Made from scratch: Sweetgreen reimagines financial processes to support its growth strategy

What was the challenge?

“Our main challenge was scalability. Sweetgreen had grown faster than our homegrown systems and complex technology stack could keep up with. As we looked to define our role in the market and prepare for an IPO, we knew that manual processes, disparate systems and inconsistent change and access management would limit growth. We needed strategic support, with the right resources and skills, to help us build a scalable architecture for our next growth phase.”

Describe the solution delivered by the PwC community of solvers?

“PwC helped us assess our financial processes, identify roadblocks and map out what future-state operations could look like. We decided to redesign our ERP system to create efficient and compliant processes that could easily adapt over time. PwC guided our team through the selection of and migration to Oracle Cloud ERP and Coupa. Together, these systems were configured to enhance our day-to-day finance and procurement processes and to support our long-term growth plans.”

How does the solution blend the strengths of technology and people?

“As part of our future-state design, we worked with PwC to design an efficient integration strategy for our point of sale and purchase transactions and then revamp our processes with Coupa and Oracle. The cloud-based structure has transformed our finance function, providing a consistent view of real-time data to help us operate better. The time needed to book and approve journal entries or pull data for month-end close has significantly decreased down to minutes. Automation has significantly reduced manual control work, and user access management functionality has improved risk management and controls, with proper segregation of duties to achieve and maintain SOX compliance.”

Where or how did innovation and unexpected ways of thinking come into play?

"Our Sweetgreen team came into this project seeking a better understanding of the leading practices in cloud-based technology. We didn’t want to move to state of the art technology and still retain our inefficient processes. PwC helped identify the appropriate processes to put in place and built a forward-looking ERP to help us achieve our goals. By elevating, standardizing and automating financial processes, our employees have a greater sense of trust in our data and are more confident in maintaining proper controls and compliance.”