Customer stories
Squirrel streamlines shareholder relationships, employee share schemes and dividend payments with Orchestra
We recently caught up with Tim Bowen, Squirrel’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO), to discuss how Orchestra has streamlined the team’s workflow, saving them hours of time and providing its shareholders with a better experience.
Our use of the share registry feature in Orchestra has significantly increased the efficiency of share transfers and new share issuances.
Tim Bowen, Squirrel's CFO
The Challenge
Prior to Orchestra, we were using another share registry platform. It was perfectly adequate as a share registry, efficient, and relatively cheap at the time, but there was no roadmap for its future development.
The team at Snowball Effect, through which we had previously raised capital, introduced us to Orchestra. I spent some time with the Orchestra team and listened to their story and plans for the platform, and their plans aligned with what Squirrel wanted to do. Once we decided to move over to Orchestra, the team made the initial migration really easy.
“With Orchestra’s platform, our shareholders are in control and can quickly update their contact details online rather than requesting for these to be manually updated. Having Orchestra’s one-stop repository for all of our communications and quarterly and annual reports is also great for our shareholders. ”
Tim Bowen, Squirrel's CFO
The Solution
Our use of the share registry feature in Orchestra has significantly increased the efficiency of share transfers and new share issuances. In addition, the share registry has helped us keep our shareholders engaged with our company by providing them with regular communications and allowing them to view it on Orchestra. This also enables us to use other communication tools, such as tiles, to share other relevant information with our shareholders. Orchestra has made our share registry way more transparent and accessible. The ability to manage our nominee entity through an Orchestra sub-registry is another great feature that has greatly improved the auditability and transparency of transactions in the nominee entity.
A few years back, Squirrel introduced a bunch of employee share schemes. Initially, we tried managing our first employee share issuance on a spreadsheet, but it turned out to be a bit of a nightmare. Then we switched to the Orchestra's ESOP module, and it worked wonders and made keeping track of vesting and eligibility so much easier. We've used Orchestra for four more issuances into our employee share schemes, each with its own vesting schedules and participants. It's hard to quantify the time efficiencies, but we've definitely saved hours of administration with these issuances.
We also use Orchestra’s communications module as a “CRM” for our shareholders. Previously we had an Excel spreadsheet with a list of shareholders with email addresses, and it wasn’t dynamic in terms of updating shareholder details. With Orchestra’s platform, our shareholders are in control and can quickly update their contact details online rather than requesting for these to be manually updated. Having Orchestra’s one-stop repository for all of our communications and quarterly and annual reports is also great for our shareholders.
When we went through our first shareholder dividend payment, at the time, Orchestra was starting to define what their dividend module might look like. Again, Orchestra listened to what we were looking for and built something to meet the users' needs. We were able to see the round one iteration of the dividend module and feedback on it, and then two weeks later, a new iteration would come out, solving any problems. That was really nice. The new dividend module will provide massive efficiency improvements for us when it comes to paying our next dividend.
The new dividend feature will also provide our shareholders with a much better user experience. They will be able to pick up their dividend statements and see the transactions when they're processed through the front end of Orchestra, and the dividend module will make lodging dividend resident withholding tax returns so much easier.
Orchestra has a beautiful front end, and the team is constantly checking in with us, listening to our feedback, and building new functionality that solves problems. Orchestra continues to surprise and delight its customers.
