How Zip is Giving Procurement Better Control of Time & Money

Zip, a leading AI-powered spend orchestration platform, has unveiled powerful AI enhancements to transform business purchasing which will help companies to save time while granting them better control over the spending.

Customers like OpenAI, Snowflake and Sephora have saved US$1.5bn on Zip over the last 12 months.

The spend orchestration platform has debuted a powerful suite of new and enhanced AI capabilities that enable companies to gain control of their spending by streamlining procurement. 

Hundreds of industry leaders including Sephora, Discover, and Reddit — alongside leading AI company, OpenAI — use the platform to increase operational efficiency, generate hard savings and reduce risk. 

Zip’s latest innovations

With the improvement comes the increase of these capabilities with new capabilities, including;

• ‘Zip AI assistant’, a generative AI procurement assistant; 
• ‘AI document extraction’, used to extract and store critical data from contracts 
• “AI intake automation,” which uses AI to pre-fill purchase requests.

Procurement is a critical function in today’s business landscape. Every year companies spend trillions of dollars on everything from office supplies to software subscriptions and professional services, infrastructure and data centre storage.

Despite its importance, the purchasing process is slow, complex and layered with inefficiencies. It includes countless steps, extensive paperwork and numerous approval and security reviews.

Zip’s AI-powered platform is used to streamline the entire procurement lifecycle, from initial request to final payment – thereby saving businesses valuable time and money, while enhancing spend visibility, risks management and compliance. 

“Zip has become an indispensable tool for OpenAI’s procurement process,” adds Hugh Drinkwater, OpenAI’s Head of Procurement. 

“We are thrilled Zip has integrated OpenAI’s technology to power their Zip AI suite to help us further reduce time spent on manual tasks, create a better buying experience and improve the productivity of our teams across the organisation.”

Through Zip’s suite of AI solutions, companies can eliminate thousands of employee hours and dramatically reduce the need for procurement, legal, security, finance and IT teams to spend time on error-prone data entry and time-consuming tasks, such as vendor contract reviews.

Miro uses Zip AI to save time with the legal contact review process, Coinbase uses it to streamline millions of dollars of invoices every year, UCI health implements it to rapidly scale contract conversions during a merge, it ensures the inclusion of key stakeholders and continuity of patient care – allowing doctors and nurses to focus on the life-saving medical treatment without administrative delays or disruptions to necessary services. 

The latest AI features bring even more advanced and impactful capabilities to Zip

AI assistant: Zip’s AI assistant guides employees through the purchasing process to reduce the time and effort required to navigate complex company spending policies. 

For example, suppose an employee wants to buy an Airtable software subscription for their team. In that case, they can send a message to Zip’s AI assistant as if messaging a coworker, and Zip AI will automatically start the purchase request, guiding them through what is needed to complete the request.

AI document extraction: AI document extraction parses data from order forms, contracts and other documents to create a comprehensive, single source of truth.

With AI document extraction, documents such as MSAs, DPAs, NDAs, SOWs, Amendments and more can be scanned in seconds. This puts valuable information to work, so it can be used to automate tasks.  

AI intake automation: AI intake automation pre-fills purchase requests with data from order forms, eliminating manual data entry and saving time. 
Employees simply need to upload the order form they receive from their vendor to have key purchase and supplier information — such as price, item quantity, and billing frequency – automatically included in their purchase request, saving them valuable time and reducing the likelihood of errors.

Today, Zip powers global payments in over 140 countries and has helped customers save almost US$4.4bm in the less than four years since the platform launched. 

In May 2023, Zip secured US$100m in Series C funding led by Y Combinator, with participation from CRV and Tiger Global, valuing the company at US$1.5bn. In a recent IDC study, organisations reported saving, on average, a staggering US$14m per year by using Zip.

“The problem with business purchasing today is that much of the process is still cumbersome and time consuming,” says Lu Cheng, Co-Founder & CTO at Zip. 

“Zip’s generative AI capabilities change that, transforming this process by guiding employees through purchasing decisions, automating tedious tasks, and reducing the complexity of navigating company policies. This is a concrete use of generative AI that makes work faster, easier, and more efficient so that every team that touches the procurement lifecycle can focus on the real, strategic work that will move the needle.”

******

Make sure you check out the latest edition of Procurement Magazine and also sign up to our global conference series - Procurement & Supply Chain LIVE 2024

******

Procurement Magazine is a BizClik brand