How Glints Turbocharged Their Operations Across APAC Leveraging Aspire’s All-In-One Finance Solutions

The Company: The Leading Talent Ecosystem in Southeast Asia

Glints, Southeast Asia's premier talent platform and solution, empowers more than 120 million professionals and enables over 60,000 organisations in recruiting and managing the right talent across the region. Established in 2015 and headquartered in Singapore, Glints has empowered the human potential of 6 million individuals, emerging as the fastest-growing startup in Southeast Asia's career development and talent recruitment landscape. With a footprint in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Taiwan, Glints now aims to extend its reach globally to help match Southeast Asia talent with exciting international opportunities and further their careers.

The Challenges: Lacking a powerful all-in-one enterprise tool for their finance needs

Glints, amidst its impressive growth journey, encountered several operational roadblocks hindering its financial agility and efficiency. These challenges, ranging from financial processes slowing down purchasing decisions, to complexities with integration and steep foreign exchange rates, compelled the search for a unified enterprise solution to boost the efficiency of their financial operations and streamline workflows.

#1 Finance was a bottleneck, slowing down operations and processes

At Glints, finance operations became a significant bottleneck, impeding the pace of transactions across various teams. With previous traditional solutions, the finance department was required to be the gatekeeper for all payments, big or small, leading to operational slowdowns. As a result, employees and teams could not use their budgets quickly and effectively. 

# 2 Lack of integration with existing accounting software systems

With Glints’ previous finance solution, there was no integration between their payment system and their accounting software, Netsuite. This made it difficult to manage payables efficiently, requiring tedious record management to track transactions and payments across the organisation. It became time-consuming for finance teams to reconcile financial data across different systems and perform the necessary bookkeeping.

#3 Expensive FX fees when paying offshore contractors and freelancers

Engaging offshore freelancers and contractors exposed Glints to expensive foreign exchange rates for every payment made in their respective home currencies. This escalated the operational costs associated with international transactions and new market expansion.

The Solution: Aspire’s all-in-one finance platform

By leveraging Aspire’s suite of finance solutions, Glints achieved smoother financial operations, simplified their cross-border transactions and enabled timely and informed decision making. Aspire’s powerful all-in-one solutions helped empower Glints' teams to optimise their spending across diverse markets and currencies, and drive their global expansion. This consolidation finally allowed Glints to harness one powerful enterprise tool capable of serving multiple purposes.

#1 Improve the speed of purchasing, complete with visibility and control 

Unlike previous solutions that only partially addressed their pain points, Aspire streamlined finance by integrating various functionalities such as purchasing and budget control. For instance, using Aspire's Corporate Cards across five markets — Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan — helped democratise the payment process and improve the velocity of business, empowering Glints employees to make purchasing decisions swiftly without going through Finance. With the ability to set budgets and assign spend limits, Glints could expand into new markets with visibility, control, and peace of mind, and get their operations up and running smoothly on the ground. 

#2 Seamless native accounting integrations

Aspire's native accounting integration resolved Glints' challenges of managing payables, tracking bills, and reconciliation across various platforms and software effortlessly. Aspire seamlessly integrated into Glints' accounting system, Netsuite, providing timely and accurate cost information. This integration enhanced operational efficiency and facilitated informed decision-making. Furthermore, Aspire’s responsive customer service and excellent support ensured timely resolution of any issues.

#3 Optimise global expansion with competitive FX for cross-border operations

Aspire's market-leading FX rates helped Glints with currency management, lowering their transaction costs when paying offshore vendors and freelancers. Aspire’s multi-currency offerings also complement Glints' cross-border operations, allowing new market representatives to spend with ease. As a bonus, Glints also enjoyed cost savings from Aspire’s cashback for their digital marketing expenses and software subscriptions.