“Rho’s budgeting tools give us the real-time ability to monitor our spend levels by department or project without having to pull lengthy reports. The previous systems with AmEx and Concur were clunky and made it difficult just to understand our spend patterns.”

What is InnoMark Communications?

Innomark Communications is a visual marketing agency based in Fairfield, Ohio that brands like New Belgium, Pepsi, and Talbots trust to create visual marketing assets that help attract, engage, and convert customers.

Venture to your local grocery or a major retailer in your area and chances are that you have seen displays, signage, and in-store experiences that Innomark has helped brands bring to life. Innomark’s displays and in-store graphics have helped Pepsi introduce a new design for their variety packs, promote New Belgium’s partnership with the Colorado Avalanche, and boost holiday retail sales at Talbots.  

Challenge

In addition to word-of-mouth growth, Innomark sources new business with a traveling sales team that spends most of its time on the road in front of clients. Between client dinners and travel, Innomark’s sales force generates considerable expenses that the finance team, led by their controller, Nathan Goodwin, is responsible for managing.

Innomark previously ran their T&E program through SAP Concur. While the system provided some value-add offerings like travel booking services, it created headaches for both the sales and finance teams. First, account representatives found the SAP Concur user experience tedious, and its configuration resulted in reimbursements being paid out biweekly. These issues caused frustrations for the field team, who had to spend valuable client time getting expenses submitted and would often have to wait more than a week for a reimbursement depending on submission timing.

Beyond the user experience issues and delays caused by SAP Concur, the previous T&E system added significant monthly costs to the balance sheet and didn’t cleanly integrate with the company’s other spend management solutions, including corporate cards provided by AmEx. As a result, Innomark’s costs became unnecessarily high – all for a collection of systems that did not provide the finance team with the integration, control, or oversight necessary to manage the company’s spend effectively.

The legacy T&E solution delayed employee expense and reimbursement submissions. Also, the complexity & lag in card charges hitting the system resulted in hours of training with new hires and submission delays.  

Solution

The Rho platform improves Innomark Communications' spend management in three ways:

1. Spend control: Rho replaced and upgraded the previous travel & expense system, saving the finance team upwards of 10 hours of operational time and over $1000 of fees they would have paid on SAP Concur every month.
2. Automated expenses: Rho simplified expense reimbursements by making payouts more timely and easier to manage for sales and finance.
3. Eliminate late receipts and accounting delays: The Rho Mobile app and text alerts made it easy for employees to submit hundreds of monthly expenses with proper labeling, which saves the finance team time at month-end.

Results

Since implementing Rho, it has never been easier for each of Innomark’s 30+ Account Executives, managers, and support staff to automate administrative tasks like expense reporting. Doing so enables them to spend more time with their customers. After a client lunch or dinner, a cardholder receives a notification from the Rho Mobile App (or a text alert depending on their Rho settings) and responds with a picture of the receipt.

Expense reports that used to take 20 or more minutes now take just a few seconds with Rho’s real-time transaction logging. Regardless of their backgrounds or previous experiences with technology solutions, team members have found Rho intuitive to use, and more than a few have shared rave reviews with Nathan and his team.

Beyond creating a positive experience for the sales staff, Rho has given the finance team more visibility and granularity over interdepartmental spending they weren’t getting with SAP Concur and their previous corporate card provider, American Express. “Rho’s budgeting tools give us the real-time ability to monitor our spend levels by department or project without having to pull lengthy reports,” Goodwin said. “The previous systems with AmEx and Concur were clunky and made it difficult just to understand our spend patterns.”

As the company continues its growth since beginning its mission in 1991, Innomark’s finance team is excited to continue exploring additional functionalities Rho has to offer. This includes using Rho’s spend management tools for areas beyond T&E so that the company can extend visibility and control over spending in other departments.