“Rho helped us transform our post-close credit card transaction reconciliation process into a bullet on our pre-close checklist, which is music to every finance executive’s ears.”
Best Bay Logistics is a freight shipping platform that provides an easy way for manufacturers to source freight shipping solution providers.
2022 was a record-breaking year for supply chain disruption. Two West Coast shipping hubs, that account for more than a third of the US’s imported goods, experienced miles-long backlogs. Various geopolitical conflicts, weather-related disasters, and the lingering impact of COVID-19 compounded things further. For many American businesses with sophisticated supply chain networks, this meant scrambling to find reliable partners that could help ensure their goods reached customers without delay – like Best Bay Logistics.
Since 2015, Best Bay Logistics has helped thousands of businesses transport goods, including automobile parts, batteries, food & beverages, and more, across a global supply network. Recently, as supply chain issues challenged companies with products stuck in ports and warehouses, Best Bay Logistics quickly emerged as a reliable, tech-driven broker that could help companies navigate supply chain minefields and identify trucking partners that could get their freights from A to B, on time and on budget. Propelled by demand and a reputation built by supply chain problem-solving, Best Bay Logistics has quickly transformed from a small logistics broker to a thriving middle-market company. As the company scaled and the volume of daily transactions grew, Best Bay Logistics brought in CFO Nikesh Patel, a seasoned finance leader, to streamline the 100-person-plus finance organization to support future growth and grow market share.
“Our first priority was to improve the company’s month-end close process,” Patel said. “We operate a multi-entity business that generates thousands of transactions every month, which put a strain on previous workflows due to the systems we had in place.” The most significant sources of friction included delays in getting employee receipts uploaded, the hours spent manually reconciling transaction data to the company’s NetSuite ERP system, and the complexity of managing data across two sub-organizations that make up Best Bay Logistics. The previous expense management and corporate card provider lacked sophisticated controls, multi-entity support, and accounting automations needed for Best Bay Logistics to run its business. As a result, the Best Bay Logistics finance team typically reviewed its financials toward the end of every following month. Nikesh’s goal: Review and finalize financials within 10 business days of month-end close.
As an ardent believer in the future of the lean finance operating model, Patel knew technology would play an integral role in achieving the finance team’s process ambitions. “Lean finance aims to change and harmonize the underlying processes that support your finance operation in a way that boosts your existing team’s efficiency and removes non-value-add activities from their workload,” said Patel. “In finance, our job is to reduce cost; we need to make sure finance can scale with the business without immediately turning to additional headcount.” The company had outgrown its previous corporate card and expense management provider, Divvy, and needed a new holistic finance system to manage the added complexity of Best Bay Logistics’ growing business while connecting seamlessly with NetSuite – with one caveat. “We didn’t have the time or patience to manage a months-long NetSuite integration, which is one big reason why we were excited about Rho.”
Best Bay Logistics leverages the Rho platform to boost its finance efficiency in three ways:
A critical requirement Nikesh had for solution providers: They needed to understand and have the ability to manage the complexity of Best Bay Logistics’ multi-entity business. The company has two distinct business units: Best Bay Logistics and Best Bay Trucking. The first entity is a broker that offers companies access to a global network of 30,000 shipping carriers. Best Bay Trucking is the company’s in-house owner/operator, specializing in transporting trade space materials and other goods. “Rho’s multi-entity support caught our attention as this was something our previous expense management provider lacked,” Patel said.
The core of Best Bay Logistics’ operations run through NetSuite, so it was critical for any new business applications to connect to the company’s ERP system – without an expensive, time-consuming process. “We have four systems across our organization that are connected to NetSuite and Rho was by far the easiest to integrate,” Patel said. “We were up and running in 20 minutes.”
Following the successful implementation, Rho has since enabled Best Bay Logistics to achieve a live transaction data feed that maps expenses to specific GL codes in NetSuite. “On average, we’re doing 100 transactions per week,” Patel said. “Rho makes it easy for our employees to manage expenses and ensures every transaction flows seamlessly without our finance team having to spend hours every month reconciling this information.” Employees that use their physical or virtual Rho Cards receive a text and email notification to upload their receipts. With the Rho Mobile App, employees can also record essential data (like expense categories), further reducing the finance team’s workload.
For Best Bay Logistics, Rho has equipped the finance team with the tools needed to scale as the business grows without adding unnecessary headcount expenses – with an added benefit. “Rho helps us uphold a culture of accountability,” said Patel. “Not having to chase employee receipts and eliminating hours of the time the finance team previously spent reconciling our transaction data has made our jobs easier and our team more effective.”
Compared to slower manual processes of the past, Best Bay Logistics today manages expenses for several sub-entity organizations – Best Bay Logistics and Best Bay Trucking – in a single platform with Rho, saving hours reconciling transactions, mapping GL codes, and chasing receipts.