How Unmind Gave its Teams More Autonomy and Kept Financial Control
We interviewed Grace Wildsmith from mental well-being scaleup Unmind to learn how they set up a process to manage their SaaS from scratch, while scaling from 50 to 155 employees.
In this story
Grace joined Unmind in April 2020 as a financial assistant. 150 employees later, they still streamline their SaaS management with Cledara.
Unmind played a key role during Covid lockdowns, when many people had to adjust their lifestyles in ways never imagined, and a mental wellbeing platform like Unmind was perfectly poised to help.
In early 2021, they raised a $47M Series B and, despite the growth, Grace didn’t need to hire more people on her finance team thanks to having a SaaS management process in place. Let’s explore.
“I don't think we'd still be a two-person finance team without Cledara. I think we would be a much bigger team. A lot bigger.”
Setting up a process
Grace tells us that all of their spend tracking and evaluating was very much a manual process.
“It was very much going to the accounting software, seeing what was going out, where it was going, and why it was going out.”
In other words, there wasn’t a strong process in place.
“Prior to Cledara, there wasn't a procurement process in place. It was all done very ad hoc, and we had one shared card we used for everything.”
How Cledara helped
“Cledara has given us the ability to put a lightweight procurement process in place” Grace says.
“It gives teams and employees access to the payment method which makes them feel really autonomous, despite us being still in control of the budget.”
“I think one of the main reasons people don't like to speak with finance is because they see it as a rigid, bureaucratic behemoth unable to help in a lot of ways. Cledara has changed that perception massively.”
Being able to analyze spend and forecast
“It was very hard to pinpoint our software spend and where the licenses sat” Grace says. A very common problem indeed at fast-growing startups.
She tells us her team didn’t really have visibility over software. “We had a lot of trouble locating the email addresses that were associated with certain accounts, something that made us waste a lot of time”.
How Cledara helped
Today, that’s all done automatically with Cledara.
“In terms of forecasting, Cledara helps me see how the spending on certain software has increased over time. Plus, it has allowed us to make more malleable assumptions of future spending.”
Apparently, it’s proven quite effective: “we've not gone over budget yet this year!” Grace says with enthusiasm. “Cledara has been pretty helpful in many ways.”
Scaling smartly
“I can compare to my previous experiences in finance departments elsewhere, which were a lot more archaic and rigid,” Grace says. “I’ve seen how software gets out of hand when the company grows and it’s not something I recommend experiencing.”
How Cledara helped
When Grace joined, Unmind had 50 employees. Now they’re at 155. Without a process in place, this is the perfect recipe for software subscriptions getting out of hand.
Instead, she tells us that “this time, it's been a very smooth ride.”
“I am coming up to a year here at Unmind and we've seen growth in every department essentially - except in finance because of how Cledara has helped automate so much of what we do! It definitely has made things so much easier”.
Grace’s highlight - Cledara’s virtual cards
“I couldn't live without Cledara’s virtual cards - they have been a godsend. I've seen the other tail end of not having control over the payment method and it’s really inefficient.”
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