The Challenge: Seeking “Strategic” Spend Management at Findigs

Findigs builds experiences for renters and property managers alike via a digital application and tenant screening platform. As a pioneer in proptech, Findigs has always been at the forefront of adopting efficient solutions to drive business growth. Utilizing Ramp for credit card management marked their commitment to leveraging modern finance tools. However, Head of Finance Sebastian Hart identified a crucial gap: the need for a more strategic layer atop Ramp's functionalities to amplify visibility, and foster collaboration around vendor spend decisions.

"While Ramp streamlined certain aspects of our spend management, it didn't offer the deep insights necessary for strategic financial management," Hart explained. "We needed to understand not just the 'what' and the 'when,' but also the 'why' behind our spend decisions.”  Hart elaborated, “Ramp and Quickbooks could report on how much we spent, but could not tell us why we chose our vendors, help us align on budget and ROI expectations, explain the causes of unexpected budget variances, or even do simple things like track renewal dates."‍

In addition, Hart wanted to reduce the time he and his team spent on low-value tasks involving managing vendor spend.  From accounting for prepaid expenses to investigating budget variances to researching price benchmarks, Hart sought more automation for these manual, time-consuming activities.
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Accordingly, Findigs aimed to enrich their financial operations with a tool that complemented Ramp, providing greater context and transparency on its vendor spend and fostering a culture of strategic thinking around vendor management.

The Solution: Integrating Glean.ai for Strategic Spend Management & Enhanced Collaboration

Findigs partnered with Glean.ai to redefine their approach to expense management and vendor spend decisions, and the adoption of Glean.ai was a game-changer for the company.
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"Glean’s unique AI and insights not only automated our processes but also prompted crucial discussions internally, encouraging a deeper examination of our spending habits," Hart remarked. “Our whole team has started operating more like owners.  They are scrutinizing bills now, negotiating discounts, and proactively seeking out alternatives.  I love it!’”
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Specific features Hart’s team utilizes in Glean that enable more strategic decision-making capabilities include:
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As a result of this process, Glean.ai has a complete view of Findig’s vendor spend, which includes AP bills Findigs pays through Glean and expenses charged on its Ramp cards.  “The real-time visibility and ability to easily double click to understand drivers of month-to-month variances in Glean on all our vendor spend is extremely powerful,” insisted Hart.

Real-time budget vs. actual alerts: Immediately after a bill is received, Glean.ai notifies users of any over-budget items, detailing the reasons.

‍Vendor management: Glean.ai monitors renewal dates, centralizes vendor documents, and facilitates new vendor approvals.

‍Benchmarking data: The platform analyzes pricing data to proactively pinpoint cost-saving opportunities.

‍Advanced finance automation: Glean.ai predicts likely accruals, automates prepaid expense amortizations, and simplifies the onboarding of new vendors.

“The feedback from across the organization has been overwhelmingly positive, with employees appreciating the additional context and analytics they have on their spend, and my finance team relishing the improved collaboration. Furthermore, our managers now have the tools to monitor their spend vs. budget in real time, allowing for proactive adjustments rather than retrospective regret," Hart emphasized.

Why Two Solutions?

Ramp effectively handles transaction management and financial controls, but it doesn’t specialize in the nuanced analysis of those expenditures. 

"Glean.ai fills this gap," Hart asserts.”  Glean.ai analyzes each bill at the line-item level and details all the items purchased, the unit prices paid, and the volumes consumed.  It tells you the ‘story’ of each bill and how the vendor relationship is evolving over time through its powerful “gleans,” which are hard-to-detect insights about the vendor spend.

"Glean.ai transforms tracking expenses into a strategic exercise that directly impacts our bottom line.  It’s certainly worth maintaining two systems for this benefit," claims Hart.

Getting Started With Glean

Onboarding Glean.ai was a swift and straightforward process. "Setting up our departments, importing vendor information, and creating approval workflows in Glean was seamless," Hart added.

Findigs also created a new group email to provide to vendors so that bills could be forwarded to Glean, Ramp, and its finance team at the same time. This setup also frees employees from the burden of tracking down and forwarding receipts to each platform.
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As a result of this process, Glean.ai has a complete view of Findig’s vendor spend, which includes AP bills Findigs pays through Glean and expenses charged on its Ramp cards.  “The real-time visibility and ability to easily double click to understand drivers of month-to-month variances in Glean on all our vendor spend is extremely powerful,” insisted Hart.

The Results: Accelerated Efficiency and Empowered Spend Culture at Findigs

Implementing Glean.ai, alongside Ramp, has reaped substantial benefits for Findigs:

Streamlined, Automated Operations: Glean.ai’s automated workflows, proactive alerts, and actionable insights has saved Findigs an estimated 15-20 hours each month, with additional savings from enhanced analytical capabilities.

‍Headcount Savings: By avoiding the premature need to expand the finance team, Findigs has saved the equivalent of a junior to mid-level finance position, conserving resources for strategic investments.

‍Strategic Spend Discussions: The platform instigated a cultural transformation, fostering a proactive approach to spend management. "Glean.ai enables conversations about spend that just didn’t happen before," Hart noted. "Now, our teams are much more aligned and informed on spend decisions."

‍Enhanced Spend Visibility Glean.ai offered unparalleled insights into Findigs' spending, enabling granular analysis and forecasting. Hart highlighted usage-based vendors like AWS that can quickly get out of control, saying “We’re now able to understand where increases are coming from, and proactively take action.”

‍Better Negotiated Deals: One of the standout features of Glean.ai, according to Hart, is its unique AI-driven insights that continually flag opportunities for savings. "We were considering a new vendor agreement when Glean.ai alerted us to an existing contract for similar services. This insight alone saved us over $10,000. It's these strategic savings that underline the value Glean.ai brings to Findigs," Hart remarked.

‍Empowerment and Accountability: The platform has instilled a sense of ownership across departments, as employees are now more involved in financial decisions. As a result, departments are initiating discussions on optimizing vendor contracts and spend efficiency.

‍Overall Financial Success: The dual use of Glean.ai and Ramp has significantly contributed to Findigs' financial success by enabling headcount savings and enhancing the management of vendor costs. “All in, I suspect that Glean has enabled us to shave 3-5% off our non-headcount spend with its analytics and focus on collaboration.”

These results paint a compelling picture of how Glean.ai has strategically augmented the capabilities of Ramp to not only simplify Findigs’ finance team's workload, but also instill a culture of strategic spend management throughout the company.

Hart summarizes, “Whereas other tools help ensure compliance with spend policies, the key difference with Glean is that it also ensures that the company is spending responsibly. The line-item-level analysis and insights gleaned on bills make conversations about vendor spend naturally happen when they weren’t occurring before. Those conversations drive better, faster decisions, which enables us to be more profitable.”

A Testament to Transformation

Under Hart's leadership, Findigs has not only seen operational improvements but also a significant cultural shift in spend management.  "The synergy between Glean.ai and Ramp is undeniable," Hart concluded. "While Ramp gets you off the ground, Glean.ai propels you forward, ensuring every vendor spend decision is scrutinized and every opportunity for optimization is explored."

For businesses like Findigs, the combination of Glean.ai and Ramp offers more than just a robust tech stack—it represents a strategic advantage, fostering a culture of accountability, automation, and precision that paves the way for sustained growth and financial health.