Providing an Intelligent and Intuitive Month-End Close Solution

The month-end close is one of the most essential tasks for any company’s finance and accounting function. Whether it’s a large corporation or a small company, month-end close activities not only produce the company’s financial statements, but they can also identify any unusual transactions caused by unintentional errors or intentional fraud. Automation is needed in this area now more than ever as companies must rely on it more heavily in the future. Pandemic or not, many mid-sized companies continue to struggle with closing and reporting accurate numbers quickly, often with a lean accounting team.

SkyStem is a recognized provider of month-end close automation software. It strives to bring soul to systems and processes by providing intelligent and intuitive solutions that eliminate redundant work, allowing customers to focus on more dynamic, strategic, and fulfilling work.

The origin of the company

Shagun Malhotra, CPA, CIA, started her career in the travel and hospitality industry, and through her experience in audit and investigative accounting, she ultimately fell in love with the world of audit, controls, and the accounting process. A troubled financial services giant asked her to lead the year-long remediation effort due to broken internal controls around the month-end process, upon which she successfully delivered a clean audit.

From this experience, Shagun saw firsthand the multitude of problems and risks accountants face when employing manual methods to close the books and complete reconciliations. She also realized that existing platforms with automation in this area were not suitable for all companies and were often priced quite high. This meant that automation was beyond the reach for many mid-sized companies that could benefit from automation during the close, but lacked the resources to make a large software investment and undergo a multi-month implementation.

This realization motivated her to found SkyStem, a SaaS provider that aimed to create an affordably priced solution to help mid-sized companies automate the month-end close process. SkyStem’s flagship solution, ART, was brought to the market shortly after. We interviewed her to know more about the company and its services. Here are a few excerpts of the interview:

Q. Tell us about the SkyStem’s core strategies to attract customers.

We offer ART on a subscription (SaaS) basis. Our solution was designed to meet four criteria: robust in features, easy to use, fast to implement, and reasonably priced. SkyStem’s core belief is that software should be robust but never break the bank or cause unnecessary business disruption, and that is how we have carved our niche in this industry. Our solution can be set up in as little as three weeks without our customers having to engage outside consultants or bring in their own IT personnel. Everything is done in-house without incurring a lot of expenses on the customer side. SkyStem strives to bring soul to software by providing intelligent and intuitive solutions to eliminate redundant work, allowing our customers to focus on more dynamic and fulfilling work. We emphasize the human touch so that customers get cutting-edge technology paired with fanatical customer service.

Q. Which attributes should a company possess to become truly successful and be able to provide the best possible service to customers?

It’s important to have passion, patience, and a strong commitment to customers. We are distinctive in the industry in that we offer white-glove customer support service free of charge. In addition, we also aim to have a significant number of enhancements to come from our existing customer pool. This has helped us create a strong and loyal customer base.

Q. How do you simplify account reconciliations?

ART helps accountants reduce up to 40% of reconciliations every month and eliminate up to 90% of administrative activities around the month-end close process through various automation activities such as system reconciliation rules, standard form creation, automated calculation schedules, checklists, dashboards and reports. We have successfully shortened the time to finish monthly reconciliation work by up to 50% in some cases.

“SkyStem’s core belief is that software should be robust but never break the bank or cause unnecessary business disruption, and that is how we have carved our niche in this industry.”

Q. What are the key differentiators of your offering?

Our product, ART, is the most affordable, quality-focused, and is easiest to implement. ART doesn’t just provide an efficient way to perform the month-end close but is also the most focused on the quality aspect of the work with unique features that set us apart. We offer three packages that allow ART to be customizable to our customer’s needs and budget based on the features that will benefit them the most. Putting the customer at the core of our product has always proven beneficial to our company’s success.

Q. Tell us about the training, customer support and continuing education that SkyStem provides.

SkyStem emphasizes a customer-centric philosophy. Our Genius Academy is one of many outlets we offer that emphasizes our high-touch approach so that our customers get the best of both worlds whenever they need – cutting-edge technology paired with fanatical customer service. SkyStem is comprised of subject matter experts with deep knowledge of accounting and auditing to assist our customers. Our hands-on customer service team and the various training channels are essential to keeping our customers happy.

In addition to training, SkyStem hosts webinars every month to share what’s essential in this industry with trending topics. We also maintain a global presence in various FinTech conferences throughout the year. We’ve expanded our channels to include podcasts of our customers’ experience with adopting automation to ease their month-end close burden. This is another way SkyStem freely disseminates information and valuable knowledge for others to learn and apply where appropriate.

Q. What is your vision for SkyStem for the next five years?

Accounting is filled with so many micro-processes and tasks, and there has always been limited focus on the small things that make the accounting world tick. We want to continue to build and refine our current product to mirror what our customers need. As we continue to acquire customers, we are always amazed at and grateful for how many great ideas are delivered to us by our customers. Continuing to inject intelligence into our solution will enable our customers to do more with less, and we want that vision to be a constant focal point.

About the CEO

Shagun Malhotra, Founder and CEO of SkyStem, is the visionary behind the product and user experience. A CPA, CIA, and an experienced auditor and process consultant, she designed ART for accountants. Having gone through the broken and inefficient process various times over, she believed there was a more efficient and user-friendly way to close the books. Being process-focused, Shagun injected process within ART to deliver a product that is highly integrated and process-centric. Shagun started her career in public accounting and has worked in Fortune 100 companies such as Marriott and Freddie Mac. Her work focused primarily on internal controls and risk mitigation in both international and domestic arenas. She has been a speaker for Kauffman FastTrac and is passionate about entrepreneurship.

“ART has been a great addition to our close process. We’re able to get account recs done earlier, follow through on unknown or identified variances more easily, and get account recs and support to the auditors much better than before. I’ve used the leader in this industry at a past job and feel this software is as good at a much more reasonable price,” David S., AM Retail Group.