We Built This Because Numbers Tell Stories
Started in a cramped Taipei office in 2018, systemtoolx emerged from one frustrating observation: businesses were drowning in financial data but starving for actual insight.
Seven years later, we're still the same small team obsessed with turning spreadsheets into strategic decisions.
How This Started
Back in 2018, our founder Veera Lindholm was consulting for mid-sized manufacturers in Taiwan. She kept seeing the same pattern: companies had tons of financial reports but couldn't figure out which products actually made money once you factored in everything.
One client was convinced their premium line was their cash cow. Turned out, after properly allocating overhead and factoring in the actual sales cycle, it was barely breaking even. Their mid-tier products? Those were funding the whole operation.
That's when we realized there was a gap. Not just in tools, but in how people were taught to think about profitability. So we started small—workshops for finance teams, teaching practical analysis methods that worked in the real world, not just in textbooks.
We're not here to sell miracle solutions. We're here because financial analysis shouldn't require a PhD to be useful.
How We Actually Work
We've refined our approach through hundreds of client engagements. It's not revolutionary—just methodical, practical, and focused on what matters.
Context First
We spend time understanding your business model before touching any numbers. A retail margin analysis looks nothing like a manufacturing profitability breakdown. Cookie-cutter approaches don't work here.
Real Cost Allocation
Most companies use allocation methods that made sense in 1985. We help you build cost structures that reflect how your business actually operates now—whether that's activity-based or something custom.
Decision-Focused Output
Analysis means nothing if it doesn't lead to better decisions. We format findings around specific questions: Should we discontinue this line? Where should we invest? Which customers are worth the effort?
Teachable Frameworks
Our goal isn't to create dependency. We document everything we do so your team can replicate the analysis next quarter. If you need us again, it should be for new challenges, not the same ones.
Incremental Implementation
We don't overhaul your entire financial reporting system on day one. Start with one product line or division, prove the value, then expand. This keeps risk low and buy-in high.
Ongoing Calibration
Business conditions change. We build in quarterly reviews to adjust assumptions, refresh benchmarks, and keep your analysis relevant. Static models become useless fast.
The People Behind the Analysis
We're a deliberately small team. Everyone here has done the actual work—building models, presenting to boards, explaining why last quarter's numbers looked weird.
Veera Lindholm
Founder and Lead ConsultantStarted her career at a Big Four firm in Helsinki, moved to Taiwan in 2015 for what was supposed to be a two-year assignment. Eight years later, she's still here because the work kept getting more interesting.
Veera specializes in cost behavior analysis and has this weird ability to spot patterns in expense data that most people miss. She's published two papers on activity-based costing in manufacturing, which sounds dry but actually changed how several clients approached their pricing.
Outside of work, she's trying to learn Mandarin and mostly failing, but her team appreciates the effort.
Tadej Kováč
Senior AnalystJoined systemtoolx in 2020 after working in corporate finance for a Taiwanese electronics manufacturer. He got tired of producing reports no one used and wanted to do work that actually influenced decisions.
Tadej handles most of our margin analysis projects and has become the go-to person for anything involving product line profitability. He's built some impressive Excel models over the years, though he's gradually moving everything to Python because he's convinced spreadsheets will eventually betray us all.
He runs ultramarathons on weekends, which explains his patience with tedious data cleaning tasks.
Finding Your Starting Point
Not sure where profitability analysis fits into your current situation? We've mapped out the most common scenarios we see.
Revenue Growth Analysis
You're probably acquiring unprofitable customers or carrying product lines that consume more resources than they generate. We help you identify which growth is actually valuable.
- Customer-level profitability assessment
- Product mix optimization modeling
- Cash conversion cycle analysis
- Pricing structure evaluation
Margin Decomposition
Your P&L looks healthy but you can't explain why some quarters are better than others, or which operational changes actually moved the numbers.
- Variance analysis frameworks
- Cost behavior pattern identification
- Contribution margin tracking systems
- Operational leverage assessment
Investment Decision Support
Before committing capital, you need realistic projections based on your actual cost structure and market position, not generic industry assumptions.
- Incremental cost modeling
- Break-even scenario planning
- Capacity utilization impact assessment
- Risk-adjusted return calculations
Diagnostic Analysis
Sometimes the best starting point is a comprehensive review that identifies the biggest opportunities without preconceptions about what the answer should be.
- Full cost structure mapping
- Benchmarking against operational norms
- Process efficiency identification
- Quick-win opportunity ranking
Recent Project Insights
We learn something new from every engagement. Here are a few lessons from work we completed in late 2024 and early 2025.
When Overhead Allocation Lies
A client was allocating overhead based on direct labor hours—a method their ERP inherited from a system installed in 1998. Problem was, their operation had automated heavily. Labor was now just 8% of total costs, but it was driving all overhead assignments. Switching to machine-hour allocation completely flipped which products looked profitable.
The Hidden Cost of Returns
An online retailer was tracking return rates but not the full cost. We mapped the entire reverse logistics process—processing time, restocking labor, packaging waste, discounted resale value, payment processing fees on refunded transactions. Returns were eating 11% of gross margin on certain categories. They adjusted their product mix accordingly.
Why We Stopped Using Standard Cost
Standard costing made sense when production was stable and predictable. But most of our clients now deal with frequent product changes, variable batch sizes, and fluctuating input costs. We've moved almost entirely to actual costing with periodic averaging. It's more work upfront but produces insights you can actually use.