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Financial leadership from day 1
Japan
E-commerce
EUR 6M
- Implement scalable expense and vendor management systems
- Prepare monthly investor updates
- Develop financial hygiene as the company rapidly scales
- Created an organized expense management process
- Designed workflows and playbooks to facilitate smooth monthly payments to platform partners
- Implemented current best-in-class software tools
- Gained clear visibility into the company’s monthly finances and early KPIs
Just a few months after the idea’s inception, the anatae team launched a powerful e-commerce platform offering over a hundred (and rapidly counting) unique gifting experiences in Japan.
The team focused on building processes and operational infrastructure that could scale alongside the company.
Onsen helped anatae implement flexible financial processes and tooling - creating a strong foundation for the company to build on.
The anatae team knew that business needs would change - and rapidly. Many of the required workflows and deliverables wouldn’t come into play for months, and sometimes years, after the platform launched.
As a result, the team had to build for the future.
Onsen worked closely with anatae’s leadership team to design processes and draft workflows and playbooks well-ahead of when they would become necessary. By foreseeing requirements in advance, the team was able to meet obligations with their platform partners in an organized and timely manner without slowing down short-term growth.
Onsen collaborated with anatae’s existing accounting and tax partners to deliver monthly financial reports and implement expense and vendor management systems. Onsen developed customized workflows and playbooks that incorporated the processes and requirements of anatae’s platform partners.
A particular challenge was the company’s Japanese bank account. Many software tools popular with U.S. early-stage startups are only available for companies with American bank accounts. As a result, the team had to get creative to automate reporting tasks. Onsen spearheaded the effort to research and connect with software vendors built with enough flexibility for Japanese companies.
As an experiential gifting platform, anatae leverages a complex commission structure. In order to build trust with their business partners, it was crucial for the team to ensure that the commission payments were made correctly and by agreed-upon deadlines. Onsen helped develop a method to record commission agreements and calculate payments in a timely manner.
The team built and launched the beta of the anatae platform in three months. In order to set themselves up for future success, the team maintained disciplined organizational practices. Onsen worked with anatae to develop processes for the team to easily track expenses and a high volume of contracts as the business grew.
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