Customer stories
Elizabeth Bukys
Published 5/7/2021
Banking in the cannabis industry can be extremely challenging. Green Check Verified is the only RegTech platform that enables transparent, verifiable, compliant banking for the cannabis industry—to solve issues that both banks and cannabis businesses have been wading through for years.
Banks need to verify that every dollar deposited is coming from a legitimate transaction. It’s so difficult to comply that Green Check Verified has a captive audience of bank and business users who rely on the platform to translate sales data into compliance records.
While most customers use ERPs or other systems that integrate directly with Green Check Verified to transform their sales data, some don’t. Their sales system either doesn’t have an API or there aren’t enough users yet to justify building the direct integration.
Green Check Verified turned to Flatfile to help them create a smooth data exchange experience for their customers:
Addressing a lackluster CSV import experience
Quickly implementing a ready-built importer
Cutting import time from minutes to seconds
Avoiding development that pulls the team away from important features
Partnering with Flatfile’s collaborative customer success team
Because compliant cannabis banking relationships aren’t easy, Green Check Verified customers were more than willing to format their CSV data as required in order to use the platform. However, the company wants to provide an exceptional customer experience, not just meet minimum requirements. When co-founder and Head of Product Mike Kennedy discovered Flatfile on ProductHunt, he was curious to find out if it could address their so-so CSV importer.
“Like most applications, we had a file import feature that required our users to manually format their files before uploading them to Green Check Verified. They had to match our template, and if there were issues they had to fix those in their CSV and try again. It created a pretty poor user experience,” explained Kennedy.
Soon after learning about Flatfile, the team at Green Check Verified decided to give it a try and implemented the whitelabeled importer quickly.
“It only took a couple of days to get Flatfile implemented in our environment and ready for user testing, with just one developer working on it,” Kennedy says. “That was the first indicator that this tool was very easy for us to work with. We got it in front of users quickly, which helped us validate that the experience was better than what we were previously asking them to do.”
There were some immediate and noticeable results with Flatfile’s data importer. “Something that took the customers five to ten minutes previously, will take them five to ten seconds now,” says Kennedy. One of the fundamental differences is Flatfile’s data-mapping capabilities. “Flatfile is able to easily parse that data, put it into columns, and then allow the user to map it. The speed and efficiency of getting data into the importer is definitely a feature that stands out.”
Flatfile also remembers common data mapping structures so that customers don’t have to map them every time they upload a new CSV. They only need to map something if their file has a new column, which is rare, since cannabis businesses upload similar files, like sales data on a routine basis.
What’s more, should there be any necessary changes to the file, customers don’t have to wrangle their CSV and try again. They can make those changes right inside of the import experience.
Kennedy also points out how useful it is that Flatfile has manual entry capabilities, in addition to the CSV importer. “For some of our users, it doesn't even make sense to upload the file, because they only have a dozen sales for the period. They can just copy and paste the data from their system, without having to create a CSV file.”
One of the biggest benefits of partnering with Flatfile was not only getting a top-notch CSV importer, but saving on development time. “It would have taken weeks or even months to build a solution that wouldn't be even nearly as robust as what we have with Flatfile,” says Kennedy.
That time would’ve taken the Green Check Verified team away from building something that is potentially unique to their business. “It makes sense to outsource data importing to Flatfile, an expert in the field, so we can focus on what differentiates us,” says Kennedy.
When implementing anything into your SaaS platform, you want to go beyond customer support and receive a great customer success partnership. Kennedy has been impressed with just how hands-on Flatfile’s CS team is. Kennedy explains, “We've got a shared Slack channel where we can pop in and ask questions. The Flatfile team is very responsive and collaborative. They always copy in the right person immediately and brainstorm solutions with us. It's not just a typical support center, "Here's a question, here's an answer, rate my response."
Ultimately, Kennedy is appreciative that the team at Flatfile took on the problem of CSV importing. “People might not think it’s a sexy product or problem to work on. But I can tell you firsthand that Flatfile is a huge improvement to our user experience. Our product is no doubt leaps and bounds stronger because of our use of Flatfile.”
About Green Check Verified
Green Check Verified (GCV) offers a suite of compliant regulatory banking technology solutions and advisory services for financial institutions. Founded in 2017 by a team of technology, banking, and regulatory experts, we focus on the intersection between community banking and the emerging legal cannabis industry. Our goal is to provide the services and technology needed to connect these two industries in compliant and profitable ways. For more information about Green Check Verified, visit www.greencheckverified.com
About Flatfile
Flatfile's vision is to enable seamless data transactions between every organization in the world. With AI-assisted data onboarding, they eliminate repetitive work and make B2B data exchange fast, intuitive, and error-free. Flatfile automatically learns how imported data should be structured and cleaned, enabling customers and teams to spend more time using their data instead of fixing it. Flatfile has transformed over 700 million rows of data for companies like ClickUp, Blackbaud, Benevity, and Toast. To learn more about Flatfile’s data onboarding platform email hello@flatfile.io or get started for free at flatfile.com.
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