Halving month-end close to five days at Essentia Analytics

Life before Payhawk

As a behavioural analytics firm, Essentia Analytics understands the power of data for decision-making. The team had already onboarded several different solutions to manage spending and make company payments, but they found that using multiple disconnected tools was causing efficiency headaches.

"We found we were always chasing invoices and also had a lot of rekey and reentry issues, especially around payments. We realised we had a huge opportunity for improvement," COO Julian Hall explained.

From disconnected solutions to centralised spend

"Before Payhawk, we used a couple of point solutions, excel, and a few different credit cards, but we didn't have an all-in-one centralised solution," Finance Director Carolina added.

By moving to Payhawk, the Essentia Analytics team has completely controlled spending, gained vital visibility, and cut out data entry issues. Our comprehensive spend management solution offers a connected and efficient experience with credit cards, AP, expense management workflows and corporate card controls, and reimbursements, all in one place.

"Managing operations is one of the key roles of the finance function," Carolina explained. "The first thing I did when I moved to Essentia Analytics was to look into our time-draining activities."

"For us, spend management was a quick win; we saw Payhawk as the future where we could have expense data entry, credit cards, approvals, spend requests, paying invoices, reimbursements, all in one."

Saving time for strategy: A rapid ROI

At Payhawk, we've helped save Essentia Analytics so much time on manual finance tasks that their finance team has been able to add strategic, non-finance responsibilities to their role.

"Using Payhawk has been a game changer; we've even been able to allocate resources to revenue-impacting teams directly," Carolina mentioned. "We have an employee in the finance team who now spends half of her time working as an SDR."

The Essentia Analytics team has also cut its month-end close in half thanks to data entry automation. Where once they'd spent over ten days closing the month, they now achieve it in just five thanks to automated data entry throughout the month rather than at the end.

Creating a strong spend culture

One of the other transformations for the team at Essentia Analytics has been in how they approach spend culture. By decentralising budget ownership with Payhawk’s easy-to-use platform, they’ve empowered teams to manage their own expenses responsibly. "Everyone knows exactly what they can spend and when," Carolina added. This shift not only saved the finance team from unnecessary back-and-forth but also fostered a proactive, accountable culture where teams take ownership of their budgets and are more mindful of their spending.

Boosting flexibility with credit cards (and a customisable solution)

Saving time to focus on strategy and revenue generation is a big benefit for Essentia Analytics, as is the flexibility they get with both payments and spend management.

"Using credit cards with Payhawk is a big benefit for us. It means we have more flexibility as we don't have to tie up our cash up front."

But the flexibility doesn't end there; the finance team can also decide exactly how it controls the business' spend. At Essentia Analytics, they centralise the AP and subscriptions but delegate employee expenses. "And Payhawk lets you set that up in a way that works for you," Carolina explained.

Like the sound of saving time and getting flexible spend management, including *credit cards (UK and US only) at your company? Book a demo to discover how to close your month faster and achieve more with your finance function.