How Rarebreed Veterinary Partners prepared for scale with Ramp

Prior to partnering with Ramp in 2020, Rarebreed faced frequent challenges with the credit limit enforced by its legacy bank. “As a startup organization, we couldn’t receive a reasonable credit limit or platform from other corporate credit card platforms, and the platforms that could offer something reasonable didn’t have the technological capabilities to keep up with our company,” explains Eric Chabot, VP of Accounting and Controller. “We had a $30,000 monthly limit for a $40M revenue business, and that often led to significant administrative hurdles and frustrations: e.g., cards maxing out, cards taking a week to be delivered, etc.” 

With its existing system, Rarebreed didn’t have real-time visibility over corporate spend. “We only got a monthly credit card statement,” says Eric. “We didn’t have a direct line of sight into spend. We didn’t have a portal where we could see everyone’s card and increase limits as needed.” If Eric wanted to increase an employee’s card limit, he would have to spend upwards of 30 minutes calling his bank and speaking with an account representative. “It was just ridiculous,” he says.

These frustrations were only exacerbated as Rarebreed quickly began to scale. Each of the organization’s 120+ locations has its own balance sheet, income statement, cashflow, and credit cards. “With over 300 credit cards out there, any type of manual administration is just a massive time suck,” says Eric. “We could not possibly have run financials for 120 practices by using our legacy system of bank cards,” he says. “It wasn’t scalable. We’re trying to get investors, we’re trying to acquire practices. We’re trying to grow. I can’t spend half the day dealing with our corporate credit cards because we exceeded our $30K limit -- again.” 

Rarebreed needed a corporate card partner that could support the company’s growth.

“Ramp was imperative when we joined in September of 2020,” says Eric. The credit line Ramp offers is based on available cash, which enabled Rarebreed to run its corporate cards and make monthly payments without concern. “That was a massive efficiency that we gained,” says Eric.

Once Rarebreed partnered with Ramp, it was able to remove its legacy accounts and cards. Eric notes that the ability to collaborate with the Ramp team and design an expense management system that made sense for his company was essential. “When we joined up with Ramp, we really felt like partners in trying to build something,” says Eric. “The response wasn’t cookie cutter. The Ramp team said: that’s really interesting. Let’s see if we can build it. And it felt really easy and efficient.” 

With Ramp, issuing new cards and updating existing card limits is seamless. Rather than spend 30+ minutes on the phone with a bank account representative, Eric can now adjust spend limits near instantly. “Ramp takes me 15 seconds -- and half of that is trying to make sure I remember my password,” he says.

The ease of use extends to the employees who use Ramp, too. “The simplicity of the Ramp technology in submitting receipts and memos via text or the app has been excellent,” says Eric. “Even our employees more hesitant with new technology have been able to navigate the Ramp portal. Furthermore, the Ramp Employee Expense Reimbursement platform has allowed us to scale our business further and eliminate the time-consuming, manual reimbursement submission process.”

Ramp supports an integration with NetSuite, which means Rarebreed’s formerly manual reconciliation process has become automated. “We do a huge volume of transactions, and Ramp helps allocate the expenses and payments to individual locations seamlessly,” says Eric.

Since partnering with Ramp, Rarebreed has reduced some of the lengthy manual processes that had previously hindered efficient operations and optimal growth. The reimbursement process, for example, which had previously taken 2.5 weeks, has been shortened to three days with Ramp. The complex, multi-practice month-end close process, which takes 10-12 business days, has gotten tighter and more accurate. Plus, integrating with NetSuite and establishing vendor rule mappings has saved the finance team hours of manual postings. 

The efficiencies Ramp has helped Rarebreed gain have enabled the company to scale from seven locations and $2.4M in revenue to 120+ locations and $300M+ revenue within four years. It’s also instituted critical real-time visibility into and understanding of cashflow. 

“Cashflow is everything for a startup business,” says Eric. “I can look in Ramp and see my spend for the month immediately. I don’t have to go on 14 different platforms. There’s no ambiguity, there’s no passcode. It’s all right there.” 

In addition to providing greater visibility into spend, Ramp has enabled Rarebreed to institute common sense controls and guardrails around employee spend. “If someone needs an immediate limit increase, the ability to do it fast with Ramp creates efficiency,” says Eric. “There’s an operational understanding of controls. Controls are good, but they shouldn’t mitigate operations -- especially when people really aren’t trying to do anything risky; they’re just trying to do their jobs.” 

Those efficiencies, in turn, enable the finance department to do their jobs better. “Ramp has allowed us to scale the program so we can actually spend more time focusing on areas that require focus,” says Eric. “The integrations and mapping and setting up categories and all that allow us to then reallocate the resources we have to other areas.” 

The financial efficiencies that Ramp drives is also a point of emphasis for Revelstoke Capital, the Private Equity sponsors of the business. “We’re focused on making technology investments that make our teams more productive,” says Amish Jhaveri, Managing Director at Revelstoke Capital. “With Ramp, I have the confidence that we can continue expanding the business in an
efficient and repeatable manner.”

At the end of Q1 2024, Rarebreed reached an exciting milestone: 116,000+ Ramp transactions totaling over $100M in Ramp spend. “That spend correlates with savings,” says Eric. “Ramp has saved us an immense amount of time and effort. Ramp has always been a great partner.”