Cribl achieves contract and time savings through Zip’s agentic AI Agents

Challenge

When Meteb Alfayez joined Cribl as the company's first procurement hire, he inherited a fragmented technology landscape that couldn't keep pace with the company's rapid growth. Cribl had expanded from 70 employees to 250, with ambitions to scale further. Unfortunately their procurement infrastructure was built for a much smaller organization.

Procurement processes relied on several disconnected tools, with no formal spend management, inconsistent approval workflows, and multiple data entry points that led to inaccurate records. Users had to navigate different systems just to complete a single purchase, creating a poor experience and significant administrative burden.

"There was no formal spend management,” Meteb shares. “The user experience, the accuracy of the data, and the ease of doing the work for the admin and the backend was not the best."

On top of the operational challenges, the procurement team had limited bandwidth. Strategic work like price benchmarking consumed hours or even days, leaving little time for building relationships with stakeholders or being embedded within business teams.

Solution

Cribl implemented Zip's full P2P suite to transform their procurement operations. The platform serves as the single front door for purchasing, handling everything from intake and sourcing through procurement, accounts payable, and payments, including virtual cards for quick vendor payments.

Zip integrates seamlessly with Cribl's tech stack, connecting to their CLM for legal, security review tools, Jira for IT ticketing, and Oracle ERP. The API documentation enabled Cribl to build custom integrations quickly (in some cases overnight) without requiring specialized technical skills.

"When we did bring in Zip, it was one centralized tool with a great user experience,” Meteb said. “Everyone submits requests in the same place and they can follow the buying journey through that."

AI Agents: Buying Back Time for Strategic Work

A key differentiator in Cribl's transformation has been the adoption of Zip's AI agents. The team worked collaboratively with Zip to develop custom agents tailored to their specific workflows, a partnership approach that drove immediate adoption and value. Meteb adds, "What's great about the Zip team is they always listen and they always interact with the customer. We build agents together. Zip didn't build an agent that they imposed on us. We built it together."

Cribl has deployed three key AI agents:

Price Negotiation Agent: Benchmark pricing using reliable third-party data in 30 seconds to one minute, work that previously took 3-4 hours or even days. 

The agent pre-drafts negotiation emails, enabling business partners to self-serve on contract negotiations. This has delivered 15% average savings on contracts.

Hotel Contract Review Agent: Analyzes complex hotel contracts with multiple charges and percentages, providing clear cost breakdowns and specific negotiation recommendations. Used by the events team and executive assistants, it saves 45 minutes to an hour per contract and ensures PO amounts match contract terms.

Executive Summary Agent: Automatically summarizes strategic contracts over $100K for executive staff approval, synthesizing the request, contract details, and interaction history. What once took 30 minutes to an hour now takes seconds.

As with many companies bringing on AI, there’s always some questions around what the future holds, but Meteb has been optimistic about the unlock this will offer his employees. "I always tell my team that AI is an empowering tool. It's not going to replace us, but it's going to empower us. I want my team to have between 10 and 20 agents each.”

Results

With Zip's P2P platform and AI agents, Cribl has achieved transformational results across efficiency, savings, and user experience, all while scaling from 250 to 1,000+ employees:

• 15% average contract savings through agentic AI price negotiation, with self-service capability for business partners
• A 10-day average SLA from intake to contracting, with some marketing contracts completed in just 3 days
• 4 hours saved per benchmarking exercise, now completed in 30 seconds to one minute
• 8.5/10 user satisfaction score for the procurement system

The time savings have enabled Cribl's procurement team to shift from reactive, transactional work to strategic partnership with the business. Rather than spending hours on repetitive tasks like benchmarking and contract review, they now have the bandwidth to build relationships, be proactive, and embed themselves within business teams.

Cribl's early adoption of AI has also elevated procurement's perception within the organization, positioning them as an innovative team that's leading digital transformation.

"Zip has provided an excellent experience to our users,” Meteb shares. “Zip is instrumental for every procurement team and every procurement professional because it makes you shine.”