How DADJ scaled faster and reduced costs using Plane
Using Plane has enabled software agency DADJ to accelerate its growth and reduce costs for both the CEO and its team of contractors.
DADJ Inc provides business consulting, staff augmentation, and outsourcing services for small and medium-sized businesses worldwide. Based in San Jose, California, DADJ was founded in 2016 by Deepak Jha, CEO, and works with nearly 70 international contractors in 2 countries, with many remote consultants based in India. DADJ’s consulting services typically range from projects in finance and accounting to IT, marketing, and human resources.
In 2020, Deepak learned about Plane through, he says, “a lucky search on the internet.” He was looking for a payments solution that would help with time savings, reduce costs, and eliminate the need for manual bookkeeping. At the time, his payments process involved manually sending payments and using spreadsheets for bookkeeping. Besides being a time-consuming process, Deepak says, “It was expensive. Depending on how much we were sending in payments, we would have to pay a commission.”
Once he started using the Plane platform, Deepak became impressed with how easy it is to send multiple international payments through Plane, in contrast with his past experiences with money transfer services. With those other services, Deepak says, “I didn’t have the ability to have a portal where I can process 10, 15, 20, 100 payment requests in one straight shot. Plane makes my running payroll very easy and clean.” He also appreciates that he can easily see contractor agreements in a centralized location. Previously, Deepak couldn’t readily view, for example, which agreements were hourly versus monthly. “I now have visibility in one place,” he says. “It has definitely simplified record keeping.” Deepak says Plane makes it easy to stay compliant: “From a tax perspective, from a legal perspective, and from a compliance perspective, I have peace of mind. All I do is pay my remote consultants. Everything that I need for running my business, and from a payments perspective, I’m able to find in Plane.”
Deepak also likes that Plane is contractor-friendly, providing optimal exchange rates and no markups for payments to his team of consultants. It’s important to him that Plane helps contractors save money. He says, “I would much rather that my contractors don’t see any deductions. If they are paid, for example, $100 for a month, they should get the entire $100. Nobody likes to lose transaction fees out of their salary.” Plane also enables Deepak to pay his team members on time, giving them, he says, “employee satisfaction where they know they are getting paid on time.” He appreciates that Plane offers “timely payments and the satisfaction that comes from timely payments.”
Plane’s simple pricing model has made it easy for Deepak to scale a rapidly growing business like DADJ. He likes that he is just charged one flat fee per contractor. “I’m sending large payments but charged a flat fee,” he says, “So scaling has been easy.”
The onboarding features of Plane’s platform have also made it easier to scale DADJ. “Plane has made my entire recruiting process very easy,” Deepak says. “Even though I have to spend time in advertising a job and in finding the right talent, once that heavy lifting is done, plugging the new hires into my organization in terms of onboarding them, contracting them, and those things has become very easy. So Plane definitely has accelerated the growth of my organization.” The speed at which he can onboard a new hire has helped boost the company’s overall productivity: “Using Plane has given us great productivity and great time savings. If I have the ability to integrate a new hire and make them productive very soon, then it helps my productivity, and it helps increase my impact.”
Overall, Deepak has been very impressed with Plane both from his own perspective as a CEO and from the benefits that the platform provides for DADJ’s contractors. Says Deepak, “Plane is a contractor’s best friend and a CEO’s best friend for paying internationally.”
