Technology Magazine November 2024 | Page 52

ZIP
having just opened an office in London to support its growing EMEA customer base — which includes Arm , a global semiconductor and software design company ; Monday . com , a leading work operating system ; and N26 , an innovative digital bank .
“ I ’ m most excited about how we now serve hundreds and hundreds of leaders from companies like OpenAI , Snowflake , Prudential , Sephora , Reddit and others , these well-regarded companies and brands across really every sort of vertical and industry out there ,” Rujul shares .
Orchestration : A vital tool for modern procurement Rujul and Cheng founded Zip having seen pain points in the procurement process during their time at Airbnb . To their great surprise , they soon discovered that most , if not all global businesses were experiencing similar issues .
Rujul explains that over the last decade , two significant changes have occurred in the world that have led to the need for a solution like the one Zip provides . First , buying has become much more distributed , with people in sales , marketing and engineering empowered to make purchases . Second , the review of spend has become much more cross-functional .
“ It ’ s not just about the dollars and the cents today ,” Rujul explains . “ I think every CPO would agree that their job is almost equivalently , if not more , about management of risk . With decentralisation , we have more

“ It ’ s not just about the dollars and cents today . I think every CPO would agree that their job is almost equivalently , if not more , about management of risk ”

RUJUL ZAPARDE CEO , ZIP
infrequent users of procurement processes , making intuitive UI crucial . You can ’ t train thousands of people , whose job is not procurement , on all of the steps involved . This means the purchasing process is currently slow , complex , and riddled with inefficiencies , involving countless steps , extensive paperwork , and numerous approvals and security reviews .”
“ Having a really crystal clear and strong workflow capability to manage the complexity of the end-to-end procurement process across all the different teams and stakeholders becomes a lot more critical in a world where buying has become distributed ,” Rujul continues . “ That ’ s the problem Zip solves .”
Rujul believes the most important thing offered by Zip ’ s orchestration platform is its cross-functional nature . Zip ’ s approach to orchestration simplifies collaboration for everyone involved —
52 November 2024