Benefits

• No longer working nights and weekends thanks to Cube's massive time-saving features
• Robust reporting and extreme confidence in their data thanks to Cube's single source of truth
• WizeHire's FP&A team upskilled thanks to their excellent relationship with Cube's customer success team

"Historically, we've been a bootstrapped company," said Sid Upadhyay, co-founder and CEO of WizeHire, a company that helps SMBs find and hire the right talent by transforming the hiring process.

That changed when WizeHire went through its first round of funding in February 2021. 

"Getting funding means we have a responsibility to our investors," said Sid. "Are we being intellectually honest? Are we making the best decisions? We need the intellectual rigor to ensure we're making the right bets."

The problem? The FP&A work that would ensure this intellectual rigor took too long. Sid and Andrew Kader, WizeHire's revenue operations manager, worked nights, weekends, and all hours in between.

Combine that with the high velocity of data they were dealing with, and it was clear that something needed to change.

Challenge

WizeHire needed to reclaim their time from their monthly financial tasks while producing more accurate information, faster.

As most of their customers are small businesses, they also saw the higher turnover that's expected in that sector.

Fiduciary duty and investor reporting needs meant WizeHire needed a faster, better process

It was important to Sid that WizeHire have access to their data without getting bogged down on tasks like their monthly close.

To report to investors, WizeHire needed to improve its current process. To ensure the best possible conversations with investors, WizeHire needed to prepare for any edge case while also speeding up its reporting methods.

Additionally, the extra level of reporting WizeHire needed took up more of their time—especially during the data diligence process. "We needed to build a system so we weren't always fact-checking," Sid said.

Time & learning curve

As the CEO, Sid doesn't have the time to work on FP&A full-time. He relies on Andrew to be his FP&A analyst.

As any one-person FP&A team will tell you, FP&A is a full-time job.

Especially when, like Andrew, your background is in accounting, not FP&A.

So WizeHire had two challenges:

1. They needed time to upskill in FP&A, and
2. They needed time to prepare and analyze their data.

Unfortunately, they found most of this time at night and on weekends.

"For us, it comes down to having the data we need and not getting bogged down on our close or on how to present the information," Sid said.

High data velocity made it challenging to understand their numbers

"We sometimes make 30 sales a day," said Sid. For a B2B SaaS company, that translates to a constant stream of data coming in, making it all the more challenging to stay on top of it. "That sheer velocity requires us to be mindful of all our levers and numbers."

Beyond new business, WizeHire's churn rate is naturally more volatile, with a mostly SMB customer base. "Churn, for us, is one of the most important things to understand," Sid said. Combined, the team needed to contain that firehose of data.

Sid also cited a desire to be "building systems to fact-check ourselves against." In other words, WizeHire needed a single source of truth that ensured its accuracy.

Solution

"We looked at other tools, but they were either too complex or were going to take too long at the end of the day," Sid said. "That's why Cube was such a no-brainer for us."

Reporting and close preparation becomes a button click with Import Data

For Sid, the best thing Cube does is eliminate the lengthy data preparation process.

"There was that magic moment after everything was set up and we went through the onboarding. What had been weekends and nights spent building the core spreadsheets so that we could do the analysis—this was 90% of the work. That becoming a button click [with Cube] was this Aha! moment.

"We've spent so much time getting the data right and maybe 10% of our time on analysis. WizeHire is now in a world where we spend 90% of that time on analysis."

Cube's time-saving features give the WizeHire team peace of mind and better agility

"I'm super cautious," Andrew said. "Hitting drilldown gives me peace of mind, like: 'all right, this makes sense, I can move on.' It saves a good chunk of time."

As a database, Cube has data governance. Andrew knows the numbers he sees when he drills down are accurate—Cube makes it so.

In addition to letting Andrew drill down, Cube automatically rolls up data into top-level dimensions so that Sid can see and interpret it more easily.

This connectedness, combined with Cube's time-saving features, makes deeper analysis much more straightforward. It also means that WizeHire can implement more advanced, granular, and powerful FP&A practices like monthly forecasting—even with a small team.

Even if somebody has a fat finger and makes a data entry error, Cube will flag the discrepancy and ask to resolve it. If it slips through, Cube's version control means it's easy to roll back or undo human mistakes.

Cube meets FP&A teams where they already are—the spreadsheet

Sid's favorite feature is how Cube makes it easy for FP&A to work with other parts of the company—and how that creates better financial transparency and a more straightforward FP&A process overall. Everybody already knows how to use spreadsheets, so there's no resistance to getting department leaders to adopt Cube.

For example, Sid cited Cube's ability to push and fetch scenarios. "We want to give guidance on forecast versus actual down at a department level," he said. "Every single person, when we show them Cube, has this wow moment like someone just flipped the lights on in the room."

Andrew has also started capacity planning for each department. "The flexibility of Cube aggregating all the data for you with just a drag and drop is amazing to see," he said.

For WizeHire, this means Cube isn't isolated to the FP&A team of Sid and Andrew. The entire leadership team gets to collaborate via Cube.

Results

WizeHire used Cube to guide them through their Series A fundraising. When we spoke for this story, they had eyes toward a Series B fundraise.

Let's look at how WizeHire's reality has changed in 2022:

WizeHire's new superpower lets them stay intellectually honest with less work

With a more powerful FP&A tool, WizeHire can deliver on the intellectual rigor they've promised their investors without compromising their time outside working hours.

Sid and Andrew now have a superabundance of time previously eaten up by manual FP&A work: they've liberated so much of their time that they are free to do the kind of deep, strategic analysis that ensures they're making the right bets.

"Making this investment early on in your company's journey will empower you to go slow—so you can grow fast," said Sid.

Cube lets WizeHire dream up strategy without wasting time on worry

When WizeHire finished its Series A funding, Sid and Andrew had a newfound fiduciary duty to their investors. To honor that, they had to work nights and weekends.

But with Cube, they no longer have to work nights and weekends (at least, not on FP&A tasks.)

So in liberating their time, Cube has given them something invaluable: space for thinking about strategy, evolving the business, and for rest.

When Andrew says the drilldown feature and single source of truth give him peace of mind, he's talking about how he now has fewer things to worry about. He no longer worries about whether he and Sid are considering all the available data when making decisions. Sid no longer goes to bed anxious about his company's budget.

Churn is also easier for WizeHire to measure and understand. Cube lets them drill down into their data so that they can better understand their churn. Then they can act on this information—they know it's accurate.

Instead of looking backward, they can focus their mental energies on imagining forward.

WizeHire upskilled their FP&A abilities after working with the Cube customer success team

"The journey of implementing Cube upskilled our FP&A and close abilities. We learned a lot from the Cube CS team," said Sid. "This is FP&A school."

Helping customers get the most out of Cube is a core practice of Cube's customer success team. 

"As our CS team comes mostly from the finance space, helping other FP&A pros be successful is in our DNA," says Marc Williams, Cube's head of customer success. Marc is quick to note that the collaboration has been a two-way street. "Sid and his team have been amazing partners. We've been able to continuously improve our product and our approach to customer success."

Sid is quick to affirm that Cube's customer success team helped him and his team improve at FP&A. "Cube helped WizeHire set standards for our 2022 budgeting that are used as best practices across all the organizations Cube works with," Sid said.

Conclusion

"There's another element of Cube that we don't talk about, and that's how cutting-edge and forward-thinking your organization is," Sid said. "The product is a massive unlock."

He continued: "Having a partner on the other end of the call that's forward-thinking and excited about our business is game-changing," Sid said. "A big point of distinction is the quality of customer success experience."