Expenzing: People Partnering People to Make Great Software
Expenzing is a specialist IT product company that creates mature and affordable digital Spend Management Solutions for organizations across industries to help bring good governance and financial control. Mumbai-based Expenzing caters to organizations globally, with offices in Boston, Singapore, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Expenzing products designed by domain experts are super intuitive to use, and yet conduct complex due diligence, configure processes streamlining in the backend.
How does an organization achieve anything? The people. Expenzing co-founders are Ms. Ila Imani, CEO, and Mr. Shabbir Imani, Founder-Director, Expenzing. They are graduates of the Indian Institute of Management- Kolkata with decades of experience in the IT domain. When Ila and Shabbir Imani founded Expenzing more than 20 years ago, their vision was already ahead of the curve. Back then services companies were on the rise, working with complicated OUs and people structures. Despite the odds, Ila and Shabbir decided to create a product-led organization with a flat hierarchy. Team members were encouraged to break free from the molds that defined the limits of what they could contribute.
Business is personal. A good workplace does not only give job satisfaction. It also gives life satisfaction. Your organization, where you spend most of your wakeful time, leaves a significant mark on your life and personality. Your work affects every aspect of your life.
What makes Expenzing different? At Expenzing, under the mentorship of top management, employees are encouraged to adopt an entrepreneurial approach to problem-solving. That brings greater accountability, ownership, and a better sense of purpose to the team members. Henry Ford said, “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” One can see a real-life example of this quote at work in Expenzing. All teams work in tandem with each other, collaborating on touchpoints related to common goals. It means the product team has insight into issues customers may be facing. Customer success teams are in the loop about the upcoming fixes and product roadmap, which allows them to engage better with existing clients. For overseas staff, it is even more critical to find the motivation to go and contribute.
Aisyah from Indonesia wrote to her mentor, “I really appreciate your generosity and your having my hard work acknowledged. Since I’ve joined the team, it’s been an adventure as well as a learning experience.”
Expenzing offers a learning environment on all experience levels. Managers and mentors help their team members to identify their strengths and calling and create opportunities for them to pursue that. It is an environment that encourages intellect, innovation, intent, and results, and is not restrained by roles and designations.
Nikhil, who has been with Expenzing for about 3 years says, “This has been a great learning experience for me. It takes years and years for a fresher to get a holistic and business-relevant understanding of the application they are working on. I am an application expert, engage in client discussions, and help new joinees to catch up. My friends in other companies are not getting this level of exposure.”
Because of how teams work together, a customer support team member could have valuable insight into product improvement. It is not just a matter of having insights. A well-implemented open-door policy, brainstorming, and strategy sessions ensure that such insights are picked up and considered before determining their feasibility.
Expenzing is an absolute powerhouse. It boasts an enviable gender and diversity ratio that goes up to senior-level and top management. It gets easy for people to meet their potential when the focus is on results and not gender, race, religion, and ethnicity. For a medium-sized organization with such close-knit teams and in-person working culture, there was a moment of uncertainty when the news of the COVID lockdown came in. However, with equal amounts of grit, grace, and compassion, everyone worked together, supported each
other, and rose to the occasion together as a team. Infrastructure support, customer support implementations, product development, scheduled releases, and bringing in new clients- everything was done, despite new and uncertain circumstances.
As things return to almost pre-COVID normalcy, the teams are back with renewed confidence on having successfully won over yet another challenge, and ready for more. The sky’s the limit here at Expenzing.
