Customer stories
Whip Around enjoys the transparency and ease which Orchestra’s ESOP feature provides
We recently caught up with Poohan Nathan, the CFO and COO at Whip Around to discover how Orchestra has helped provide employee share scheme transparency and streamlined their business processes.
About
Whip Around was founded in New Zealand in 2016, originally to help local freight companies with their paper-based compliance obligations. As the company has grown, its software as a service offering has expanded into the US, which is now its main market.
A Kiwi software success story, Whip Around has won numerous awards, including the NZ Hi-Tech Startup Company of the Year in 2019 and the NZ Hi-Tech Emerging Company of the Year in 2021. In 2023, they broke into the Deloitte Fast 50.
With Noah Hickey, an ex-All Whites and Pushpay early investor, at the helm as CEO, Whip Around has grown into a team of 70 spread across New Zealand and the US. Today, thousands of customers in the US use Whip Around’s fleet maintenance software to keep their businesses moving.
One of the key benefits of using Orchestra has been the transparency it provides us around ESOP.
Poohan Nathan, Whip Around's CFO & COO
The Challenge
In my role as CFO and COO at Whip Around, I’m in charge of investor relations and governance. Prior to moving over to Orchestra, we ran everything on spreadsheets—our cap table, assets, cap table schedules, and employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) register. It took a lot of work to maintain and reconcile these spreadsheets.
The team at Snowball Effect, who we use as the nominee company for our cap table, introduced us to the team at Orchestra and recommended the platform. The team at Orchestra ran a few demos of the platform for us and showcased its functionality and what it could do to streamline and save us time as a business. We quickly recognised that Orchestra was a good single source of truth for our share register, cap table and ESOP, rather than relying on manually updating multiple spreadsheets.
Given the number of shareholders we have, in conjunction with Snowball Nominees, Orchestra and our team were very collaborative and solution-oriented when it came to shifting over to Orchestra's platform.
Orchestra [has] cut out a lot of admin and risk associated with ESOP and communications around it.
Poohan Nathan, Whip Around's CFO & COO
The Solution
One of the key benefits of using Orchestra has been the transparency it provides us around ESOP, plus the time it has saved us. Before Orchestra, our HR team would send out vesting letters to employees who were part of the employee share option scheme on every anniversary date of their vesting period. It was a big process that required tracking on spreadsheets, calendar reminders, multiple PDFs, and a lot of manual time to prepare and review the information before it was sent out. Now, with Orchestra, it's cut out a lot of the admin and risk associated with ESOP and communications around it.
Prior to Orchestra, we used to receive many questions from staff about their ESOP. Despite them receiving their vesting letters and the deeds, there was still confusion, as ESOP is often not easy to understand. Since Orchestra, we’ve had very few staff questions about ESOP. Staff are able to log in to Orchestra and see a dashboard with their ESOP details, communication history, and all the documentation. It’s a single source of truth, and everyone can see it.
Some of my other favourite Orchestra features include the share registry. I like being able to see a list of our shareholders and their contact details if we need to contact them. It’s a good shareholder database that houses all the key details in one place. The share registry also has neat functionality, which means that if we make a change in the share register, it automatically updates the company office website. We find that really helpful. The download report functionality is also a big help for us. The reports are nicely presented and editable if need be.
Orchestra is a very simple tool to use, and even our team members who aren’t familiar with ESOP and equity management platforms find it very user-friendly. Our team and shareholders like Orchestra's platform's transparency and simplicity. While some shareholders prefer a more personal approach to a purely digital one, Orchestra gives Whip Around the ability to combine those approaches.
