Our main mission is facilitating collaboration between fast-growing tech startups and traditional, established companies. And this story is an excellent example of a project with innovation at its heart.
Three C4DI members have collaborated to create a brand new expense management solution that gives businesses the financial freedom they need, while saving time and money.
The Rix Group has partnered with Bespoke Business Solutions, App and IoT Development Agency Sauce to design and build Expensemate, an end-to-end expense management solution. Software Development Company Arc Studios also worked on the project to develop a content management system for the Expensemate website.
The holistic suite of products and services includes MastercardsⓇ that can be fully controlled by business owners, an app that captures and records key financial information, receipt photos and a portal that provides intelligent insights into company spending.
Harry Rix with an Expensemate card
“The idea for Expensemate was sparked in discussions to expand our offering to our Fuelmate customers. While our fuel cards gave businesses control over fuel costs, broader expenses were still causing headaches,” Harry Rix, Product Owner at Expensemate, tells us.
Fuelmate was launched in early 2007 and quickly became one of the group’s fastest-growing businesses, providing thousands of companies across the UK with fuel card services.
“A lot of paper-based processes, including expenses tracking, are shifting to digital, but we realised that nobody was offering an end-to-end expense management solution from payments to reconciliation, as well as offering credit against transactions.”
Expensemate saves time and money for business owners, accountants and employees, allowing businesses to actively manage spending, standardise practices and say goodbye to expense reports and paper receipts.
“The MastercardsⓇ give businesses control over what employees are spending, while the app enables you to log expenses on the go. The portal saves hours of admin time and gives you insight into who is spending and what they’re spending it on.”
Established in 1873, The Rix Group is a family-owned business with deep roots in Hull. However, over the past two centuries, the group has diversified to meet the ever-changing demands of its customers.
Expensemate is just one example of this in action.
Sauce, Bespoke Business Solutions, App and IoT Development Agency, is based at C4DI
“Working with the Expensemate team on this project has been incredible. While they have the experience and existing userbase as an established business, the team shared our startup values and agile way of working,” explains Jim Wardlaw, Chief of Product and Design at Sauce.
“It has been an interesting collaboration between ourselves and The Rix Group, as well as other financial tech companies like QPay and ByteStrype. While the final end product focuses on simplicity, there was a lot of complexity behind the scenes and it has really opened up my eyes into how payments work.”
Expensemate card
"It’s been a rich experience, but not without its challenges, which both teams have worked tirelessly to overcome,” says Aaron Martin, CEO of Arc Studios.
“Creating a flexible content management system that allows the Expensemate team to create a website that they can be proud of has been incredibly complex and intricate, but I think the end result speaks for itself and shows how collaborating on a project can ensure success."
Expensemate’s aim is to save customers time and money with digital tools that give real insights into company spending. But, The Rix Group is also keen to highlight its human approach to business.
“Alongside the technology, we have a dedicated team of account managers based in the city who are always on hand to help our customers out with any questions they may have,” Harry adds.
This project is a brilliant example of how companies within C4DI are able to quickly collaborate on projects and ideas. Our corporate members benefit from a vast pool of talent that they can draw from, while our startups are able to connect and collaborate with established companies as they scale up.
You can find out more about Expensemate here.
Meanwhile, if you’d like to find out more about C4DI and how your startup or business can get involved in the community, please contact our Community Manager Louise Cooke.