Using Pleo- Knodd
Managing over $300,000 on marketing spend made easy with Pleo
The challenge
Co-founders Jakob Hedlund and Josefine Svegborn had a vision to a help a new generation of parents. And in 2018, Knodd was born.
Knodd is a digital childcare platform, that provides a space for parents to get in touch with pediatric specialists via video consultations through the business’s app. In the app, parents also have access to educational material and courses to further their knowledge of caring for a child.
It’s no surprise that the company quickly found itself experiencing hypergrowth, with Jakob really feeling the need for a cost and spend management solution that would simplify and distribute work across the teams.
Clunky process of managing business spending
As a CEO wearing different hats, Jakob quickly realised that manually tracking (chasing down) receipts and expenses wasn’t sustainable, even in the early days of the company. Not to mention, all employees had to go through him to make a purchase or approve an expense.
Difficulty tracking marketing spend across channels
As the Growth & Marketing Manager of a small team, Victor is responsible for both strategic and operational work of marketing activities. As the overall business goal began to shift from hypergrowth to profitability, the marketing budget needed to have a closer eye on it. Not only to have better control over the costs, but also to receive insights into what activities were bringing in the highest ROI.
No corporate overview of spend
Without a background in finance, Jakob was struggling to keep an overview of spend across the business – even in the early days with a much smaller team. And this became more difficult as the company continued to grow and add additional entities to support the needs of their customers.
The solution
A complete spending solution that supports the business goal of optimising for profitability, without needing to take the foot off the gas pedal when it comes to marketing activities.
“Before hiring our first in-house financial role, Pleo was my finance partner.” - Jakob Hedlund, Co-founder and CEO
The results
Being a CEO of a quickly growing business, Jakob has better things to do than chasing people for receipts and trying to connect the dots between entities. Pleo has not only helped free up time for Jakob to focus more on strategic growth planning, but it has also allowed Victor to make the right investment decisions when it comes to marketing activities to support this sustainable growth.
Management of marketing spend that suits the business model
Due to the nature of the Knodd’s digital platform, Victor needs to act quickly and add more budget to a campaign or pause it all together depending on whether there are too many or too few patients. Using Pleo’s virtual cards, Victor now has a flexible way to manage his marketing budget and has complete overview of what has spent in a given month.
Big time savings
Jakob estimates he saves 5 to 10 hours a month with Pleo – with their external accountants saving even more. And Victor is a big fan of Fetch (Pleo’s Gmail, Outlook & Microsoft 365 integration) and says that he saves one to two hours a week when it comes to the receipt admin of marketing activities and recurring expenses.
Positive impact on company culture
With Pleo, the entire team at Knodd feels more empowered and trusted with company money. No more asking the CEO for permission to make a purchase on behalf of the company, but Jakob still can be assured that all expenses will be accounted for.
Holistic overview of where money is spent
Using Pleo’s multi-entity feature, Jakob now has a complete overview and better ownership of the total spend across the company in real-time, and providing him the clarity needed to make smarter business decisions to ensure sustainable growth.
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