A new dimension of online shopping
The company
Clothing, shoes, accessories – for fashion-conscious shoppers, ABOUT YOU is the go-to destination. Founded in 2014 as a subsidiary of Otto, ABOUT YOU is one of Europe's fastest-growing e-commerce companies. Its impressive success story includes becoming Hamburg's first unicorn in 2018 and going public in 2021. In the 2021/22 fiscal year, ABOUT YOU generated 1.73 billion euros in revenue. Today, a team of 1,500 employees from 77 nations is dedicated to providing customers with a personalized shopping experience on their smartphones.
The company's finance department consists of Controlling, Tax, Treasury, and Accounting. ABOUT YOU's accounting team comprises 35 employees working across Sales Accounting, Merchandise Accounting, and Non-Merchandise Accounting.
Top performance requires state-of-the-art technology
The motivation
For ABOUT YOU, using modern technology is a key factor in ensuring employee satisfaction. As part of the company's digital transformation, the online retailer was looking for a solution to simplify travel expense and outlay reporting for both users and the accounting and HR teams. They needed a modern tool that would integrate seamlessly into their system landscape, be continuously optimized by the provider, and allow for customization.
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State-of-the-art expense management
The initial situation
To keep pace with the company's rapid growth, ABOUT YOU decided to take its HR system landscape to the next level. The first step, led by Marcel Ziebold, who is responsible for HR Controlling, Data & Systems at ABOUT YOU, was a complete overhaul of the master data system.
To make internal processes more efficient and automate them as much as possible, Marcel Ziebold and his colleagues next focused on harmonizing the connected system landscapes. It quickly became clear that the existing expense management solution did not meet their usability requirements and was causing frustration for everyone involved. The entire process was extremely cumbersome and time-consuming. Employees wanting to submit travel expenses had to email the payroll team, who then had to manually set up and activate the person—an enormous administrative burden for a team of 1,500 employees. The process was also far from convenient for the employees themselves, especially those who traveled frequently. Furthermore, ABOUT YOU found the provider's support to be inadequate.
There was also a clear need for optimization from the perspective of Katharina Baldus, Senior Accountant at ABOUT YOU, who oversees Group Accounting and Payroll and acts as the interface between HR and Accounting. The process caused a high manual workload in accounting as well, since there were no options for using interfaces. There was no connection to SAP or the company's internal disbursement tool. In addition, manual submission and, in particular, the complicated splitting of receipts took up a lot of time and placed a burden on employees.
A new solution had to be found to automate processes and thereby relieve the burden on the payroll and accounting teams. At the same time, the tool needed to offer employees a positive user experience by making the submission of receipts as simple as possible.
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The requirement: Individually configured interfaces for seamless integration
The Challenges
When searching for a best-in-class expense management solution, the decision was clearly in favor of the expense tool from the Circula portfolio. The deciding factors were, on the one hand, the existing interfaces, which allow the Circula solution to integrate perfectly into the ABOUT YOU system landscape. On the other hand, the user-friendliness for employees was highly convincing. Receipts can be easily scanned on the go using the smartphone app or submitted with a single click via email.
The introduction of the expense management solution with Circula was part of a larger transformation of the system landscape at ABOUT YOU. Against this backdrop, a seamless integration was of paramount importance. For the accounting department, the interface connection to SAP and the disbursement tool was crucial to eliminate manual processes. The booking process needed to function flawlessly both in terms of tax compliance and within SAP. For tool owner Marcel Ziebold, the connection to the payroll system DATEV and the master data system Personio was essential, while also meeting all legal requirements. In both the accounting and HR departments, the Circula solution was intended to relieve staff through automated processes. A particular challenge was the close tie between ABOUT YOU and its parent company, Otto. This meant that multiple stakeholders were involved in the coordination processes, and certain structures and processes were already predetermined.
A key requirement for ABOUT YOU was to make the settlement of expenses and travel costs as convenient as possible with the new expense management tool from Circula. The solution was intended to join the ranks of other modern tools that the company already provides to its employees to create a motivating work environment.
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Customized solution implemented quickly and easily
The Implementation
Realizing ideas efficiently, taking action instead of just talking, and offering smart, uncomplicated solutions—this is an integral part of the corporate culture at both ABOUT YOU and Circula. The introduction of the travel expense and disbursement management system followed this same approach. Katharina Baldus found the collaboration during the implementation to be extremely productive and straightforward: she was able to handle the coordination alongside her daily business without any issues.
After the joint kick-off, the partners defined the necessary steps and the current as well as future requirements. They also agreed on adjustments to the SAP or Personio interfaces to meet the specific needs of ABOUT YOU, going beyond standard settings. Since the implementation is carried out by Circula itself, these individual adjustments could be made quickly. Just a few weeks after the kick-off, Circula and ABOUT YOU conducted extensive testing. Before the go-live, various scenarios were played through, and all interfaces were thoroughly checked to ensure they were functioning correctly. The expense management tool has been in use at ABOUT YOU since September 2022.
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Lean processes and satisfied employees
The Results
ABOUT YOU considers the decision to partner with Circula for the introduction of a new expense management tool a great success. The Circula solution fully meets all requirements: it not only fits perfectly into the system landscape and communicates smoothly with all interfaces, some of which are individually configured, but the tool is also exceptionally well-received by employees. Currently, 639 of the 1,500 ABOUT YOU employees are using the new solution. Their feedback is consistently positive, as submitting receipts via the app is now incredibly simple. Certain factors, such as the cost center, are already pre-set, and receipts are scanned using a smart OCR scan, which automatically completes the created expense entry. The outstanding user experience, which was a central criterion for ABOUT YOU in selecting the Circula solution, has thus been 100% realized.
From the perspective of the responsible staff in HR and accounting, the introduction of the new tool has also brought numerous improvements. For one, employees now approach them with significantly fewer questions due to the tool's ease of use. Furthermore, the entire user management process has been eliminated, as users are now created automatically via the Personio integration. This removes all manual effort, and no one needs to reach out when they require an account. Splitting receipts has also become much easier. The entire process, from submission to disbursement, has been significantly streamlined and automated as much as possible.
The partnership between Circula and ABOUT YOU continues even after the successful introduction of the travel expense and disbursement management system. In close cooperation, they are committed to digital transformation, working on the continuous optimization of the tool, and growing together as a result.
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