Hippo is a cutting-edge company that leverages smart home technology to offer competitive homeowners insurance policies. After raising their Series E funding, Hippo looked for a corporate finance platform to fit its rapidly growing needs. Initially, the Finance team looked at legacy solutions but realized quickly that those legacy tools wouldn’t meet their needs. 

“After getting demos with all the legacy tools, we went with the one that demoed the best. But, then we were told we had to purchase an additional connector tool to be the bridge between [the legacy solution] and our data for anything to work,” said Guy Zeltser, VP of Finance at Hippo Insurance. “They also told us that we had to find an outside partner to implement the tool. The person I was shaking hands and signing a contract with wouldn’t be there to ensure the tool worked for us. This didn’t make sense and didn’t work for us.”

With Vareto, the Finance team found an in-house implementation team that worked closely with them to customize the platform to their needs.

“I’ve been really pleased with the experience,” Guy stated. “Customer Success was organized, listened to us, and implemented the feedback we gave. We didn’t just choose a product — we chose a partner who does whatever it takes to ensure we are successful.”

Since deploying Vareto, Finance has been able to reduce repetitive work significantly. Before Vareto, the team spent five to six business days every month generating department-level budget versus actuals (BvA) status reports. Finance then had to email each of its 15 departments with the relevant Excel spreadsheet and answer additional back-and-forth questions.

“For example, every month, Marketing would reach out about customer acquisition cost (CAC), marketing spend, or some other metric for the month that just finished,” Guy explained. “We’d have to go to Tableau and download a report, then go into NetSuite to download a report — this required a few hours of manual work each time just to get back to them. Now, Marketing can just click into the Vareto dashboard and instantaneously see all the granular data they need on demand without needing to check with us. We can automatically generate insights to our business partners in a timely manner. It’s improved how we provide immediate value to and collaborate with our business partners.”

With Vareto, Finance trusts that they have access to the information they need to generate strategic insights — and Vareto has become a vital tool for company leadership. 

“We can share dynamic dashboards In Vareto instead of static Powerpoint deck attachments. When we’re in live discussions with leadership, we need access to information very quickly,” said Guy. “Now we can click and access line item data within seconds. And because it connects directly to our systems, it reduces the error rate.”  

Centralizing critical operating data and business models in Vareto also mitigates key person risk.

“When I build a model in Excel, I understand it, but if I don’t take time to explain it to my team, they won’t understand how it’s built.” said Guy. “But now, Vareto breaks down information silos because the models and data live in Vareto in one place.”

As Hippo continues to scale, the finance team sees Vareto as a way to maximize its impact.

Guy explained: “With our finance team, we’re not trying to build an army, but a strong team with strong individuals. We’re constantly thinking about how we get leverage. How do we not spend 80% of our time generating reports, presentations, and numbers? How can we instead automate so we can spend that time on messaging, insight generation, and thinking about how to grow the business? Vareto has been that multiplier for our team’s ability. It’s been a huge time-saver that touches almost all the work we do. With Vareto, one person can do the work of two to three people.”