WP Engine Payables Automation Scales Growth of Partner Program

• Accelerated time-to-value of launching new Agency Partner Program by 12 months
• Eliminated need to hire team to manage partner commissions, tax compliance, accruals, and payments
• Time spent reconciling partner payments sped up by 24 days annually

HQ Austin, TX
Customer Since 2017
Industry Online Services

With over 2 billion page views across 500,000+ digital experiences every day and 75,000+ global customers, the WP Engine digital experience platform is the industry’s leading solution to build, deliver, and optimize digital experiences built on WordPress. A big part of the growth formula for WP Engine involves gaining new customers through partners, and more recently, launching a dedicated Agency Partner Program to grow new accounts with brands seeking to create world-class digital experiences.

The original plan for the new Agency Partner Program called for bringing on a leader to launch the program operationally, and then hiring additional resources as the program grew. This pushed the launch date for the program out a full year.

“With the payments, commissions, tax compliance, and the accrual process, we were looking at delivering this project a year out in order to hire a team that would 100% manage all the commissions as well as help with the tax compliance and the payment processing.”

A year of missed opportunities with hundreds of agency partners compelled the WP Engine team to look for technology solutions to speed the time-to-market of onboarding agencies and automating payments and compliance. The decision was made to implement Tipalti. “By deploying Tipalti, this saved us from having to hire a whole new team and accelerated our Agency Partner Program launch by a year—a huge advantage for us,” said Gilharry.

When WP Engine began onboarding partners using Tipalti’s self-service portal, the process for ensuring global tax compliance was greatly simplified. According to Gilharry, “We can’t waste effort on paying folks who aren’t eligible, and we want to pay eligible partners correctly. A major feature that really benefits us is the global tax-compliance piece with Tipalti.”

“We had 2 dedicated finance folks who were reconciling payments each month, taking 48 hours to get back to us, so we had to be very strict with the cutoff date. After implementing Tipalti, it takes one person an hour to go through the same process. Our monthly close process is much faster.”

Once partners started receiving payments, reconciling those payments with WP Engine’s accounting system has also been significantly simplified. Overall, WP Engine has found that automating its payables operations with Tipalti has been a streamlined and seamless process.

“Now I get alerts that it’s time to pay partners and who we need to pay. My job is a lot easier and efficient, and I spend a lot less time reviewing and troubleshooting risks,” sums up Gilharry.