ORO Labs & BMS: Transforming User-Driven Procurement

At DPW New York in June 2026 leaders from ORO Labs and global biopharmaceutical company Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) told Procurement Magazine about their highly successful collaboration to transform procurement and user experience at BMS.

They explained how the two companies began their collaboration and how BMS aligned procurement with business objectives to enable users, support profitability and drive growth. 

During the interview Lalitha Rajagopalan, Co-Founder, Head of Strategy & GTM at ORO Labs, Paula Glickenhaus, Chief Procurement Officer at BMS and Rhonda Griscti, BMS' Executive Director Digital Strategy and Global Process Lead, discussed why ORO's orchestration layer is key to unifying existing procurement technologies, delivering an Amazon-like user experience and positioning procurement as a trusted business partner. 

How was ORO Labs designed to tackle the specific procurement challenges faced by companies like BMS?

Lalitha: I've been in the procurement space from the product side for the last 20 or so years. We realised that the core of a lot of problems in the procurement experience at global companies is that compliance and user experience are fighting with each other. Our goal was to solve that challenge.

Our objective became finding the kinds of companies for which this is really important because, if we can solve it for them, then we can solve it for others – life sciences and pharmaceuticals topped the list. 

The goal of making user experience so good that it makes compliance better was the origin of ORO Labs. 

From a BMS perspective, what made ORO Labs a strong partner?

Paula: The challenge we wanted to solve was around user experience, but we also had a compliance problem, too. We had committed to the board to have all suppliers go to one door – that was super important. 

Specifically on user experience, we were evaluating tools that would let people feel that dealing with procurement was no longer archaic, but an innovative, modern, Amazon-like experience.

Rhonda: ORO Labs understood our vision around creating a layer where people never have to leave and procurement processes would flow seamlessly. 

Lalitha and the team really understood that goal and have helped us turn it into a reality very quickly.

Why is an orchestration layer so important for organisations? 

Lalitha: In modern companies, speed and velocity are incredibly important. The only way you can move fast is by giving agency to employees, and that comes from self-service. 

With procurement, I felt that the tools did not allow for that ownership and that self-service and technology didn’t let teams deliver on the compliance promise; the only way you could deliver on that is by being a helicopter parent. 

A company like BMS has lots of smart people who PhD in really critical sciences – they're not going to get a PhD in procurement to know how to deal with all the processes.

Paula: I love that idea because our mission as a company is to deliver more medicines to more patients faster. 

Sometimes back-office functions like procurement are seen as being in the middle of the scientists and the patients, or stopping that happening. 

Having an orchestration layer that is easy to use speeds up our processes and gives our scientists more time working in the lab.

How did you build and execute the business case for this transformation?

Paula: We had to outsource 80% of our procurement function to a third party and that was clearly not working, so we knew we needed to invest in technology. 

The proposal to our CFO was: ‘what if we in-source that capacity with 50% of the FTEs, keep all the OPEX and spend the difference on technology.’ 

That's where Rhonda came into play as the architect tasked with taking the work of 120 employees and only hiring 60 to make it happen.

Rhonda: I started to look at the existing tools in the marketplace, and understand what wasn’t working for us. We quickly pivoted, realising ORO is an AI-enabled tool that will help us get more money back, and is faster and easier to use. We deployed that to create additional funding. 

Then we put in place an autonomous negotiation tool to ramp up and bring money back in. And at the same time, we were working with Lalitha and her team to create the orchestration layer.

We put in the orchestration first while we were optimising inside procurement. When we went live with that, we started to back up and start with the ‘front door’ user experience. 

There's so many things you can buy and use, but you have to focus on giving users value first and simplification second.

What measurable outcomes and cultural impacts have you seen?

Rhonda: We're making it so simple to work with procurement that it's becoming the default. We built this out like an iPhone experience – we’ve provided the orchestration and each month we give new features that provide an even better experience.

Paula: I heard in a town hall that it takes eight months to do a procurement contract – I called that ‘the procurement pregnancy’. I went back to the team and told them “I’m offended, we're going to aim for less than 30 days."

Rhonda: When we started this process, we took eight months for our average contract. The metrics now [at time of recording] are at 16 days with 80% coming in within that timeframe. 

Users now also experience 50% less clicks to go through the procurement process. At BMS, Procurement is becoming easier and faster, and we're also getting better across compliance.

Paula: Procurement reports to the CFO. Now, imagine your CFO telling your investors ‘we have already eliminated 100,000 FTE hours from the system’. What’s better than that? 

How has this transformed your relationship with the legal and risk teams?

Rhonda: It's entirely different than it was just six months ago. Then, we were trying to sell the concept of faster contracting and simplification. 

Now we have a partner in the legal team who's the ‘legal disruptor’ working with us every step of the way on risk aversion, reducing the need for contracts, slowing out the demand and getting the whole entire legal team aligned with that concept.

In three months' time we have template repositories, we have fallback language, tools for redlining and we're scoping out an SOW that will actually create a contract. 

This wasn’t possible before we implemented ORO Labs and showed our teams that we could manage risk through the front door. They're now pushing us to go faster.

What is the next milestone for BMS and ORO Labs?

Rhonda: My fantasy is that any project comes in and flows all the way to the purchase order in under five days – even if you need to do Third-Party Risk Management and contracts. That's where I'd like to get to. It’s a lot of baby steps and agent building, but we’re ready for it. 

Paula: We were very successful because we had the end goal in mind – making it easier for the users and our suppliers. 

What's next is how we make it even more seamless with the tools we have and the master data work we have done. Ideally, it should almost be like they don't even know procurement exists.

Lalitha: To me the best user experience is a lazy user experience where the right thing just happens. And I think supplier experience is a really big deal – it’s hard being a meaningful supplier to a really big corporation, so there’s still work to do there. 

I love the fact that we all have such strong ambition to do so much more together and I really think the future will be super cool.