Pattern Energy is one of the world’s largest, privately owned renewable energy companies that uses best-in-class technologies to deliver sustainable power solutions.
INDUSTRY
Renewable Energy
EMPLOYEES
500 - 1,000
APPZEN PRODUCTS
Expense Audit
THE PROBLEM
Manual expense auditing strained global compliance
With operations spanning the US, Canada, the Netherlands, and Japan, Pattern Energy’s eight-person Accounts Payable team struggled to maintain rigorous compliance standards alongside a highly manual audit process. As a renewable energy company heavily dependent on meeting government regulations, Pattern Energy needed robust checks and balances across its global operations.
“Our company is very, very reliant on government compliance, and it was very important for us to have a system of checks and balances that would allow us to find these things.”
Caitlin Leatherman, Accounts Payable Supervisor at Pattern Energy Group
Time-intensive audits consumed the team’s time, leaving almost no working hours to focus on value-add activities that could drive long-term improvements. Pattern Energy needed a way to automate, but they also needed a solution they could implement without disrupting their existing operations. The prospect of changing their global operations seemed daunting for their lean team, but they needed a solution to strengthen compliance controls.
“We were hoping to find an application that would help us regain some of the time we lost in the manual process of auditing expenses. We wanted to see if we could [put] some of that time back on our plate and use it more effectively,” says Leatherman.
THE SOLUTION
A swift implementation saved 350 working hours
The rapid, two-month deployment of AppZen’s Expense Audit allowed the team to immediately redirect their focus toward optimizing policies. Instead of being bogged down with integration configurations, the team could concentrate on establishing stronger compliance controls and developing specialized teams like their “fraud squad.”
“We created an entire compliance aspect to our travel and expense policies that allowed us to analyze all of these small, possibly fraudulent expenses. We were so surprised at how much time we could regain after tweaking our policy to match exactly what the company needed.”
Caitlin Leatherman, Accounts Payable Supervisor at Pattern Energy Group
A speedy implementation also meant Caitlin and her team could spend more time educating employees on expense best practices. “Because the implementation was so quick, we were able to spend more time training our employees,” shares Leatherman. “We were so happy to have more time in our day to do things we needed to do.” In their first year of using AppZen, the team saved over 350 hours of manual auditing and could auto-approve 71% of their expense report globally.
THE RESULT
Strategic pursuits unlocked through 71% auto-approvals
Pattern Energy achieved significant operational efficiencies through its AppZen implementation, reclaiming the equivalent of half a full-time employee’s capacity. Instead of reviewing every expense item, AppZen surfaced only the items requiring human attention, dramatically improving the team’s use of time and resources. The team could redirect their focus to strategic initiatives at scale. “We weren’t spending time on expenses that were really low risk. It allowed us to expand the rest of our department and company,” reflects Leatherman.
Looking ahead, Pattern Energy is positioned to support its global expansion plans with a scalable expense management solution. As the company explores new markets and regions, its partnership with AppZen will help ensure consistent compliance standards across its growing international operations.
