THE CHALLENGE
Manual treasury processes and key-person dependencies
As one of Europe’s fastest-growing tech companies—and recently named Google Cloud’s 2025 Partner of the Year in Databases—Aiven has scaled rapidly to support thousands of customers globally. With operations spanning 17 legal entities and multiple geographies, and NetSuite as its ERP, its finance function needed to evolve to keep pace.
When Kenneth Chen joined as CFO in late 2023, he quickly identified treasury operations as a key area for improvement. “What I learned was that because there was no integration, much of that work was done manually,” Kenneth recalls. “We had to log into numerous bank portals just to get balance information, which wasn’t an effective use of our team’s time.”
This setup created both operational risk and a barrier to scale. “If a key person was on vacation or out sick, we were unable to understand what our cash position was,” Kenneth explains. “For a fast-growing company operating in multiple geographies, that’s a big risk.”
“You end up being held back because you’re constantly doing the tactical, day-to-day work,” he adds. “That’s not where the value of finance comes from.”
Like many high-growth companies, Aiven had accumulated layered, manual workflows that made it difficult to standardize and scale its treasury processes across the finance team.
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THE SOLUTION
Fast implementation, seamless integration, and hands-on support
To support its continued growth and reduce operational complexity, Aiven turned to Atlar to modernize its treasury operations. The team was looking for a solution that could be implemented quickly, integrate effortlessly with NetSuite and multiple banks across jurisdictions, and provide immediate, visible value—without requiring a large consulting project.
As Kenneth explains, “The reason we picked a next-generation tool like Atlar was because of the time to value. We couldn’t afford a six-month implementation. We needed something that just worked, right away—and it did.”
With Atlar, Aiven connected its global banking structure to a single source of truth integrated directly with NetSuite. The implementation was fast and collaborative, with Atlar’s team coordinating directly with Aiven’s banks and troubleshooting issues along the way. As a result, Aiven was able to go live quickly.
“We were the beneficiaries of Atlar’s model,” Kenneth says. “They helped debug integrations, spoke directly with our banks, and ensured we got value quickly.”
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THE RESULT
Real-time cash visibility, confident decision-making, and reduced risk
Since implementing Atlar, Aiven has streamlined its treasury operations and built a scalable foundation to support its growth. With around 400 employees and a lean finance team, automation has become essential—reducing onboarding time, avoiding errors, and eliminating outdated workflows.
Switching from previous-day views to real-time visibility has also made cash management far more dependable. The benefits span the entire finance team and unlock time for more strategic work:
- Faster month-end close: Bank data feeds directly into NetSuite, eliminating manual uploads and improving reconciliation reliability
- Real-time cash visibility: Kenneth and the wider finance team can now see accurate, up-to-date cash positions across all banks and legal entities in a single dashboard.
- Self-serve finance operations: Treasury is no longer a bottleneck. Finance ops, tax, and FP&A teams use Atlar to initiate payments, reconcile data, and run reports without relying on a single gatekeeper.
- Fewer errors, more control: Aiven now logs and tracks all payment activity in one place with audit trails, improving both accuracy and compliance.
Automation has also freed the finance team to focus on strategic planning, approval workflows, and cash flow forecasting. “Treasury should be about enabling resource allocation, not pulling balance data,” he says. “Atlar lets us do that. And for a growth-stage business like ours, that’s oxygen.”
Aiven’s story shows how modern treasury infrastructure can unlock more than just efficiency—it can empower teams, reduce risk, and support strategic growth at scale. To see the full, extended interview with Aiven CFO, Kenneth Chen, click here.
Want to see how modern finance teams like Aiven are scaling with Atlar? Get in touch.
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