Noom Brings Accounting In-House with Streamlined Financial Operations

• Eliminated the need for outsourced accounting help
• Avoided hiring two full-time resources for accounts payable operations
• Integrated seamlessly with ERP, NetSuite

HQ New York, NY
Customer Since 2019
Industry Consumer Services

Make the world a healthier place. With this mantra in mind, Noom founders, Saeju Jeong and Artem Petakov, created their company in 2008 to help people adopt healthier habits. Because of Noom, over 45 million users worldwide make more conscious decisions with their diet, fitness, and lifestyle.

With a core team of 1,000+ employees based in New York, Seoul, and Tokyo and over 1,600 health coaches, the Noom network was growing steadily to support its passionate user base. Their unique blend of psychology and data differentiated their offerings in the market, and by 2020 the company quadrupled their earnings. As a key financial leader, Marc Balcke, Noom’s Corporate Controller, recognized the company’s significant growth and knew the critical opportunity this presented to implement the right technology stack.

“To continue growing, I was looking to adopt holistic and scalable solutions that integrated with our ERP, NetSuite. With the right technology, I believe finance can support the success of a global organization in a very cost-effective and efficient way.”

Before Balcke joined, all payables were made by check and required multiple signatures. Third-party accountants managed bills and payables across unwieldy systems like Google Drive, Excel, and personal email. On the clinical research side, Noom paid vendor invoices for operations and advertising, including foreign vendors and contingent workers—causing finance to shoulder the burden of managing and paying hundreds of individual partners.

“It was very complex to track payments—many were lost or voided, and we had to reissue them manually.”

Also, with Tipalti’s OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology, Noom saved time on data entry, stayed compliant with international vendor requirements, gained visibility into their approval process, and implemented more robust financial controls. Plus, Noom’s vendors now had the flexibility to onboard themselves, manage their tax form requirements, and choose their preferred payment methods.

“Pre Tipalti, we couldn’t add new suppliers, vendors, and partners without adding finance headcount. Now, we can scale and have as many partners as we want.”

Transforming their payables process has enabled Balcke to centralize financials and bring everything in-house. This newfound visibility into a global business yielded immediate benefits. As Balcke explained, “More visibility and transparency into the financials of our subsidiaries accelerates our reporting and helps us measure and understand our financial performance faster.”

As Noom continues to acquire subsidiaries, automation allows its finance processes to scale and accommodate hundreds of additional vendors without adding unnecessary headcount. “We would have had to hire at least two more employees to handle onboarding and payments, especially after our acquisition that added two hundred additional vendors.”

Now, Balcke believes that organizations should modernize their payables as soon as possible and watch the dividends pay for themselves in record time.

“The time savings alone is exponential. Automating payables allows my team to spend more time on strategic initiatives.”