Fintech unicorn Pleo is scaling up with Okta and dataJAR

Empowering employees with an end-to-end expenses solution 

Managing financial processes manually can really slow down the pace of a project. Think expense reports, holding on to old paper receipts and wondering whether an invoice has been paid on time. Expense management solution Pleo solves this challenge by providing simple, intuitive and in some cases delightful technology for the finance team and employee alike.. With Pleo, finance teams can give employees a Pleo card to buy what they need to get their work done. They then take a photo of the receipt in the Pleo app and expense reports are automatically created, giving finance teams the visibility they need to ensure healthy spending within the business. Pleo also takes care of invoice management, mileage and reimbursement claims, meaning finance administrators can expect to save 138 work hours a year normally spent on paperwork and admin.

This combination of easy-to-use solutions and tangible time savings is proving popular with Pleo's customers, and in recent years, the start up has experienced rapid growth, expanding from Denmark and the UK to a further 14 European markets. As a result, its workforce has doubled in size in the past six months, and now numbers nearly 1,000 employees.

With such rapid growth, onboarding and offboarding were taking up a lot of time. Pleo's IT team wanted to reduce the time it was spending on administrative tasks, and centralise and modernise its access management. That would close any possible security loopholes and ensure its auditing and data management processes were compliant with governance regulations for its sector.

Pleo was already collaborating with Okta partner dataJAR to help configure and control its Apple devices using Jamf. After hearing how other growing start-ups were working with dataJAR and Okta to support their growth, Pleo decided that Okta was the right solution to provide both easy integrations and the capacity to scale in the future.  

"At Pleo, our mindset is to be ready to scale up, whether in selecting tools or developing internal processes," explains Laith Al-Maliki, IT Manager, Pleo. "We try to choose the best tools in the market, which also fit with the tools we already have, and Okta is a great example of that approach." 

Choosing a platform that integrates with all the right tools 

Pleo's team-led approach extends the ways its own teams work internally, with Pleo employees able to purchase IT applications and solutions as needed using Pleo cards. As a result, Pleo's workforce uses up to 200 different SaaS applications. While employees were previously signing in to some of these applications via Google Workspace, not all of the applications its workforce used were compatible, leading to a patchwork of different security solutions. 

Pleo wanted a single solution that would integrate with all its major applications, including datajar.mobi and Google Workspace, as well as its HR software Humans, in order to deliver greater visibility over all its identity processes. Pleo decided Okta was the best fit for the company's remote-first mindset and its integration needs, as it provided the simplest user interface as well as the greatest number of integrations with the tools it was already using.

As for dataJAR, Pleo felt they had a similar approach to choosing the leading tools on the market. "97% of our users utilise some form of macOS, and dataJAR had recently hired a number of world-class Mac experts, so that immediately earned our stamp of approval," explains Laith. "Adding Okta to the services we were already provisioning through dataJAR was a great way to deepen the partnership." 

Delivering faster onboarding and more consistent security

Employees can now log in to 28 applications via Okta using Single Sign-On (SSO), securing their log in with a secondary factor using Multi Factor Authentication (MFA). They can do this in the way that suits them best, using Okta Verify, Google Authenticator, or an SMS. Employees can also use Okta Fastpass, which delivers passwordless authentication through its macOS devices managed by Jamf. 

"Using dataJAR Mobile Device Management and Okta means that when employees receive their company laptop, it's fully loaded and ready to go, with all their tools installed," explains Laith. "From the user point of view, it's really easy, and we've been getting great feedback from new starters."

With Pleo's rapid rates of growth, up to 100 employees have been onboarded every month. Inductions take place every two weeks as part of Pleo's extended onboarding process. Eleven of Pleo's applications are integrated with Lifecycle Management, and Okta now automatically assigns permissions for those applications using group access rights, which has reduced the administrative burden associated with both onboarding new starters and forming new internal teams. 

Supporting an IT team with greater visibility and more control

One of the key benefits for Pleo is that security across applications is now consistent. The IT team is back in charge of access management, as now employees are now only allowed to purchase applications that are compatible with Okta. It now also has visibility over the entire lifecycle of user accounts, and has significantly reduced the number of weekly IT service desk queries. 

Another key change is the time required to onboard new employees, which previously took up to two hours. Now, new employees are onboarded within five minutes, and when employees leave the company their access to applications is disabled without having to manually remove it. That both saves time for the IT team, and helps in terms of security and governance.

"As a regulated institution, we need to ensure that applications are managed properly and accounts are closed on time," says Laith. "Our policy is that if a tool is unable to connect to Okta, we won't purchase that tool, as it's critical to our auditing."

Bringing together Okta and HR for even easier provisioning

The next step for Pleo is to integrate its HR software with Okta. That will enable it to automate provisioning and deprovisioning based on HR records, saving time, and helping to eliminate manual errors. It is also looking forward to the introduction of Identity Governance, which will automatically generate governance reports for auditing. 

"We know the technology inside out, and are able to tailor the user experience to a particular client's environment," says Chris Tomsett, Business Development Manager at dataJAR. "We're really looking forward to continuing to support Pleo as it grows."

"Without dataJAR and Okta, we simply wouldn't have been able to scale in a sustainable way," concludes Laith. "Not only can we onboard more quickly and efficiently, the IT team is much less stressed."