Precoro vs. Zip

Today’s procurement function faces a number of challenges. Procurement teams are under pressure to reduce costs while maintaining quality, which requires a focus on negotiation skills and strategic sourcing. Teams must be able to access the right data to analyze spending patterns and predict future outcomes.

Companies are looking to mitigate risk, improve spend management, and streamline compliance. The right purchasing software will optimize and automate the procurement process, reducing time, effort, and costs.

Two of the best brands for getting started with automation are Precoro and Zip. This article will examine both spend management platforms, including a brief overview, key features, and ways they overlap. We’ll also look at how the systems complement each other, and how they work separately.

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Precoro: efficient purchase management system

Precoro offers a fully automated process in a single tool. From purchase orders to reporting and budget control, companies can increase order processing speed with Precoro, leading to 2.5 times faster approvals than other systems on the market.

Precoro is considered one of the best procurement software systems for small to mid-sized companies offering robust procure-to-pay features that include simple sourcing, automated approvals, and guided purchasing.

The cloud-based SaaS optimizes the procurement process and aims to eliminate time-consuming manual tasks and human error. Users can approve documents from any mobile device, and centralize the purchasing process for total visibility across an organization.

The top capabilities of Precoro include:

• Purchase Order Management: Generate instant POs from requests or scratch and automatically send them to suppliers. Access a limitless catalog of products and services.
• Supplier Management: Reports on supplier performance, extensive supplier list with contact storage, self-service supplier portal, and focus on spend control.
• 3-Way Matching: The purchase order, receipt, and invoice are matched in real-time with discrepancy tracking, invoice tolerance rates, and customizable exceptions.
• User Management: Single sign-on with PingOne, OKTA, Keycloak, and Azure AD. User access restrictions with multiple countries, currencies, and offices in one account.
• Budget Control: Automatic budget limits for locations, departments, and custom fields. Bulk upload and management with insightful reports and real-time budget control.

Precoro offers a wide range of eprocurement features to help companies streamline their purchasing process, improve spend visibility, and manage vendor relationships more effectively.

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Why companies choose Precoro

Precoro is procurement software designed to save a business time and money. The best teams use the platform to eliminate error-prone manual work, reduce expenses, coordinate purchasing processes, and focus on what matters. Companies choose Precoro as their spend management solution for reasons like:

Approval workflows

Precoro offers workflows for departments, locations, and custom fields. The system has features for mobile-ready approvals, approval thresholds, and custom policies. Companies can deliver needed products and services with completely flexible workflows and 90% faster approvals.

Reporting and analytics

Forget about archaic expense tracking in Excel. Companies can run instant reports to provide accurate procurement metrics that ensure smart financial and operational decisions, with real-time data at your fingertips. Take advantage of over 120 customizable fields for tailored reports and 20+ filters to find exactly what you need.

Top integrations

No more manual data entry from accounting software. Simplify the integration process with two types of integration: automatic and flat-file. Companies can quickly connect top ERPs and CRMs like Xero, QuickBooks, Netsuite, and more. Instantly match purchase orders, invoices, suppliers, and statutes, and automatically match fields for flat-file integration.

Precoro scored 4.7 out of 5 (113 reviews) on G2.

Precoro scored 4.8 out of 5 (178 reviews) on Capterra.

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Zip Intake-to-Procure: modern spend control management

Zip is the new concierge for procurement, enabling companies to increase employee adoption, manage spend, and mitigate risk. It’s one of the leading intake-to-procure solutions providing a single interface for any employee to initiate a purchase or vendor request. 

The Zip Intake-to-Procure platform eliminates “after-the-fact” purchase requisitions and guides employees through everything from intake to approvals. It’s an intuitive front end for your ERP systems, providing a seamless user experience, with automatic approval workflows, PO creation, and easier budget management.

Zip enhances spend management by focusing on employee adoption, real-time visibility, and a wide range of integrations. Launch in less than six weeks and let the Zip program serve as your orchestration layer, integrating into core systems, and allowing key stakeholders to keep their own tools.

What are some of the best features that ZIP has to offer?

• Automate Intake-to-Procure: Configure and optimize the entire end-to-end intake process with automatic PO creation and approval process.
• Configurable Approval Chains: Built for collaboration, send notifications to key stakeholders at the right time, for each purchase request.
• Flexible and Extensible: Change workflows easily without the need for coding or help from IT. No complicated implementation or installation.
• Key Integrations: Pre-built API connectors to the systems that matter, like Slack, Oracle, JIRA, Ironclad, Procurify, leading CLMs, and GRC systems.
• Onboarding Vendors: Zip ingests and categorizes existing vendors, then automatically flags any overlap, from software to staffing agencies.

Little change management or training modules are needed to implement Zip. The procurement management software guides employees every step of the way. The system works to proactively rationalize vendor contracts while strengthening business relationships and improving employee satisfaction.

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Why companies choose Zip

Zip Intake-to-Procure has recently been recognized as a 2022 ProcureTech100 Company (next to teams like Airbase and Coupa) for its ease of use, comprehensive intake-to-procure solution, and fast time-to-value.

Zip enables businesses to gain clear and timely visibility across all purchases, mitigating risk, increasing operational efficiency, and gaining better control of spend. This is all done while dramatically improving the employee experience and empowering supplier onboarding with automated contract management.

Here are a few reasons why companies choose Zip:

Pre-built intake

The average employee is more focused on their job than specific department policies for IT, finance, or legal. Zip fills this gap by providing a completely guided buying experience from intake to purchase. The intake process can be easily configured to loop in the right stakeholders, exactly when they are needed. It’s an intuitive front door for your ERP and P2P systems, automatically generating purchase orders and purchase requisitions as required.

Real-time reporting

Zip provides real-time reporting and analytics tools, allowing users to track spend, monitor supplier performance, and identify areas for cost savings. Companies can then make more informed decisions driven by intelligent data.

Total customization

The Zip Intake-to-Procure solution is a zero-code solution that allows users to customize workflows and approval processes. This helps to ensure compliance with company policies and reduces the risk of errors or delays.

Control spend and mitigate risk

Maintain financial integrity with a centralized procurement process that helps to manage the entire vendor lifecycle; while reducing rogue spend. In Zip, you can customize workflows and channel requests to existing vendors/contracts while automating renewals throughout the process.

Additional reasons to choose Zip

• Zero-Code Flexibility: Highly configurable and extensible, with no need to write code or understand development.
• Operational Efficiency: Quick deployment in eight weeks or less and reduce administrative burden by 40%
• Top-Level Integrations: Integrates disparate platforms like ERP, CLM, P2P, CLM, SSO, and ticketing.

Zip scored 4.8 out of 5 (38 reviews) on G2.

Zip scored 4.8 out of 5 (22 reviews) on Capterra.

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The overlap between Precoro and Zip

Zip and Precoro are both designed for everyone from small businesses to mid-market companies, with Zip focusing more on large enterprises. The systems are both useful for improving visibility into spend and effectively managing supplier relationships. 

Both systems offer features that range from purchase requisitions to approval workflows, deep analytics, and expense categorization. Zip and Precoro both provide a user-friendly interface with reasonable pricing and strong customer support. Each system boasts AI-powered technology and automation of manual tasks.

Zip and Precoro share additional comprehensive features like:

• Limited training required
• Spend management
• Automated approval workflows
• Vendor management
• Instant PO generation
• Various integrations with top ERPs and P2Ps

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How today’s companies use Zip to augment traditional business spend management

When it comes to the common FAQs of improving business spend management (BSM) a common theme is automation. The more you can give up manual tasks, the more productive employees become. You’ll see higher levels of satisfaction and employee retention rates. 

Given the right tools, suppliers also become happier. They’re empowered through self-service portals and have their questions answered almost instantly, rather than waiting around for someone to call back.

In traditional BSM, the approval process could take days or even weeks, sometimes requiring five to six signatures for final approval. It’s a clunky process that leads to lost time, more labor, and increased expenses. 

Software solutions like Zip Intake-to-Procure augment traditional spend management by automating much of the process from intake and vendor selection, to purchase order creation and approval. There’s a higher rate of accountability, more visibility, and a greater collaborative feel.

Zip replaces traditional BSM platforms in a variety of ways. It’s the single program an employee needs to quickly initiate a purchase, then route it for approval in minutes. Zip effortlessly guides teams through preferred vendors and ensures everything is in total compliance.

How successful is the Zip solution?

When HR company Lattice needed a solid system to scale its legal function, they turned to Zip. They needed something to implement fast, that was going to be effective, and would scale as the procurement team grew. 

By onboarding Zip, Lattice was able to build a strong, stable, scaling procurement system that served all their needs. Upfront, everything is laid out in an organized fashion, eliminating the manual overhead of rigorous information collection. 

The result was that Lattice saw an estimated 50% decrease in cycle times, decreased time spent on asynchronous communication, and increased cost visibility.

As Robert Scott, SVP of Legal at Lattice, puts it: “The greatest benefit that I get out of using the Zip platform is peace of mind.”

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