The finance team at Andros does more than manage the company's books. Maksim Gekhman, CPA, Andros’s Director of Finance, describes himself and the four members of the finance department as a “strategic finance team.”

“The mission of the finance team at Andros is to provide visibility into financial performance and forecasts to help the leadership team make informed decisions based on data. They tell the story of the company through the lens of financial analysis and information and provide support to make and implement operational, financial, and strategic decisions. This allows management to make the best use of capital, effectively manage cash flow, and plan financially to ensure the organization's strategic goals can be met,” he says.

That’s a big part of why inefficient systems and tools don’t work for Max. His team can’t spend time on low-value manual tasks. One of their previous vendor’s biggest drawbacks was that it was nearly impossible for Andros’s finance team to track spending on credit cards they had issued to employees. And that’s why, two years ago, they went looking for a new credit card solution.

“It took an hour to issue a credit card, and, honestly, I was dreading every time a new executive would join the company—I’d have to log in and send them a virtual credit card, and the whole thing was such a cumbersome process!” he said of the solution Andros used at the time. “You couldn’t even change spend limits after issuing cards. Instead, you needed to create a new card.” 

Max quickly realized Rippling had the potential to streamline and integrate a lot of Andros’s disparate systems.

“We needed something that could integrate with payroll and our employee roster, so we could easily assign credit cards to individuals and track their spend,” Max said. That’s what led him to Rippling.

As he learned about all the different systems Rippling could consolidate, Andros began dropping more and more inefficient tools and replacing them with Rippling products.

“I think we’ve pretty much signed up for all of the products at Rippling by now,” he said.

First, Andros left Sequoia One PEO for Rippling Payroll and Time & Attendance. Then, they replaced 15Five with Rippling’s HR products, including Pulse and Learning Management.

From there, they replaced Bill.com and Expensify with Bill Pay and Spend Management, and they’re now in the process of replacing two IT vendors, ManageEngine and Sophos, with Rippling’s IT solution.

“Doing all these consolidations has been very impactful for the finance and admin departments,” Max said. “With these consolidations, we decreased the time we spent on manual tasks that we were doing before Rippling. This helped us reduce our month-end close process to three business days from the previous 10 business days, which is world-class.  We have been able to increase automation to scale our team, so we spend less time querying and calculating and more time analyzing and communicating.  All of this helps the business, driving enterprise value.”

I think we’ve pretty much signed up for all of the products at Rippling by now.

Maksim Gekhman, CPA

Andros’ Director of Finance

With so many systems now consolidated in Rippling, Andros automated many of the manual tasks that were previously eating up so much time. Max estimates that he and the rest of the finance team save 20 hours of work a month thanks to automation. 

“With the third-party cost savings and efficiencies gained for the team, we estimate that the total annual savings for the company is approximately $100,000,” Max said.

With so much time saved, Max and his team can focus on strategic initiatives that help Andros succeed. The finance team can do more than report data; they also have time to analyze and take action with their business unit leaders. An example is related to the company’s AWS spend.  Max and his team ran a report and noticed their AWS spending had been increasing month-over-month.

“By running reports that track credit card spend in Rippling, we noticed that the AWS cost was consistently trending upwards every month. This prompted the finance and R&D departments to investigate and ultimately ended up with us getting the spending back under control,” he said. “Previously, it would’ve been hard to see the increasing costs in real-time. We would have had to wait until we closed the month—a whole 30 days—to see the issue. But because of the real-time reporting in Rippling, we can run this report straight away, and it’s visible in seconds.”

Because of the real-time reporting in Rippling, we can run this report straight away, and it’s visible in seconds.

Maksim Gekhman, CPA

Andros’ Director of Finance

• $100k saved each year. “The reduction in third-party vendor spend on solutions combined with the automation that was part of the Rippling solutions has a total impact of ~ $100k/year.”
• 20 hours saved each month. “The finance and G&A teams have saved time on manual tasks by transitioning to Rippling Payroll, Spend, and HR solutions.”
• End-of-month close time decreased by 70%. “We decreased our close time from ten business days to three business days, which is world-class.”