Why Zip & ORO are the Leaders in Intake & Orchestration

Article Procurement Technology Why Zip & ORO are the Leaders in Intake & Orchestration By Aaron McMillan June 01, 2026 undefined mins Share this article Prioritise Us on Google Share this article Prioritise Us on Google ORO Labs Co-Founders Sudhir Bhojwani, Lalitha Rajagopalan and Yuan Tung (Credit: ORO Labs) Zip and ORO have solved the "front-door" problem of procurement with an employee interface that manages data, risk and approvals across fragmented systems By solving procurement’s critical "front-door" problem, Zip and ORO Labs have introduced an intelligent employee interface that unifies data, mitigates risk and streamlines approvals across heavily fragmented enterprise legacy systems. For decades, enterprise procurement has suffered from a fundamental UX flaw: the "front-door" problem. When an ordinary employee wants to request a new software tool, order marketing assets or onboard a vendor, they are instantly met with a confusing maze of fragmented systems. ERPs, contract management databases, IT ticket queues and legal frameworks rarely talk to one another. The result is a broken user experience, rogue spending and massive compliance risks. Enter Zip and ORO Labs. As the dual pioneers of the "Intake & Orchestration" category, these two platforms act as an intelligent orchestration layer. Instead of forcing employees to navigate rigid legacy software, they ingest complex user requests, instantly cross-reference data across existing tech stacks, assess vendor risk and route parallel approvals, all through a single, intuitive interface. As the market enters a definitive era of AI-driven automation, both companies have rapidly scaled from disruptive newcomers into category-defining juggernauts. Forrester validates the orchestration model While the conceptual benefits of procurement orchestration are clear, a recent Total Economic Impact (TEI) study conducted by Forrester Consulting has put definitive numbers behind the phenomenon. Evaluating Zip’s impact on global enterprises, the study revealed that the platform delivers a staggering 386% Return on Investment (ROI) , with the software completely paying for itself in under six months. Forrester’s findings outline a dramatic shift in how modern enterprises manage cash flow, efficiency and compliance. By bringing more spend under management and establishing centralised orchestration, enterprises achieved an average 3.3% reduction in overall spend. At the same time, the combination of intuitive intake and automated routing allowed organisations to realise an average 70% reduction in the time spent submitting and approving procurement requests. This shift to a single orchestration layer with no-code workflow maintenance significantly cut IT overhead, drastically reducing internal change requests and ongoing operational friction. Zip Co-Founders, Rujul Zaparde (right) and Lu Cheng at Zip Forward 2025 Frictionless operations at T-Mobile Take, for example, T-Mobile. The sweeping initiative to transform its procurement was driven by a singular executive mandate: simplify the business. Prior to partnering with Zip, T-Mobile navigated legacy ERP and procurement systems that were reaching their end of life, relying on a homegrown orchestration tool that lacked integration between procurement, legal and the ERP. This friction resulted in bottlenecked service level agreements (SLAs) that frequently stretched past thirty days. This bottleneck sparked a philosophical shift under Chief Procurement Officer, Michael Levenson. The core philosophy guiding the transformation was to make procurement entirely frictionless for repeatable, everyday buys. By automating routine intake, specialised procurement staff could step away from administrative tasks and focus on high-value, complex deals. Michael emphasised listening to team members at all working levels to distil actionable change. “It’s simplifying things for the business, making sure that we have procurement focused on the deals that bring value and benefit to teams.” This execution is a microcosm of a much broader market shift. As Rujul Zaparde, Co-founder and CEO at Zip , noted at its Zip Forward event in London: “Our customers to date, having deployed over a thousand agents into production in their Zip environments, have seen over 800,000 hours saved and over US$59m of cost avoidance and savings.” Michael Simpson, CPO at T-Mobile, joined Zip’s Co-Founder, Felix Meng on stage at Zip Forward Overcoming bureaucracy with agentic AI Equally disruptive is ORO Labs . Founded by former SAP Ariba executives Lalitha Rajagopalan, Yuan Tung and Sudhir Bhojwani, the company replaces slow, bureaucratic legacy systems with an agile, AI-driven orchestration layer. By deploying agentic AI to simplify complex buying journeys, ORO automates up to 80% of manual review cycles for global giants like Kyndryl and The Coca-Cola Company. This massive market traction was recently validated by a milestone US$100 million Series C funding round led by Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives and Brighton Park Capital. Driven by market demand for modernised supply chain and procurement functions, ORO has achieved a remarkable 300% revenue growth over the past year, trusted by global brands including Booking.com, Pfizer, Danone, Stellantis and Bayer. "Demand for procurement orchestration has skyrocketed because teams simply cannot continue to operate the way they always have," says Sudhir Bhojwani, Co-Founder and CEO of ORO Labs. "Market volatility and price pressures are too severe. Companies need a layer that brings order and intelligence to the chaos, and that layer is orchestration." Shifting from hours to minutes with agentic AI Modern enterprises demand a guided procurement experience akin to consumer apps that manage complexity behind the scenes. ORO Labs achieves this by allowing employees to simply state what they need, while the platform autonomously calculates the route, compliance checks and system dependencies in the background. This approach is delivering rapid results across complex categories like indirect spend, services and direct materials. For a major consumer packaged goods giant, ORO’s Procurement Front Door powers a global “Idea2Pay” framework across 100 countries. Integrating seamlessly with marketing purchasing, it drastically accelerates time-to-market for new products. Similarly, a top three US bank uses ORO as a supplier front door, streamlining collaboration on complex due diligence without weakening regulatory controls. The driving force behind these successes is agentic AI. ORO utilises AI to handle repetitive tasks and cross-system data analysis, leaving human teams to focus on strategic judgment and accountability. This model is already reshaping heavily regulated sectors. ORO partners with pharmaceutical leaders, including Pfizer and Novartis, to automate a PR to PO review process that was once entirely manual. These accelerated review cycles let business users engage suppliers faster while reducing risk. For instance, in ORO's oil and gas portfolio, the platform reads dense supplier proposals, runs multi-line safety checks and generates purchase orders in minutes rather than hours, drastically lowering the burden of manual labour. Company portals ORO Labs Zip Executives Rujul Zaparde co-founder and CEO of Zip Sudhir Bhojwani Co-founder & CEO Tags Procurement Orchestration Procurement Technology Digital Transformation Supply AI Intake