How Zenyum mastered employee spending with Aspire Corporate Cards

The Company: The Iconic Smile Cosmetics Brand in Asia

Zenyum was conceived with a vision to create affordable and accessible oral care, and more importantly brighten smiles everywhere. From their iconic 3D-printed Invisible Braces and Clear Aligners to Sonic Toothbrush, Zenyum’s expanding range of Smile Cosmetics products has caught on with hundreds of thousands of customers across the region. In just 5 years, Zenyum has emerged as one of Asia’s largest consumer brands, operating in eight markets including Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

To date, Zenyum has raised over US$50 million from institutional and blue-chip investors like RTP Global, Sequoia India, L Catterton, and others. With more than 500 partnerships with dental clinics throughout Asia, Zenyum is transforming traditional dental care through technology and innovation, to deliver healthier and more confident smiles.

The Challenges: Slow and manual expense management processes

Zenyum has a sizeable workforce with more than 200 employees throughout the region. As a fast-growing brand expanding into new markets, Zenyum needed an efficient and reliable method to track team and employee spending. Slow and manual finance processes caused delays during month-end reconciliation. Without a comprehensive financial management system that could scale with its business, Zenyum could not make informed and data-driven decisions about expenses and budgeting.

#1 Limited visibility and control into employee spending

Building partnerships with dental clinics for their clear aligners is a core part of Zenyum’s business model. It allows Zenyum to localise their dental services and products to new markets quickly while maintaining their service and quality standards. The Zenyum partner network boasts over 500 clinics in 7 countries, including Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, Japan and Vietnam. It became difficult to track spending efficiently as local country teams and employees would incur incidental expenses such as travel or marketing in high volumes.

#2 Could not set budgets at an employee or department level

As a fast-growing startup, it was difficult for Zenyum to set clear expense policies during the initial stages of growth and expansion. They needed a multi-purpose financial platform that could not only provide instant visibility into spending but also allow finance to easily enforce limits and assign budgets. 

#3 Slow and manual financial processes 

Before Aspire, employees expensed through their personal cards and claimed reimbursements afterward. Due to the high volume of small transactions, the finance team had to manually track and approve each expense. This was inefficient and time-consuming.

Their previous system did not offer them added functionalities such as accounting integrations and built-in corporate cards that could benefit their business.

The Solution: Corporate Cards with built-in expense tracking

Upon learning about the challenges that the finance team was facing, COO Frederik Krass switched to Aspire’s all-in-one platform. Using Aspire’s built-in Expense Management, Zenyum could instantly monitor transactions and access employee spending in real-time. More importantly, Zenyum leveraged Aspire Corporate Cards, giving employees and teams more flexibility in spending, while retaining full control over their budget.

#1 24/7, real-time visibility into all expenses from a single dashboard

Rather than rely on personal cards, Zenyum issued Aspire’s virtual corporate cards to employees and teams. Thanks to the built-in expense management feature, any transactions were instantly recorded. The finance team could effortlessly monitor the type, volume, purpose, and source of each expense, all from a single dashboard. In addition, they could get valuable insights into spending and make adjustments to budgets and policies quickly.

#2 Corporate card for employees and teams with pre-set budget and limits

By leveraging Aspire’s unlimited virtual corporate cards, employees could spend without fear of going over budget. Zenyum’s finance team could set and adjust budgets at any level - employee, team, or department-wide instantly through the dashboard. This flexibility empowered employees to spend but also enabled finance to customise smart expense policies according to their workflow. For instance, they could allocate a single card just for software subscriptions, ensuring better vendor cost management. 

#3 Seamless and automated claims and smoother accounting

Zenyum receives approximately 40 employee claims each month. By using Aspire Corporate cards for all their claims processing, Zenyum eliminated the need to track manual receipts and paperwork. They could also design their own approval workflows, with managers receiving timely notifications. This sped up the reimbursement process and streamlined their monthly payroll. Zenyum is also exploring Aspire’s native integrations with their accounting platform Oracle Netsuite for smoother closing and financial reporting.