Zip describes itself as “the leading intake and provisioning orchestration platform and Intake-to-Pay suite.” It doesn’t seem like the most exciting space for a startup, but if you’ve ever worked at a large company, you know how byzantine the process of purchasing even the most basic things can be. It’s annoying for the employee and difficult to manage for the purchasing, finance and legal teams who have to juggle different applications that can barely communicate with each other.
To make all of this easier, Zip today announced Zip Premier, a set of new enterprise features, as well as a new low-code integration platform that allows its users to create their own integrations for access services that Zip itself does not support. with its existing connectors. And to make it easier to onboard new customers, Zip is also launching a set of 100 pre-built workflow templates today. These include templates for working with contractors, managing automatic renewals and supplier churn, for example.
At its core, Zip brings together the split procurement process into a single platform that allows companies to manage everything from the initial purchase request to managing purchasing policies and approval from finance teams, legal and security, through to budget management. , integration of new suppliers, creation of purchase orders and processing of invoices. Businesses that already use third-party tools for any of these steps can continue to use them, with Zip then bringing all of this data together and managing the overall workflow.
Image credits: Zipper
“The problem is very horizontal and pervasive because the problem of the employee who has to buy something to do their job is very common in all sectors,” Zaparde said, also emphasizing that the problems become more painful as the The company is growing – and even bigger. when it concerns a company in a regulated sector.
New features the company is launching today for businesses include more granular permissions and new tools for maintaining audit trails for requests, permissions and vendors to ensure a business remains ready to be audited. Zip is also adding new tools to monitor the health of its integrations with third-party services and has added real-time alerts when things go wrong.
Image credits: Zipper
The new low-code integration platform is an interesting piece. Zaparde acknowledged that companies are unlikely to want their regular employees to build integrations into their financial systems, for example. But he thinks it will help IT teams create and maintain these connectors, which will often tie into existing or custom-built systems that Zip itself couldn’t support.
Zip competes against several other procurement platforms such as Coupa, SAP, Workday and more. But Zaparde says the advantage of Zip is that it can connect all of these systems together.
“Traditional procurement solutions do not meet the complex needs of modern businesses that face a complex web of fragmented procurement processes across numerous business teams and systems,” he said. “Developed alongside our largest enterprise customers, our new features streamline the entire spending process, delivering enterprise-grade performance with consumer-grade flexibility so our customers can ensure compliance and scale quickly. »
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