The team at Cledara, an all-in-one SaaS purchasing and management platform for small and medium-size businesses, needed to integrate with HRIS solutions and accounting platforms to streamline several workflows for users.

They started by building integrations with Xero and QuickBooks in-house but found the process of implementing and maintaining these integrations to be resource and time-intensive. Given that they needed to build dozens of customer-facing HRIS and accounting integrations, they knew they needed to change their approach.

Brad van Leeuwen, the COO and Co-Founder at Cledara, adds some color: “The HRIS software landscape is incredibly fragmented. Our existing clients use 20+ HRIS systems, and that number only balloons when we look at what prospects use. It was clear that accommodating all of our clients’ and prospects’ HRIS integration needs required us to invest in 3rd-party tooling.”

Brad and his team went on to evaluate unified API solutions and found that Merge covered the highest volume of HRIS integrations and the broadest set of software categories—which not only included accounting and HRIS but also others they might want to explore in the future. 

Taken together, they knew they found their long-term integration partner.

Within a couple weeks, their team was able to build 40+ HRIS and accounting integrations, which include applications like NetSuite, BambooHR, and Gusto.

Through these integrations, they’re able to automate workflows that help customers improve their employee onboarding experience, save on SaaS spend, track subscription invoices, and reconcile payments.

Here’s how they work:

• When a customer adds an employee to their HRIS, Cledara automatically provisions the employee with the appropriate set of applications based on their department and role

• When a customer removes an employee from their HRIS or marks them as terminated, Cledara automatically de-provisions that employee from their applications 

• When an invoice or a transaction for a SaaS subscription gets added to Cledara, they also get posted to the customer’s accounting system in near real-time to automate reconciliation  

The team at Cledara has also built integrations with email service providers in-house, which help streamline their customers’ workflows even further. For instance, if an email from a vendor comes in and includes an invoice, Cledara receives it, reconciles it with the transaction the customer made with their card, and posts it to the customer’s accounting system.

Since adding the HRIS and accounting integrations to their platform, Cledara has significantly improved the day-to-day work their end users perform. 

“Finance, IT, and HR teams no longer have to spend so much of their time on the tedious and manual tasks that come with procuring and managing software and onboarding and offboarding employees. They can use that time in more fulfilling and impactful ways, such as modernizing  their IT infrastructure or reimagining their quote-to-cash process,” explains Brad. 

Given the impact these integrations have on their customer experience, Brad attributes some of the recent improvements to their NPS®—the satisfaction score Cledara measures and tracks through recurring customer surveys—and the surge in positive reviews on G2 (they’ve more than doubled their 5-star review count this past quarter) to the integrations they’ve built with Merge. 

Brad explains that the integrations have also been critical for helping their team close deals. “We increased new business sales by roughly 3x quarter over quarter, and the integrations we’ve added through Merge are a big reason why.”

So, what’s next in Cledara’s partnership with Merge?

Brad fills us in: “We’re looking to add many more integrations through Merge because we see them, and the automations they enable, as crucial to providing great customer experiences. Our journey with Merge is only getting started.”