Windward makes sure their payments always run smoothly with a holistic spend management platform

Industry:

Shipping, Big Data, Analytics, Insurance

Location:

Washington D.C., USA

Employees:

115

Hours saved with Mesh:

32

About Windward

Mesh spoke with Guy Talmor, Financial Controller at Windward to learn about his experience with the platform and how automation in finance saves him hours each month. Windward is a predictive intelligence company that uses AI and big data to digitalize the global maritime industry. Guy joined the company only 5 months ago, and Windward had already been using Mesh for quite some time. We loved hearing his point of view on how he felt coming in with an already established spend management system in place.

What were the challenges
you faced?

Guy admits that since he joined Windward and they were already using Mesh he didn’t experience any challenges himself. He felt lucky that he was able to benefit from the platform and not have to spend hours each month chasing after employees or worrying about attributing all the spend to the right department. He explains that being a startup, Windward uses many subscriptions. They need to make sure that everything runs smoothly, without any potential payment failures leading to a service being cancelled and a company’s worst nightmare – business downtime.

“I can only imagine how challenging it would have been, managing all the subscriptions on one corporate card and worrying about a payment not going through or the hassle that would come with cancelling a subscription”

How did Mesh address those challenges?

The fact that every subscription was linked to a unique virtual card, made everything a lot easier to manage. It was all centralized on one platform and if they ever needed to cancel a payment, they could do so in one click. They also found the on-going support and monitoring from the Mesh Customer Success team made a huge difference as they didn’t need to worry about anything going wrong, knowing they would be alerted immediately.

“Having everything automated has made our work so much easier and efficient. Receipts get uploaded and matched, we receive immediate notifications about any request, approval or transaction and best of all, we can use Mesh with our existing ERP so that everything we need from the platform gets synced instantly.”

When it comes to paying for subscriptions, employees make requests and may need to wait some time before they get approved. This can halt business activities as it might take a few weeks, or even months until they can start using the SaaS service. “With the Mesh platform, requests and approvals happen very quickly and we can all just get on with our work and focus on what we came here to do.”

What do you like most about
using Mesh?

Guy finds the software to be extremely intuitive and simple. From the day he joined Windward, he was able to use the platform immediately, an unfamiliar experience as most software systems can take a few weeks to get used to.

“I saw that I was able to save hours every month, leaving me with time to focus on things that offer more value and are in line with my job description as a Financial Controller.” 

Saving time, also meant that the company was able to overall reduce their spend and get the most out of their resources. As a startup, it was important for Windward to maximize their assets and not have time wasted manually matching receipts or categorizing expenses.

What would you say to other finance teams thinking about using
Mesh Payments?

“For a company that has a lot of subscriptions and vendors, or many expenses – Mesh is a great solution. It’s super simple to use and makes the whole payment process a lot more enjoyable than it used to be.”

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