks and bring exceptions to the right person.
These are opportunities I see for a growing restaurant group, not assumptions about deficiencies in Urban Italian Group’s current systems.
Chapter 03 / The personFinance experience, curiosity and the next step
I've led the work.
Now I want to help lead what comes next.
My career spans more than 15 years in accounting, controlling and financial management. At Hyper Island, I coordinated and led the accounting team's day-to-day work across an international group, developed financial processes and implemented new systems. At Oxford Leadership, I worked with international group finance, budgets and forecasts, and reported financial information to the board.
For as long as I've worked in finance, I've questioned the repetitive tasks that consume people's days. I enjoy understanding how the numbers fit together and what they mean for a business. I don't enjoy administration for its own sake. Finding a better way has always felt natural to me — and I've learned that the hardest part is often changing the way people work, not selecting the software.
After studying AI Business Consulting at Hyper Island, I deliberately returned to hands-on accounting across different businesses to understand the detail behind the workflows. Today I use AI coding agents to turn ideas into prototypes. I shape the business logic and user experience, test the result and work with technical specialists where production-grade security and infrastructure are required.
Food is one of my biggest passions, and a big part of why I want to work in this industry. I also enjoy building things. My next step is to combine that drive for simpler work with broader responsibility for financial performance, leading a team and partnering with management. To me, change succeeds when people want to use the new way of working.
Hyper IslandFinancial operations and accounting-team leadership across Sweden, UK, Singapore and US
Oxford LeadershipInternational group finance, budgeting, forecasting and board reporting
Cloud RedovisningHands-on accounting across industries, systems and business models
Turning problems into working tools.
Mailhandler
Mail and task workflows for accounting teams, with delegation, responsibility, recurring work and structured handoffs. Built using AI coding agents.
Prototype · pilot plannedAutomotive accounting
Processing transaction reports, supporting documents and different VAT treatments, with accounting transfer through the Fortnox API.
In developmentRestaurant Intelligence
Linking supplier invoice lines with ingredient prices and recipe costs, to explore better purchasing and menu economics.
In developmentChapter 04 / The visionAI-native by design · Human-led where it matters
AI-native finance.
Human-led decisions.
To me, AI-native finance means designing the process around the people doing the work — not adding a chatbot to yesterday's paperwork. A manager could approve an invoice on a phone. A chef could photograph a receipt. Someone could explain a missing transaction by voice or a short message. Behind the scenes, AI and clear rules can structure the information, run routine checks and ask only for what is missing. Nobody should have to enter the same information twice.
That is as much a leadership and change-management challenge as a technical one. It starts with listening to chefs, restaurant managers and finance colleagues, understanding their routines and making the new way of working genuinely easier. Finance must still own the controls, authorizations, budgets, forecasts and cash flow. The goal is less time collecting numbers, and more time using them to improve the business.
THE PRINCIPLE
People shouldn't have to adapt to the system. The system should adapt to them.
Photo
A missing receipt, captured in seconds.
Voice
A quick explanation without another form.
Quick approval
A clear decision, right on a phone.
Illustrative workflow possibilities — not claims about the current systems at Urban Italian Group or features already built.
01 / ARRIVECapture
An invoice, a phone photo, a short voice note or a simple reply enters one coherent workflow.
02 / CHECKVerify
AI and rules structure the input, check the basics and flag missing or unusual details.
03 / DECIDEApprove
The right person gets a clear, easy approval request — with context and an audit trail.
04 / LEARNImprove
Verified information reaches accounting and reporting without another round of retyping.
WHERE THIS CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE
Start by removing small, repeated moments of administration. Then build on reliable data to strengthen financial control, forecasting, restaurant performance and international growth — without making people work harder to feed the system.
01Supplier invoices & approvals
Mobile-friendly approvals with proper authorization, controls and a clear history of decisions.
02Bank reconciliation & close
Let the system match transactions; ask employees for missing receipts by photo or a quick response.
03Forecasting & performance
Spend less time collecting data and more time leading performance, cash flow and planning.
04Purchasing & recipe economics
Turn information already captured into ingredient price trends and practical recipe insights.
I don't want to replace people with AI. I want to take unnecessary administration off their shoulders — and help lead a finance function where people can focus on the work they're good at and enjoy.
Chapter 05 / The experimentA small idea you can test
A builder's mindset.
A finance leader's perspective.
A heart for food.
A small example of the AI-native approach: information from a supplier invoice can become verified ingredient prices, then better recipe costing and purchasing insight — without another round of manual retyping. Try the synthetic example below. Restaurant Intelligence is still in development.
TRY IT / SYNTHETIC RECIPE COSTING
Move the ingredient price and see the effect on one serving of Carbonara.
255 SEK / kg
190 SEK380 SEK
Ingredient cost / portion39.19 kr
Difference from baseline0.00 kr
Food cost / 180 SEK ex VAT21.8%
Synthetic example, no live supplier data. Assumptions: 40 g Pecorino and 28.99 SEK of other ingredient costs per portion. This measures ingredient cost, not restaurant profit. No changes are stored.
I want to combine international finance experience, AI-assisted building and a genuine passion for food to help shape the next generation of finance at Urban Italian Group.
Let’s build an AI-native finance function that moves the business forward.
I've spent my career looking for smarter ways to work. With AI, we can now adapt the workflow to the person — a photo, a voice note, a quick approval — while strengthening controls, developing the team and creating better financial insight. That's the kind of change I want to lead.