How Ramp helped Zola do more with less

Zola’s legacy expense management system was a combination of inefficient manual tools. Finance team members found themselves poring over spreadsheets, manually tracking credit cards, and constantly chasing receipts. This system didn’t give the team visibility into corporate spend, and reporting was unreliable. 

What’s more, the cumbersome and manually-intensive process didn’t align with the company’s overarching goal of streamlining processes through technology and AI. “Being lean and having everybody wear multiple hats is what we’re doing right now,” explains Zola VP Controller, Joe Horn, “So we rely heavily on our systems to be able to automate a lot of that work for us.”

The push to automate and streamline wherever possible comes straight from the top. “We are constantly being challenged to think of ideas to implement more AI in our business processes,” says Joe. “How can we implement AI with our expenses, reporting, accounting and auditing functions?”

Joe and his team sought an expense management solution that could leverage this type of technology to generate efficiency, improve visibility and reporting, and make better use of Zola’s small but mighty finance and accounting team.

Zola considered various expense management systems before partnering with Ramp. “I remember when we were analyzing different systems, we had a comparison chart that outlined the positives and negatives for each,” says Joe. “Across the board, Ramp was saving us time, implementing better controls, issuing virtual cards in a more seamless way than we previously could, integrating with our accounting software in a way that we couldn’t have previously.”

The very decision to partner with Ramp, thus, felt streamlined. “The decision was quick and easy,” says Joe. “We tested Ramp out for a month or two with a couple of business owners and received across the board positive feedback. Then we put it into action— and ever since, I really haven’t heard any negative feedback from employees using Ramp at Zola.”

Joe appreciates Ramp’s ease of use, which makes it easy to set up employees on the platform. “It’s so intuitive they can use it themselves,” Joe says. “With other systems we’ve used, we’ve had to sit there with the employee, do little 15-minute seminars to educate them. We don’t need to do that with Ramp.”

Once it debuted Ramp, the finance team coded automated controls within the platform to enable greater visibility and exert better control over corporate spend. “Once we set it up initially, we can just let it go,” says Joe. This differs from legacy systems, he says, which required considerable manual oversight and intervention. “The more automation Ramp has provided us over the last couple of years, the easier it is for me and the rest of my team,” he says.

Implementing Ramp has enabled the finance team to make good on its goal of staying lean and agile. “The number one thing we’re trying to do each year is to find ways to free up more time for all of us,” says Joe. “Any time you can free up extra time to work on other areas such as analyzing the business trends and helping to make strategic decisions, the better.” With Ramp, the finance team has been able to shift its collective focus from the tedious, formerly highly manual tasks of reconciliation, check-writing, and monitoring to higher-level strategic efforts. 

In a sense, Ramp’s AI has unleashed the uniquely human power of the finance team. “We are now able to sit back and review things in a way we weren’t previously able to do,” says Joe. “It’s really just another resource to make our lives easier and to save us time at the end of the day.”

One way Ramp makes the team’s lives easier is by improving spend visibility and enhancing the reliability of reporting— all while maintaining high levels of security. “In the past, we would issue a virtual card via email, and then we didn’t really know who had access to that information,” says Joe. “Today, we know that when we issue a virtual card in Ramp, it goes to the owner, they have control over it, and they won’t be able to share it with other folks unless they want to. It’s more secure— and trust and safety has been a number-one issue for us over the last couple of years.”

Ramp’s integration with Slack makes it easy for the finance team to stay abreast of any unusual or potentially fraudulent charges. “The thing I love the most about Ramp is when I get a Slack message alert saying that somebody spent $12K on X vendor,” says Joe. “In the past, I didn’t have that visibility. Today, I can Slack that person on the spot and make sure they authorized the charge.” That ability has reduced both instances of out-of-policy spend and fraudulent spend. “It helps me sleep at night knowing that any time a charge happens on any of our Ramp cards, someone’s going to see it,” says Joe.

That peace of mind helps position Zola as a more audit-ready company. “I’ve noticed in the last few years that auditors have focused on more random sampling,” says Joe. “You really need backup and receipts and memos for every single charge, regardless of the dollar amount. Having Ramp store all that information where we can easily call upon it if it’s picked in an audit gives me confidence that we are always prepared for an audit.”

Ramp’s automations have also expedited the team’s month-end close process, helping cut the process nearly in half: from 20-25 days down to 12-13. “We’re trying to get into a good rhythm of closing the books within 10-12 days, and Ramp has been a huge, huge lifesaver and time saver for us,” says Joe.

Ultimately, the entire team— finance and other employees alike -- agree that Ramp has been a boon for Zola’s business. “The feedback I get from everyone at Zola is just positive,” says Joe. “With other systems, I get a mix of positive and negative feedback. I hear all good things about Ramp.”