How Invesco manages $1.1B spend with a 19-person team

The challenge

Invesco was facing serious procurement challenges. With no upstream procurement systems or sourcing tools, and only basic contract repositories, they were managing $1.1 billion in spend with minimal infrastructure and a team of just 19 people.

The procurement process was entirely reactive. Strategic sourcing happened via email and Excel with no audit trail. The team operated in a "wait for the phone to ring" mode rather than proactively managing categories. Mid-tail spend received only light-touch engagement, and high-volume repetitive sourcing meant the team was spending time on tactical, manual work processing and approving requests instead of strategic value-add initiatives..

Limited visibility into spend restricted the business's buying power, leading to missed savings opportunities and perpetuated stakeholder distrust. Without a centralized procurement tool, contract renewals caught the team off guard with no systematic way to track performance or optimize future decisions. Previous assessments done by outside consultancies had indicated the team needed 50+ people to maintain the volume of requests they were receiving, and Invesco knew there had to be a better way to more effectively manage procurement.

The solution

When Clare Cassano joined as Head of Procurement Strategy & Execution in early 2024, she was tasked with creating a new process and corresponding tech stack for procurement orchestration. With this mandate, the team moved forward with implementing Zip, allowing Invesco to bring a new level of visibility into the procurement process across all stakeholders. 

Invesco deployed Zip as the central orchestration layer connecting all procurement activities, and decided to stand up a modern, integrated stack from day one vs. trying to overlay Zip on top of legacy systems.

The Zip team’s consultative approach made the implementation seamless, and Invesco took a phased rollout strategy, beginning with a pilot group before expanding to EMEA and North America in early September 2024. The platform's intuitive intake and configurable workflows meant employees could engage easily without extensive training. The procurement team could also add self-service functionality, allowing for workflows with governance gates that enable stakeholders to handle below-threshold sourcing independently while maintaining compliance.

Invesco implemented an integrated tech stack designed to enable a small team to operate with much larger organizational effectiveness. With Zip serving as the single front door, each request undergoes a series of checks with the following tools:

• Globality: Sourcing 
• ProcessUnity: Supplier risk and maintenance
• Ironclad: Contracting
• Oracle:  PR creation 

With Zip as the central orchestration layer, all approvals have been completed prior to the PR process and PO creation, which takes place in Oracle ERP.  Across the board, all parties have had visibility across the intake process, ensuring requesters are kept up to date on status and the procurement team has an audit trail of all requests in one centralized system of record.

Looking forward

Since implementing Zip, Invesco's procurement transformation has helped the organization drive faster operational efficiency, better strategic positioning, and more innovative leadership, allowing a 19-person team to effectively manage $1.1 billion in spend and avoid the need to hire 20-30 additional employees. In the first year of using Zip, the team saw a 26% increase in savings and went from a 4X to 7X increase in procurement ROI.

The team moved from email and Excel-based sourcing to systematic processes with complete audit trails and can now track contract performance and renewal optimization, informing better sourcing decisions. Automated workflows dramatically reduce cycle times, regulatory compliance assessments happen automatically, and low-risk renewals are approved without human review.

Zip's orchestration capabilities enabled the team to gain visibility into billions in spend, avoid significant headcount costs, and deliver measurable value while maintaining compliance in a highly regulated environment.  This transformation elevated procurement from being a reactive and transactional function to a strategic and innovative partner across stakeholders, earning them a seat at the table with C-suite leadership and on the firm's generative AI governance committee. "Technology advancement has brought 30 years of progress in the last 5 years," Global Chief Procurement Officer Al Williams shares. "We're positioned to be part of the answer, not part of the problem."