4 Ways an Integrated Finance Solution Can Boost Your Business

As more DTC companies embrace digital transformation, fintech platforms are replacing the financial services they’ve typically received from legacy banks, credit unions, and card providers.

According to one report by Forbes, fintechs raised a record $91.5 billion in global funding during the first three quarters of 2021, doubling the sector’s YOY growth. Over that same period, 200 new fintechs became unicorns—or startups valued at $1 billion or more.

If you’re a growing consumer company, this is all great news. With a broader array of fintechs on the market, you have faster, smarter, and more cost-effective tools to help you manage expenses like shipping and inventory, optimize your cash flow, and scale your business.

There’s just one problem: as you adopt new banking, AP, accounting, and other finance solutions, the number of products you’re forced to juggle can quickly become unmanageable, creating more hassles for your team than you ultimately save through automation.

We sat down with our friends at Rho to explore how building your tech stack strategically—for quality, over quantity—and opting for an integrated, all-in-one finance platform can help you simplify spend management, streamline key workflows, and refocus time and resources on your business.

SaaS overload

As fintech takes off, the number of cloud-based services and SaaS platforms consumer brands rely on to operate has soared. A recent study estimates that, today, the typical company uses an average of 110 applications to run their business—a 700% jump from 2017.

Much of this comes down to hyperspecialization, or the trend of breaking critical processes into several smaller workflows. Each of these is then addressed by a niche product requiring its own integrations, subscription fees, and onboarding programs.

Hyperspecialization was already a problem in 2019 —and it’s only getting worse as the fintech market continues to diversify.

For example, when it comes to your finances, you might handle your commercial banking through Chase, your AP through Bill.com, and your corporate cards through American Express. That means navigating three separate systems just to sort out your expenses and close your books.

Simplifying your tech stack

Now, holistic, tech-forward options are emerging to help you automate and consolidate your workflows and devote less time to managing your spend.

All-in-one finance solutions provide a flexible suite of products—including banking, cards, AP, expense management, and budgeting—all interconnected and accessible through a single login.

With an integrated approach to finance, your team can implement the services you need to meet your goals and trust that they’ll work seamlessly together.

This leads to four big business benefits: Increased efficiency, tighter controls, greater opportunities for growth, and high-touch customer support. Let’s take a deeper look at each:

1. Efficiency

When financial records are split between multiple, isolated systems, your team may spend hours (or days) entering data, compiling and pulling reports, and chasing down receipts and invoice approvals—energy-draining tasks that divert efforts from high-level, analytical work.

With an integrated digital platform, everything from invoice processing to approval routing to receipt capture can be fully automated, with data flowing quickly and accurately between functions.

You can also sync financial data with accounting software like Quickbooks. Each transaction, from card spend to bill pay, is auto-populated in your GL and mapped to accounting codes, so you can generate expense reports, reconcile expenses, and close your books with one click.

Take plant-based food e-commerce company Outstanding Foods. Before making the switch, Will Finkelstein (VP of Finance), was frustrated by “janky traditional banking and cards platforms that take too long to load or require too many steps.”

Now, Outstanding Foods “saves over 10 hours per month thanks to Rho’s all-in-one technology which has enabled incredible efficiencies in [their] finances. From the speed of entering vendor data to automated and fee-free wire transfers, to the seconds it takes to issue cards to new employees. [Rho] knows how finance and accounting teams want to operate.”

2. Control

DTC business leaders put expense and reporting policies in place for a reason, but those policies are ineffective at best if there’s no dedicated, wide-reaching platform to coordinate them.

With an integrated solution, you can set and automatically enforce rules and get instant visibility into spending across cost centers.

You may also assign virtual (or physical) corporate cards to different employees, departments, and expense channels and customize their individual permissions and spending limits.

All charges are also displayed and categorized in real-time on a central dashboard, so you can see the details behind every transaction, track your financial performance, and confidently plan your budget without having to wait for an official report.

That means you can empower your team to collaborate on finances—without ever putting your bottom line at risk.

3. Growth

Platforms that build better-connected finance solutions also introduce greater potential for savings and growth.

It starts with a comprehensive underwriting model that considers every aspect of your consumer brand, tapping into nontraditional data points like your cash conversion cycles, gross profit margins, and customer contracts.

Each card provider has a different approach to underwriting, so it's important to do your research and identify which model will best support your business.

For instance, American Vintners sees uneven sales rhythms that peak around the holidays. According to their Director of Sales, Randy Dzierzawski, Rho’s holistic underwriting and adaptable terms help the wine group translate seasonality into growth. “The Rho Card gives us a spending limit that’s five times higher than what we saw with our previous bank,” he said. “The more we sell, the larger that line of credit gets, and the more cash back we receive on a monthly basis.”

It doesn’t hurt that a product suite structure means simpler pricing, with fee-free services to protect your business’s revenue.

4. Support

Finally, when it comes to something as important as your finances, a bit of high-touch, human service can go a long way. Chatbots—especially those scattered across fragmented, disconnected platforms—just don’t cut it when there are real issues to address.

With the right finance partner, a responsive, integrated solution means more opportunities to learn about your business, recognize your needs, and lend personalized support.

That’s why most platforms assign a dedicated industry expert to every customer account, getting to know your company’s operations inside and out in order to meet your unique objectives.

The bottom line

Consolidating your tech stack and choosing an integrated, tech-forward spend management platform can make all the difference when it comes to setting your finances up for success.

Not only will you have everything you need in one place, but you’ll also unlock the efficiency, collaboration, savings, and support your consumer company needs to thrive.

Learn more

An all-in-one finance platform like Rho can help you simplify spend management, streamline key workflows, and refocus time and resources on your business. Visit Rho.co to read all about the benefits integrated finance has to offer—or reach out to the Rho team for a full tour of their product suite. You can get started here.