How Zip is Helping Squarespace cut its Procurement Cycle
Squarespace, headquartered in New York City, is built on a mission to help anyone create the perfect online presence. Recently, the company was looking to optimise its procurement process.
In particular, the company wanted to eliminate issues such as slow, manual processes, cycle times averaging 30 days or more, poor requestor visibility and dissatisfied internal customers.
Squarespace enlisted the help of Zip as it looked to gain control over its procurement process, utilising it from an e-sourcing perspective, managing its events as well as its intake management, and reinventing the procurement process for those requesters looking to buy.
From bottleneck to breakthrough
Ilysa Laulom, Head of Procurement at Squarespace, described how procurement operated before Zip was involved: "Since using Zip, our procurement process has completely transformed, it transformed from this process where stakeholders were dreading going through procurement. Procurement has historically been looked at as a bottleneck and a function that no one really wants to go to.
"I cannot tell you how many times a day my team revived feedback saying, 'I love Zip, this is so much better than what you were using before'.
The most dramatic change has been seen with its cycle times, which Ilysa describes as an "embarrassing" close to 40 days process. Now with Zip, it has been cut by 75% as it has lowered to around just 10 days – just a few months after implementation. To have our stakeholders, our customers coming to us and saying they actually love the process, I've never heard that in my 20 years of doing this."
Becoming part of the critical stack
This has led to Zip becoming part of the "critical stack" at Squarespace.
Ilysa describes the UI as the star of the show, including its user-friendly interface, adding: "I've been in procurement a long time, and I've never seen anything like it."
This has led to a 66% decrease in cycle times, streamlined processes integrating multiple tools and teams, and user-friendly intake and end-to-end visibility.
Unlocking value across the business
Ilysa concludes: "Zip helps us unlock an immense amount of value for our organisations. For example, cost savings, which is huge for us and for every company right now.
"It helps us to save money, rationalise suppliers, identify those cost savings opportunities and reinvest that into our business, invest that into R&D, and into product. Because, at the end of the day, what is most important is delivering value to our customers and making our product the greatest."
Sharing the success of the implementation story on LinkedIn, Matthew Hardin, Director of Advisory at Zip, said: “This is such an awesome story and similar to my own experience implementing Zip as a customer.
“I love hearing the real impact that great technology can have on an organisation, especially one led by such awesome leaders.
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