:format(webp))
Six years of success: How Emma Sleep has found a true growth partner in Perk since 2019
Who is Emma Sleep?
Emma Sleep is more than just a mattress company. They’re a full-service sleep company, offering a range of items like pillow, duvets, mattress protectors, toppers, and other items to help their customers get a comfortable night’s rest. Based in four main offices with other hubs around the world, Emma Sleep has a presence in Europe, North America, and APAC. They’re a growing scale-up that now has over 1000 employees and sells hundreds of thousands of mattresses per month.
Perk: An intuitive choice for travel management
Emma Sleep has been working with Perk for quite some time. Before Perk, there was no formal travel management system in place. Employees would book their business trips, and then Emma Sleep would reimburse them.
As the company grew rapidly and considered opening new offices, it became clear that it was time to find a more centralised solution for business travel. The Emma Sleep team often needs to travel to meet with suppliers, integrate new systems, and strengthen relationships face-to-face. With no travel policies in place and employees booking travel manually, the organisation was left without an easy way to control the costs of travel and identify opportunities for savings. The reimbursement system wasn’t ideal, either—employees had to pay out of pocket and wait for expenses to be approved, which could be a stressful process for them.
After considering several other options, Emma Sleep decided to go with Perk. In March 2019, they implemented the Perk software within their company. Currently, they have an integration with their HR system, Personio. In the future, they hope to expand this, and also add more integrations with Jira and Expensya. Perk has become an integral part of operations at Emma Sleep, bridging the gap between HR, finance, and travel.
A long-term partnership for optimisation and growth
As a fast-growing organisation, Emma Sleep is used to managing change. When Beatriz Neves, Emma’s P&O Excellence Manager, joined the company, One of her first tasks was to work with the team to improve the travelling process at Emma. Last year, Emma Sleep went through a restructuring and changed the policy again, with Perk’s ongoing support. Emma Sleep continuously asks for feedback from employees on the company’s travel program. When travelers make suggestions, Beatriz passes those on to her Perk account manager, and the two of them work together to find a solution.
“What I really value in this partnership is that we’re creating something that we can develop together. It's not just your company developing and us being on the sidelines… Instead, we’re growing together in different ways. Perk supporting us, and us supporting Perk.”
— Beatriz Neves, P&O Excellence Manager at Emma Sleep
One example of this is dynamic budgets. Beatriz was hearing feedback that travelers were being marked as out of policy when traveling to areas outside the company’s main offices. Using Perk’s dynamic policies, they were able to set an upper spending limit of 20% above the average price for any specific area. Once this change was made, the process ran more smoothly and they received very positive feedback from travelers.
“The account managers take the time to actually help you and support you to find what you need. I’m very honest in terms of what Emma needs, and Flo [the account manager] is also very transparent with what Perk wants to develop... I think it creates a real relationship of trust, and that’s something that I’m quite proud of.”
— Beatriz Neves, P&O Excellence Manager at Emma Sleep
Creating and enforcing travel policies with Perk has been a gamechanger for Emma Sleep. Over time, by ensuring that flights, hotels, trains, and cars are booked within policy, they’ve saved a total of around €45,000! They’re able to avoid unnecessary upgrades and high-cost options, while still giving travelers the autonomy to book their preferred choices within the Perk system.
Ensuring everyone is ready to travel
With an international team operating in several countries, Emma Sleep needs to make sure everyone has the correct visa to travel. Using Perk’s built-in approval process, they’re able to have the appropriate team member check the requester’s visa status before approving any trips.
Specific groups of travelers have a different approval process. Wholesale managers who travel daily can be approved directly by their team leads, while senior management can choose to book a first-class ticket on long-distance flights. Travelers have the freedom to select their preferred airlines and hotels within the Perk platform, as long as they’re within policy.
Access to the right data for advanced business intelligence
Using data downloaded from Perk, Emma Sleep’s business intelligence team is able to create useful dashboards to understand how much different departments are spending, where the spending is happening, and what types of trips people are taking. They gain full visibility over who is traveling, which locations people are traveling to, upcoming, ongoing, and canceled trips, and the cost of travel bookings.
“Before, it was just us working my magic with Excel… Now, the dashboards that we create are one of the biggest sources for us to keep making improvements in our travel policy. The dashboards get updated monthly, and they get shown to our C level executives, and then they can discuss internally.”
— Beatriz Neves, P&O Excellence Manager at Emma Sleep
Keeping travelers safe with duty of care features
With Perk’s duty of care features, Emma Sleep can ensure that travelers are supported 24/7, even during a crisis. Recently, when air strikes were happening between India and Pakistan, Emma Sleep was notified by the software and was able to immediately communicate with their employees who were traveling in the area.
They’ve also been able to rely on Perk’s Customer Care staff on occasions where employees have accidentally canceled a flight, needed to cancel a flight last-minute, or ran into problems with a rental car company. When things go wrong, Perk is just a call away.
“It's good to know that Customer Support is there 24/7 to find a solution, or escalate it to somebody else who can find a solution.”
— Beatriz Neves, P&O Excellence Manager at Emma Sleep
With Perk’s post-booking support, Emma Sleep can make changes to bookings instantly rather than having to go back and forth over email. This efficient process has saved them €9000 over the past 12 months.
Not only are Emma Sleep’s travelers able to book traditional hotels through Perk, they’re now also able to book Airbnbs for long-term stays. With Perk’s support team and extensive inventory, they’ve been able to solve challenges and find great accommodation options around the world.
:format(webp))