Recharge chooses Airbase’s Guided Procurement.

An initial solution fell short.

In early 2022, Recharge’s Accounting and Legal teams collaborated to create a procurement process within their contract management system (CMS) as a way to document requests and approvals on contract-based spend.

At the time, approvals from the FP&A, Legal, IT, and InfoSec teams were gathered through a mix of emails and Slack and were recorded in a Google Sheet. Spend owners and approvers met monthly to share knowledge about upcoming software renewals and various other planned spend.

While the process worked to monitor and control spend, the Accounting and Legal teams and the spend requesters spent a lot of time following up with various teams for approvals and tracking down contracts. Full and consistent data wasn’t always captured across all the key tools.

After several months of running this process, there continued to be inefficiencies and lots of “chasing” for approvals and documentation. Users, including the various key approvers, were not satisfied with the overall procurement experience.

The Legal and Accounting teams continued to brainstorm and implement revisions to the process but the larger issues of inefficiency and manual work remained. Requests were still slow to approve, and documentation and information capture were still being duplicated in multiple tools by multiple teams. Feedback from stakeholders continued to lean negative, and there was too much ongoing manual work by a small group of people.

The Guided Procurement solution.

Around this time, Airbase was rolling out its new Guided Procurement Module, and the Airbase team reached out to Erin to share information about the new features. While the Recharge team saw the potential benefits of moving the majority of the procurement process over to Airbase, Recharge had just recently rolled out their new process, and the thought of making another change so quickly was daunting.

As frequent early adopters, the Recharge team was interested in learning more and requested a detailed demo of Guided Procurement. After a deeper dive, the Recharge team saw that Airbase’s Guided Procurement would address the major pain points they were still experiencing in their current process, and Erin and Joe shared the proposed solution with the broader Recharge team.

The team agreed that implementing Guided Procurement would “greatly improve efficiency and the overall user experience for our employees.” ​

A straightforward setup process.

While the Recharge team knew implementing Guided Procurement was the way to go, after just spending a year rolling out a new procurement process, the thought of another process change project was overwhelming. Erin and her team were surprised, however, with how straightforward it was to add Guided Procurement to their existing Airbase setup. Erin shared feedback that Airbase’s customer service team members “were really great at helping us set everything up. I liked that they let me drive the process even though they could have done the setup so much faster. They were very patient.”

Not only was the original setup of Guided Procurement straightforward but the Recharge team is now able to quickly make revisions and additional enhancements to their processes as business needs change.

Feedback from key stakeholders has been very positive now, as Recharge can quickly incorporate suggestions and requests from other teams. Erin noted that she has led other teams in building procurement processes in three different systems, and previously, she’s had difficulty revising the process.

Transparency and efficiency for multiple stakeholders.

The challenge of multi-stakeholder approval in the procurement process is one that many companies face. Until Airbase Guided Procurement, there have been limited options for a procurement intake process that integrates with other key stakeholder systems and also allows for simultaneous approvals.

Recharge Controller, Joe Gibbons, pointed out that this new approach saves the company time because approval workflows are no longer sequential. Once manager, budget owner, and finance reviews are complete, other key functional reviewers (Legal, IT, and InfoSec) can review and approve spend requests simultaneously and in their own systems, with integration between those systems and Airbase.

He also noted that more thorough, documented purchase requests provide better visibility and control and help streamline FP&A and cash management activities. Joe explained that once Recharge began using Guided Procurement,

Great UI leads to great UX.

Joe appreciates the clean UI and great visibility into where requests stand in the process.

Erin echoed the same sentiments about usability.

Greater control with purchase orders.

With Guided Procurement, the Recharge team is now leveraging purchase orders, which are simple to generate and match when invoices come through. This enhances the control environment and gives invoice approvers increased confidence that amounts are correct. Erin emphasized how much easier it is to implement controls with POs.

“We generally won’t process invoices where the spend owner has skipped the procurement process. We have increased confidence issuing a payment when the spend request has been approved in Guided Procurement by all key stakeholders and we can match an invoice we receive to a PO.”

Erin explained that when incoming invoices are automatically matched to POs in Airbase, the teams save an enormous amount of time not having to track down approvals and manually review original contract details. The PO process ensures approvals are obtained up front, before a purchase commitment is made, and it reduces the scramble for teams to review and approve something at the last minute. Airbase automatically matches the PO and invoice for a full audit trail.

Improved oversight, safer payments.

Having more transparent, streamlined, and user-friendly procurement processes helps Recharge enforce a strong control environment. Joe called out the added protections that Airbase’s Risk team provides by monitoring payments moving through the platform. The Airbase team helps monitor certain invoice details and payment activities to help mitigate the risk of fraudulent payments.

“It’s good to know that on the payments side, Airbase is behind the scenes helping keep our payments safe.”

After using Guided Procurement for a couple of months, Joe, Erin, and team met with key procurement stakeholders at Recharge to get feedback. Users shared both positive feedback and suggestions for improvements. The ease of making updates to Guided Procurement allowed Erin to turn stakeholder feedback into actionable change, and within a two-week period, she was able to roll out an updated version of the process, addressing most of the suggestions from the team. Once these updates were made, feedback from all stakeholders has continued to be positive, and users are extremely happy with the efficiency, transparency, and control Guided Procurement has given them.

Erin shared a favorite piece of feedback that came from one of the key stakeholders who submitted the second spend request through the new Guided Procurement workflow in Airbase. The spend owner proclaimed,

And that’s when you know you’re heading in the right direction.