Spendesk has helped our teams move from administrative tasks to more analytical work.

Key results with Spendesk

• Eliminated paper processes: Moved from 100% paper expense reports to fully digital workflows.

• Complete digitisation: Transformed from paper to digital across all entities in just 60 days.

• Multi-entity visibility: Real-time spend oversight across five countries and eight locations.

• Finance team transformation: Freed accountants from admin tasks to focus on strategic analysis.

• 190% user adoption: Grew from 50 planned users to 145 active users.

• Zero employee cash advances: Eliminated the need for staff to advance personal funds.

• Seamless ERP integration: Automated data flow with existing accounting systems.

About Pierre Frey

Pierre Frey is a French family-owned design house founded in 1935, creating fabrics, wallpapers, carpets, and furniture. Combining heritage craftsmanship with innovation, the company operates workshops in France and the UK, serving design professionals across 80+ countries with projects ranging from Château de Versailles to the White House.

The challenges

Before Spendesk, Pierre Frey's financial processes had fallen significantly behind its creative innovation, creating operational and strategic challenges across international operations.

Core issues:

• 100% paper-based expense reports requiring manual processing of 50 reports monthly.

• Each report contained 10-20 line items requiring manual data entry.

• No digital audit trail or spending dashboard across the organisation.

• Employees forced to advance personal cash for business purchases.

• Single corporate card for the entire company with a separate fuel card system.

• No real-time visibility across multiple entities and geographies.

• Finance team consumed by administrative tasks rather than strategic analysis.

• Complex multi-language requirements (French, English and German) across entities.

• No visibility into company expenses without physically retrieving paper documents.

The solution

Pierre Frey selected Spendesk's Premium solution to handle their complex requirements: multi-entity management, multi-language support, and seamless ERP integration.

Key features implemented:

• Multi-entity deployment across five countries with unified processes.

• Physical and virtual cards eliminated employee cash advances.

• Multi-language support for French, English, and German operations.

• ERP integration enables seamless data flow to accounting systems.

• CSV export capabilities for customised accounting processes.

• Automated approval workflows replaced paper-based processes.

• Real-time spend visibility across all entities and geographies.

From paper to digital in 60 days

The transformation was remarkably swift. Pierre Frey deployed Spendesk in December 2021 and reached full digital maturity across their organisation by February 2022, just two months later.

This rapid adoption reflected both the platform's intuitive design and the urgent need for modernisation. What once required hours of manual data entry, document retrieval, and reconciliation now happens automatically. The team gained real-time visibility into spending across all entities, with proper audit trails and approval workflows built into every transaction.

The deployment scaled beyond initial expectations. While Pierre Frey originally targeted 50 users, the platform now supports 145 active users, nearly triple the original target. Employees now hold Spendesk cards, eliminating the need for personal cash advances and providing controlled spending power across the organisation.

The results

Since adopting Spendesk six years ago, Pierre Frey has fundamentally transformed its finance operations:

• Two-month digital transformation: From paper to full maturity in 60 days.

• 190% user adoption: Grew from 50 planned users to 145 active users.

• Eliminated paper processing: Zero manual expense report processing.

• Finance team transformation: Shifted from administrative tasks to strategic analysis.

• Real-time multi-entity visibility: Complete oversight across five countries.

• Zero cash advances: Eliminated employee need to advance personal funds.

• Seamless ERP integration: Automated data flow with accounting systems.

• Sustained partnership: Six years of continued value and evolution.

Looking ahead: AI as finance co-pilot

Having successfully digitised spend management, Pierre Frey is now focused on leveraging AI to transform finance from reactive to predictive. Benjamin has been collaborating with Spendesk as it builds new AI agents that he's especially excited about: those that automatically match purchase orders with invoices, flag discrepancies, and surface strategic insights.

"Having AI agents from Spendesk that automatically match POs with invoices and flag discrepancies would save our teams a huge amount of time. When AI moves from automation to real financial intelligence, it can act as a co-pilot for the finance team."

He's also excited about Spendesk's vision for opportunities that extend beyond automation to intelligence: AI identifying supplier patterns, predicting cashflow challenges, and providing anonymised benchmarking against similar companies.

Ready to modernise your financial operations?

Discover how Spendesk can help your business eliminate paper processes, gain multi-entity visibility, and free your finance team for strategic work. Talk to an expert today.