Health Gorilla is an interoperability platform providing permitted access to actionable patient data. Customers use Health Gorilla to improve patient health outcomes, streamline workflows, and create a more equitable healthcare ecosystem. Health Gorilla is your single source of truth for health data.

The team at Health Gorilla needed a way to do more with less. Sun Choi, SVP of Finance, manages a full accounting and BizOps team, but the organization lacks a full FP&A team, which means that in addition to determining overall business strategy and staying on top of his duties as a function leader, Sun is responsible for monthly closing, KPIs, modeling, and other traditional FP&A tasks. Rather than make another full-time hire, Health Gorilla sought an FP&A software solution that could automate monthly manual tasks and speed up recurring processes, freeing up Sun’s time to devote to other high-impact initiatives.

Sun had worked with an Excel-native FP&A software solution at a previous company that didn’t meet his expectations. Implementation of that tool didn’t go as planned, and the team couldn’t utilize the software to perform critical tasks as they intended. When searching for a tool for Health Gorilla, Sun had heard of Vareto from other finance leaders and had been impressed by the value it could add to his workflow. 

Fast and easy implementation 

Because of his prior negative experience, the implementation process was really important to Sun. He partnered closely with a Customer Growth Manager (CGM) at Vareto, and they walked through the implementation process together, achieving Sun’s first goal in less than four weeks. 

“Our CGM made a big difference during the implementation process and helped us reach our goals. Without her, we wouldn't have been able to get up and running so quickly.” —Sun Choi, SVP of Finance, Health Gorilla

Sun’s top priority was building a dashboard showcasing KPIs. He needed a single source of truth for company metrics. He had previously built a KPI dashboard in Google Sheets that he was able to bring into Vareto. The new KPI dashboard could automatically pull in and populate data from business-critical systems, saving time for Sun and ensuring that anyone looking at company metrics was viewing accurate and up-to-date information. 

Automation that saves headcount costs

Sun had a difficult — nearly impossible — time maintaining his workload only using Google Sheets or Excel. Before implementing Vareto, Sun would spend several hours every week manually copying and pasting data from systems like Quickbooks and Salesforce into his Google Sheets. While Sun still closes the financials monthly, he leverages Vareto to automatically bring in actuals data from their ERP, removing the need to copy/paste manually and significantly lowering error rates from manual processes. Vareto also helps track company headcount through an integration with Health Gorilla’s HRIS, allowing Sun to more easily and accurately update the model every month based on changes to headcount.

Sun also meets with departmental leaders bi-weekly to discuss budget variances and answer any questions they may have about the financials. Similarly, without Vareto, Sun was manually copying/pasting data from business systems into individual spreadsheets created for each department. Automating these processes saved Sun 10-20 hours of manual work per week and allowed them to push back hiring another FTE.

Better collaboration with business partners and increased visibility

In addition to saving Sun time through automation, Vareto has improved his ability to collaborate with business partners effectively. Each business unit has its own customized dashboard and access to Vareto, allowing those team members to self-serve and view their metrics in real time. Sun has complete control over user access, ensuring that different team members have appropriate access to the data. As he meets with department leaders bi-weekly, Sun finds that the conversations are easier when his business partners utilize their Vareto dashboards. They can get the insight they need from the numbers and come to him with minimal questions about the data, enabling them to focus on more strategic initiatives during meetings. 

Teams can also easily double-click into the data in Vareto to find details about their numbers. For example, if Marketing needs to know which conferences are making up their events budget for the quarter, they can discover vendor-level information within a few clicks. Without Vareto, Sun would have to copy and paste that information from Quickbooks into a spreadsheet. In a fast-paced environment, this delay slows decision-making or could mean that the Marketing team had to make decisions without data, ultimately adding friction between them and finance.

“In this macroeconomic environment, it’s critical for companies to have visibility into cash burn and where we can optimize spend. Vareto helps me do that in real-time, so we have the agility to focus on what matters most.” —Sun Choi, SVP, Finance, Health Gorilla