Wild has garnered a cult following for its sustainable, high-quality body care products, being the UK's top brand for refillable deodorant. The brand has been acknowledged as the fastest-growing company in the UK, largely due to its successful omnichannel marketing and influencer programme.
Wild has an in-house team dedicated to their influencer marketing programme, and has built dynamic influencer partnerships that require ongoing payments. With hundreds of influencers to pay each week, managing payments could have easily become a daunting task for the team.
That's where Telleroo comes in, offering an efficient and streamlined solution for bulk influencer payments. Anna Stafford, Finance Manager at Wild, shares their experience using Telleroo:
"A really crucial piece for me is speed. We have large volumes of payments because we work with hundreds of influencers a week. If we were paying those manually, it would be super time-consuming. I'd say that is the biggest win that we get out of Telleroo."
There is a lot of software out there geared towards managing and paying influencers. So why use Telleroo instead of these platforms?
"Part of it is the initial setup. I have spoken to platforms in the past and they sound really great. Often you can onboard influencers to the software so that they can monitor the collaboration. It's a great tool, but with our scale we don't need those additional add-ons. We don't really have the time to go through that process and manage it going forward."
Sending bulk payments is one thing, but what about reconciling company accounts? Wild has used Telleroo since 2020, and it’s the smooth experience with Xero’s accounting software that has made it a sustainable choice:
"The number one reason for joining Telleroo was the ease of integration into Xero, our accounting system. Being able to create payment runs directly from Xero, essentially linking to Telleroo with a click of a button. It also means we don't need to reconcile payments on an individual basis. Being able to just do that in one click saves so much time."
Initially, Wild outsourced its accounts payable operations, collaborating closely with their accounting partner in Telleroo. However, following the recruitment of a Finance Assistant, the team transitioned to managing accounts payable internally. A shift that was helped by Telleroo:
"Telleroo made the transition super easy, because it's so simple to use. I could transfer my knowledge of using the software to our Finance Assistant, and it wasn't a complicated process at all. When transferring our Telleroo account from our previous partners to Wild, directly invoicing and updating the account was all done through the Telleroo chat function. It was definitely seamless."
Anna now oversees accounts payable, focusing more on the overall process than tackling the day-to-day. Wild's Finance Assistant creates supplier and influencer pay runs and submits them to Anna for approval:
"Nothing gets paid before I review it. Sometimes things get picked up in Telleroo, for example, a direct debit, and we'll take that out. We can catch things that slip through the cracks the first time around in Xero. It's very useful to have that level of review."
"It's also helpful that Telleroo flags if there are bank details missing, or if they're different to what is currently in Xero. Then we can do those double-checks. It saves so much time. With so many influencers, it saves us from having to check every invoice against their existing bank details. Telleroo is useful for picking up any errors there."
"The way that Telleroo and Xero work from purely the payment perspective works great for us. I think when they're bigger packages, sometimes there are bits that you don't need. I'm really happy with how Telleroo works for us, and that's why we're with Telleroo."