Spend Matters webinar sheds light on ‘intense interest’ in emerging intake and orchestration market

On June 19, the Spend Matters analyst team hosted ‘Demystifying Intake and Orchestration in Procurement,’ a Zip-sponsored live webinar. The team, with input from Shao Zhu, Senior Director of Advisory at Zip, and Jason Powell, Director of Procurement from Figma and a user of Zip, covered what these solutions do, actual applications for these solutions and how procurement may go about making the business case for them to other stakeholders. No other source in the procurement industry gives the same level of breadth and depth to this type of solution as you will find in this collaboration.

Even before turning to how these tools present innovative solutions to the more cumbersome side of procurement, the sheer number of attendees shone a light on the activity surrounding this still-new sector.

“We saw great performance in this intake and orchestration webinar in terms of signups, live attendance and the watching duration of attendees,” Bill Crowley, Spend Matters Chief Revenue Officer, noted. “All of those metrics point to a market with intense, emerging interest and one without as much credible content. It also means that the content hit the mark with attendees; it is really hard to get people to attend live at all, never mind for a long time. It’s a credit to the Spend Matters Analyst team.”

And you can still get in on the action by watching a recording of ‘Demystifying Intake and Orchestration in Procurement.’

What the webinar covers

Intake management and orchestration in procurement aim to unravel the tangle of separate procurement processes that follow a request.

“We might not have an application monolith,” Pierre Mitchell, Spend Matters Chief Research Officer, states. “We might have dozens if not hundreds of systems. So, how do we simplify the complex and actually bring this ‘Turbo-Tax-like’ experience to make — I wouldn’t say make Procurement delightful — but make it a well-integrated and coherent process that all stakeholders can intuitively use.”

Following that, each member of the analyst team breaks down an element of the market. Nikhil Gaur, Research Analyst and Project Associate, breaks down how Spend Matters classifies intake management and orchestration, the differences between the processes and how a bit of both is needed for the greatest effect. Abby Ommen, Research Analyst and Analyst Production Manager, gives an overview of the major vendors in the developing market. Meena Ibrahim, Research Analyst, presents some use cases for intake management solutions, such as managing the steps during processes for the onboarding and offboarding of employees. Bertrand Maltaverne, Lead Analyst for Upstream Procurement, follows with use cases for orchestration in procurement, such as pushing an intake request to a sourcing solution and bringing the sourcing awards back to the initial request. And Xavier Olivera, Lead Analyst for Downstream Procurement, walks through several business case arguments prospective intake users can make to win over the stakeholders needed for such an investment.

In addition to the material presented by members of the Spend Matters analyst team, Shao Zhou makes the concept of intake concrete by walking the audience through Zip’s processes for spend and vendor onboarding. Similarly, Jason Powell offers the user’s perspective and explains how integrating Zip into Figma’s processes addressed challenges of audit readiness, preparing new procurement policies and change management during a transition from zero PO processes to PO-backed invoicing, and, just three weeks after implementation, helped Figma submit $3.8 million for PR approval, code 240 bills and approve $11 millions’ worth of bills.

The presenters also left enough space to field a short Q&A. This mostly focuses on the question of how one justifies the business value of intake management and highlights its potential ROI. The discussion bounces between Jason Powell, who explains his usual method of engaging with stakeholders, and Pierre Mitchell, who builds on Powell’s points from his experience as an analyst.

This recap serves as a teaser for what you can learn from this webinar. So, start learning now.

For further information about intake and orchestration in Procurement, visit our in-depth guide.