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Customer stories
JBS&G share how Orchestra has saved the company nearly a week a month by automating their monthly dividends
We recently caught up with Polly Doak, Chief Financial Officer at JBS&G, to learn how Orchestra has helped transform the company’s employee share scheme and monthly dividend payouts.
When I had a look at Orchestra’s system, it was kind of a no-brainer as the team was able to design and provide everything we wanted.
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Polly Doak - JBS&G CFO
The Challenge
Our employee share scheme and share issues were originally manually managed on Excel spreadsheets by an amazing team member. She has phenomenal attention to detail, but our employee shareholders were growing to such an extent that it was time to look for an alternative, an automated solution that didn’t rely so much on manual management.
We also pay dividends every single month to our shareholders, which our employees anticipate, especially those whose dividends contribute a significant amount to their remuneration. Every month, the team member was manually paying out each dividend and letting the employee choose whether they wanted to receive 100% of the dividends as cash or 30% as cash and 70% to repay their employee share loan. She would then manually update the loan spreadsheets and send all the dividend information out to each person via email. It was taking her about four days a month to manage this dividends process. Because it was such a manual process, this meant that she couldn’t take leave during the dividend payout time of the month.
Our accountants and auditors recommended Orchestra to us. When I had a look at Orchestra’s system, it was kind of a no-brainer as the team was able to design and provide everything we wanted. AT JBS&G, we call ourselves Goldilocks, as we're just the right-sized business, and I feel like Orchestra is the same.
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Orchestra’s dividend feature is just incredible; it is great being able to type in the dividend amount and have it instantly calculated automatically.
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Polly Doak- JBS&G CFO
The Solution
The onboarding process with Orchestra was phenomenal. The team was very responsive, and it was really easy. The Orchestra team has been my ‘we will make it happen for you’.
The Orchestra team’s responsiveness and helpfulness have continued since the initial onboarding. For example, I asked about adding the ability to generate a custom report so I can export my dividend straight into Xero, and the team was straight onto it. This will save me time each month, which is fantastic.
Orchestra’s dividend feature is just incredible; it is great being able to type in the dividend amount and have it instantly calculated automatically. I know that sounds so simple, but because we have multiple share issues and our Excel shareholder files were set up by share issue, this dividends feature has made a big difference. This, and the calculation of employee share loans previously took us so long to do. Now, having dividends automatically work out the share loan has saved us four days a month of resources.
Another feature I enjoy using is the Orchestra document vault and communications capability. It’s great being able to send out general communications through Orchestra to a large group of shareholders or send out an AGM notification. I look forward to our next share issue where we can use the integrated DocuSign feature to remove paper & emails.
The main thing I appreciate about Orchestra’s platform is that it is straightforward and easy to use.