How DoorDash transformed their accounting org and bent the cost curve

Gordon finally had what he needed to grow without incurring cost: infrared AI vision that showed him exactly where bottlenecks and waste were hiding in his accounting processes.

The challenge

We often ask Gordon Lee, the CAO of DoorDash, to join us on stage at our conferences. There's never a dull moment when Gordon takes the mic. He has a way of making the challenge of keeping G&A flat as you grow highly entertaining—and relatable—for accounting leaders.

'Two or three years ago, before there was such a thing as Within, we measured based on the number of manual journal entries being automated...' There was an audible groan from the audience. That kind of manual labor is a drag on the team and adds expense. 'To automate a journal entry, you either did a system integration in your ERP or an RPA—both required ongoing updates, which could be costly.'

Gordon knew he needed a clearer picture of how his team's accounting processes actually worked, and where they might find the hidden inefficiencies—without hiring a horde of consultants.

He needed a new tool that had process intelligence, powered by AI.

Enter Within.

The solution

Within made process discovery as simple as recording a video on your phone. Instead of months-long consulting engagements with interviews and flowcharts, teams just screen-recorded themselves doing their actual work or during a Zoom call, hit submit, and received complete documentation five to fifteen minutes later.

Within recorded DoorDash's thousands of accounting processes, tagging every step with an owner—the team in Mexico, India—and calculated each step's cost. That allowed Gordon to make a data-driven decision about where to automate.

When Gordon wanted to tweak their analysis tool? Rather than waiting months for IT to respond to a ticket, he simply asked the Within team and poof! It appeared days later. With all of this added efficiency, Doordash was able to move at startup speed inside a Fortune 500 company.

The impact

Quantifiable Results: 3,800+ processes documented and analyzed across entire accounting organization

300+ transformation requests now properly prioritized with data-driven insights

Cultural Transformation: Gordon also wants to take care of his team, and Within's efficiencies and automation have helped him do that. When Within supported automation of the tedious stuff—the mind-numbing manual entries that nobody enjoys—Gordon's people suddenly had breathing room. Instead of drowning in data entry, they could focus on the work that actually mattered: figuring out how to make systems run better, spotting patterns in the numbers, and solving problems that required human judgment.