Gogoro’s SEC Reporting Team Gaining Autonomy and Achieving Rapid Filings while Cutting Costs by Deploying Workiva

Nasdaq-listed Gogoro Inc., a Taiwanese company, is powering a sustainable urban commute ecosystem with its battery-swapping refueling platform and electric-powered scooters. However, the clean-energy innovator experienced roadblocks with its F4 and 20F filing workflows because of manual reporting processes. George Chiao, Head of SEC Reporting and Compliance, and George Lin, Program Manager, with their teams, would work until 2:00 a.m.—preventing quality time with family.

To keep Gogoro mobile toward limiting the city’s carbon footprint, George set out to declutter its SEC reporting operations. After introducing Workiva’s SEC reporting solution, Gogoro achieved record filing speed, significantly slashed labour and administrative costs and collaborated smarter across geographies and timezones.  

F4 and 20F filings pile on the paperwork 

Teams were wrangling masses of data into their compiler from across multiple functions and departments using traditional desktop systems. Meanwhile, a flurry of comments held in messy draft versions with enormous file sizes created problematic risk—the 20F in particular demanded a major collaboration. Simultaneously, tracking edits and ensuring they were collated in up-to-date and countless copies led to unmanageable version control difficulties.  

F4 filing involving external stakeholders in the US was a unique struggle as well. Timezone differences and the raft of emails with sensitive attachments exchanged between the US and Asia invited risks and hampered timelines. All together, these bottlenecks led to 2:00 a.m. nights. To untangle Gogoro’s SEC workspace and sync operations between the two regions, George scrapped the printer for the cloud. 

Usability secures buy-in

George had to factor in change management considerations while evaluating the market for solutions. Achieving needed efficiencies and data accuracy was essential, but so was a tool’s ability to integrate with traditional systems. As an agnostic platform, Workiva can assimilate with native frameworks, which was key in securing its initial buy-in. Usability was a facet in this process as well. Staff used desktop software for everything, so too radical of a shift to dissimilar applications would complicate onboarding. Conversely, Workiva’s environment resembles that of desktop applications, enabling easier conversion. 

After fulfilling Gogoro’s immediate requirements, Workiva’s functionality did the rest of the convincing. Its powerful source-linking tool—which can cross-reference numbers, data and other figures from various files within a current working page—offered much promise to substantially aid roles across the team.   

Rolling forward with tighter tracking  

By pulling paper-bound data into the platform, Gogoro can now roll forward the previous quarter’s data, freeing up time for George and teams to focus on the content instead of the mechanics. “Without Workiva, it’s really a nightmare, especially when under a tight deadline with last minute comments—you become the bottleneck if you’re unable to turnaround the document,” George said. As a result, human resources and administrative costs dropped considerably. "We managed to cut back at least 50% of labour hours with this new process—that’s huge time-savings and helps us to scale to the next level of our reporting needs," George added.

Furthermore, Gogoro has experienced increased collaboration and visibility. Controller, legal, internal control, audit and investor relations teams can unite synchronously on the most recent draft in a single environment—no more version control setbacks and irregular pacing through reports.

Before Workiva, the Investor Relations office, based in Seattle, and Asia teams experienced timing inconsistencies, slowdowns from varying platforms and transparency challenges. With Workiva’s revision tracking features, the Investor Relations team and other collaborators can trace historical edits, comments and dialogue that contributed to a narrative’s development—in real time and in one platform. As a report progresses from preparation to review to final approval stages, SOX compliance staff and other stakeholders are notified.

Ultimately, George and his teams are more empowered because they have flexibility to file anytime and anywhere without the manual-reporting drawbacks. “We can go home early or choose to work from home so we can spend time with our families and just click the button to file when all is ready. No matter where we are—Seattle, Taiwan or the West or East coast of the US—we can work together with Workiva,” George said.

Change management without “change” 

As part of the change management process, teams needed the right instruction and resources to learn the platform. With Workiva’s customer success team, George and his staff experienced a fluid on-ramp with dedicated support from the beginning, which has fostered stronger internal collaboration and encouraged more active users.

Workiva presented three demonstrations for stakeholders to address users’ questions and illustrate the Workiva platform’s capabilities. “Having staff participate in the training helps versus people getting lost if you just throw them onto the platform,” George said. Ongoing self-training modules equipped personnel with the right knowledge on how to track, edit and leave comments on documents. And because Workiva’s functionality was designed with desktop software users in mind, George said Workiva’s uptake was “as easy as plug and play.”  

Looking ahead of SEC reporting

Because of new SEC reporting efficiencies, George has laid out a tentative roadmap for future expansion possibilities. Since Gogoro’s ethos is anchored in sustainability, ESG is a core company value—and to investors as well. Connecting both financial and non-financial data to SEC reporting with Workiva’s ESG reporting solution would further demonstrate the company’s commitment to ESG. Fine-tuning the enterprise’s SOX compliance function using Workiva’s integrated risk product is another immediate opportunity Gogoro is weighing.  

In the meantime, George and his teams are getting better sleep and spending more time with their families.

We attained an amazing filing speed in record time! Achieving this reduced our timelines, and we couldn’t have done it without Workiva.

_{—George Chiao, Head of SEC Reporting and Compliance, Gogoro}  

See how you can use Workiva to simplify work. Download the platform brochure or request a demo at workiva.com/request-demo.