CASE STUDY
Marble is growing fast. It is good for its bottom line but it also means that many people on the team have to wear several hats.
With the pressures of marketing their own service, servicing existing customers and keeping their investors informed and up to date, there aren’t enough hours in the day.
While Marble is growing fast and has very positive cashflow, they also have many different vendors in various sectors, all of whom have different payment schedules and billing cycles. It gets complicated fast,and spreadsheets just don’t get the job done after a certain point – which tends to happen a lot sooner than you think it will.
The result, in a startup environment, is that some invoices may be missed, which tends to lead to irate vendors. It also means that when financial reports are run to be presented to investors and other stakeholders, there are past due accounts on them.
None of those things are good, especially in the fast paced startup world, where one account on hold or credit facility cancelled could lead to a snowball of problems that need to be solved fast.
The only real options would be to hire more people, which they are not quite ready todo just yet, or to find innovative solutions. As a leading innovator themselves, it’s no surprise that Marble chose to explore the latter option.
As most tech CEOs do, Stuart started to investigate his options to automate the AP process and discovered Glean AI.
Like Marble, Glean AI is a tech company that is disrupting the status quo. The product is designed to automate the accounts payable process in ways that traditional accounting software just cannot do.
Within hours of making the decision to switch to Glean AI, and a few one on one onboarding calls, Marble was all set up. Vendors were advised of the new invoice dedicated email address to submit their billing to, and all the backend setup was done.
Now, when vendors submit invoices, they can be approved easily and queued for payment automatically. Payments happen on the date they are due, and for the correct, approved amount every time. There are no more checks to cancel or alter because they were filled out incorrectly, and no tedious processing of batch payments. It all happens instantly and easily in the background, while busy CEOs and executives focus on other aspects of their business.
"The primary problem that Glean AI solves for me today is trust that my vendors, consultants, and providers will get paid on time, and the correct amount. As a small business I really need them to trust me, because I need their best work, on time. So if I can get them paid with no fuss, predictably, it helps a lot!"
In the past, simply because they were so busy growing their company and nurturing their customer relationships, some things may have fallen through the cracks at Marble.
While the company is fully liquid, growing fast, and well-funded, this led to some of their vendors being concerned that disorganization at the company could impact their payments.
Switching to Glean eliminated late or missing payments, which ended many of those uncomfortable and unfounded conversations.
Tighter control over accounts payable, and real time data on what is owed, to whom and by when is also critical for general corporate planning. In today’s business world, things can change in an instant, and with Glean, you always know exactly where you stand as far as your invoice obligations.