Turning a roadblock into a growth engine: How SkyCell scaled its expense management
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- Customer Story
SkyCell is redefining pharmaceutical logistics, providing innovative, temperature-controlled containers to safely transport critical medications across the globe. Yet, while its supply chains operated seamlessly and efficiently, the finance department struggled to keep pace with the company’s rapid growth.
The challenge: High effort, low scalability
Managing expenses was anything but easy before Yokoy. The process was not only time-consuming but also frustrating for both employees and the finance team. Employees had to manually input their expenses into spreadsheets, gather paper receipts, and submit them for approval. The finance team, in turn, had to review each expense individually. Any mistakes led to further delays, meaning employees often had to wait weeks for reimbursement.
At the numerous trade shows and events SkyCell attends each year, high expense volumes accumulated, and their manual processing repeatedly led to bottlenecks, delaying approvals and reimbursements. On top of that, there was little transparency – employees often had no idea where their expense reports were in the process or why they were delayed. “At one point, a team member was almost fully dedicated to handling expense reports. Without Yokoy, we would have needed a full-time role just for this process,” says Reza Motavalli, Team Lead Accounting at SkyCell.
SkyCell’s international structure added another layer of complexity. With each country following its own tax rules and compliance standards, unifying expense processes across locations proved nearly impossible.
The solution: Smart automation, scalability, and transparency
As SkyCell continued to grow, it needed an intuitive, scalable solution that could integrate effortlessly with its existing infrastructure. Yokoy proved to be the perfect fit, offering exactly what the company was looking for.
Employees now simply upload their receipts, while Yokoy’s AI automatically detects, categorises, and syncs the data with the ERP system. The approval process is now much faster and more efficient, while the administrative workload for both employees and the finance team has been significantly reduced. „For our employees, this is by far the greatest advantage of Yokoy. The time required to submit expenses has been drastically reduced,“ says Reza.
The challenges of managing international locations are now a thing of the past. Yokoy allows for the seamless integration of country-specific policies and approval processes, ensuring automatic compliance and reducing manual oversight. New locations can be added effortlessly, without adding extra administrative workload.
“With our expense policy built into Yokoy, we can immediately spot any expense that falls outside the guidelines and take action right away. This level of automation makes the system extremely user-friendly,” says Reza.
Thanks to Yokoy’s analytics function, the finance team now has complete, real-time visibility into all expense flows. Trends and anomalies can be identified early, allowing for proactive adjustments. This increased transparency has not only eased the workload for the finance team but has also led to more effective budget planning.
Measurable impact: €117,000 saved annually
Implementing Yokoy has delivered significant benefits for SkyCell. Beyond greater transparency, scalability, and reduced processing times, the financial results clearly highlight its success.
Through automation, SkyCell saves 250 work hours and €117,000 annually – valuable resources that are now redirected toward strategic projects and process optimisation. Employees also feel the impact: instead of spending time on tedious Excel sheets and receipt tracking, Yokoy now handles most of the work for them.
SkyCell stands for innovation and efficiency and now, that extends to its finance department. With Yokoy, the company has not only solved an immediate challenge but built an agile and future-ready finance function. What was once a barrier is now a competitive advantage.
“We needed a solution that could grow with us. Yokoy does exactly that.”
