Before Rippling, Avidon Health used Chase and Dext for corporate card management. "There couldn’t be a solid, enforceable Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) because the process had too many steps to remember—that was the problem," said AJ Johnson, Business Operations Manager at Avidon Health.

Multiple people were involved in spending management, including AJ, the SVP of Operations, multiple accountants, and all the cardholders. AJ elaborated, "This process involved the efforts of multiple team members, which wasn't an efficient use of the SVP of Operations' valuable time. She added, "We lacked the means to establish a system that empowered card users to independently access, reconcile, and upload receipts.”

AJ pointed to reconciling recurring charges as a particular pain point. That was maybe doable when it was one team member with one card, she said. But when it became three cards, then six, then 10—without a dedicated team member to handle financial processes, it was impossible to stay on top of them all. 

Avidon Health needed a solution that not only gave employees more autonomy but also automated and streamlined some of the manual processes.

When Avidon Health found Rippling, it was for payroll, not Spend Management. But later, when AJ was looking for solutions to the company's finance process woes, her Rippling AM had an idea.

"I was looking at solutions that were more holistic and all-in-one: bill payment, credit, the whole spectrum," AJ said. "But at the same time, I was drowning just keeping up with cards, and our AM walked us through Spend Management and it just made sense. It was almost a no-brainer because we love Rippling for payroll. We thought, if it's half as good as that, we're going to be fine."

Since implementing Rippling Spend Management, AJ has reduced a two-day reconciliation process to something that takes virtually no time. Instead of involving unnecessary stakeholders at all levels of the organization, cardholders can access Rippling and take charge of their own accounts.

With Rippling, Avidon Health sets their policy, and cardholding employees now have the responsibility and autonomy to manage their own card use, including leaving notes for managers in case of anomalies, like when they accidentally use their company card for a personal transaction. All AJ needs to do is skim a monthly report to make sure everything is in order.

More employee autonomy means that AJ and other stakeholders have a lot of their time back to focus on strategic priorities they were forced to put off before Rippling. And they're not the only ones benefiting. 

"Administratively, there is a lot of consolidation, streamlining, and automation behind the processes, which has helped us enforce our policies much better," she explained. "But on the other side, for the cardholders, I think there's been a lot more clarity around what is in their tasks and responsibilities, being able to build the management in a way that really reflects our values and policies and giving them the resources to do things autonomously."

So what's on her plate now that she isn't spending so much time manually reconciling employee spending?

"It's allowed me to start focusing on employee benefits like we really want to," she said. “In intersecting roles, we spend a lot of time managing administrative and bureaucratic tasks which can cut away from really important responsibilities. And for me, the key responsibility that I now have much more time for is listening to employees and empowering them so they can live their fullest lives inside and outside Avidon Health.”

AJ said, "Our Rippling salesperson had a great understanding of what Rippling is, where Rippling is going, and where we are, and how Rippling can continue to grow with us and our needs. I mean, the fact that we're sitting here and talking right now is a testament to it—a year and a half later, there's still genuine interest in trying to create a product that really fits and works for your clients.” 

I feel like we have partners as if they were sitting right here at the table with us. Those are the kinds of conversations we can have in depth and that's just what we need.

AJ Johnson,

Business Operations Manager at Avidon Health

• Time saved:  Rippling automations save Avidon Health two days a month on spend management.
• Breezy corporate card management: AJ and her team can manage one-time and recurring expenses across 12 corporate credit cards—without any cumbersome manual work. 
• Consolidated spend: By linking employee spend to payroll, AJ has visibility of all company expenses in a single system—making it easier to control costs and close the books.