Udemy ensures SOX compliance by increasing compliant spend while slashing cycle times

The challenge

A manual system faces its moment of truth

When Lud Hrovat joined Udemy as Director of Procurement in April 2021, he stepped into a whirlwind of growth fueled by the pandemic. With millions of people stuck at home, the demand for online learning skyrocketed. Meanwhile, the company was preparing for its October IPO. But behind the scenes, procurement was overtaxed.

With Lud’s procurement team consisting of himself and just one other person, Udemy’s processes were manual and time-consuming. The team relied on a patchwork of systems borrowed from other departments, none of which were designed for procurement. “We had to use a non-procurement system to intake a request, ask a whole bunch of follow-up questions uniquely every time, and then the transparency was just null,” Hrovat explained.

Employees had to submit requests through a generic intake form that lacked the ability to collect critical information for procurement needs. Follow-ups were frequent, requiring additional clarification about vendor details, scope of work, and budgetary approvals. Approval chains were managed manually through Slack or email, with no mechanism to ensure the right stakeholders were consistently involved.

The ad-hoc approach to approvals created potential risk: “Transparency required us to hopefully find the right people that were relevant and manually put them on a Slack or an email,” Lud said. Cycle times for critical contracts stretched to over a month.

Stakeholders across the organization wanted to follow the right processes, but the tools available to them made it difficult to self-serve or collaborate effectively. The procurement team was stretched thin, leaving little room for strategic initiatives like negotiating contracts or building supplier relationships.

For a company on the path to IPO, this wasn’t sustainable.

The solution

A flexible approach for complex stakeholder needs

Lud knew that Udemy needed to overhaul its procurement process to keep pace with its growing business. He turned to Zip for its intuitive design, flexible workflows, and seamless integration with Ironclad. “We were looking for two things: something that integrated with our contract system, and something that was very end-user friendly,” he said.

Implementation was fast, taking just a few months. Zip became Udemy’s single front door for all procurement requests, eliminating a major pain point for the organization by centralizing intake and approval processes. The platform’s flexibility allowed the team to design conditional workflows that looped in relevant stakeholders only when needed.

Zip was able to automatically route requests to legal for contract reviews, privacy and infosec for data security concerns, and IT for software integrations. Additional stakeholders like accounting and ESG specialists are brought in on requests as needed to ensure compliance with financial and ethical standards. “One of our rules was, if we have to ask something multiple times, it should be a systematized action,” Lud said.

A major change for Udemy was the ability to move from linear to parallel approval paths. With Zip, stakeholders could review and approve at the same time, with all of the necessary information presented alongside the request. This approach not only sped up the process, but also improved compliance.

Zip also supported SOX controls and reporting by automating audit trails, making it easy to track contract sign-offs and ensure the right people approved each step. The vendor portal streamlined onboarding by gathering necessary compliance data up front. Supplier diversity and ESG reporting became a built-in part of the process, enabling Udemy to easily track and report on these metrics.

The result

Ushering in “an explosion of compliance”

After Zip’s rollout, procurement cycle times dropped to an average of just 12 days. Managed transactions leapt from 400 to 2,000 within the first year, while non-compliant spend dropped dramatically.

“We went live with Zip and instantly got an explosion of compliance,” Lud said. “Becoming compliant without slowing anything down is huge—most procurement teams in high-growth environments have to keep adding steps and then check if they’re messing things up or causing delays.” This was especially important for Udemy as it prepared for its IPO, where meeting strict compliance obligations was non-negotiable.

Meanwhile, the increased efficiency allowed the procurement team to expand its strategic bandwidth. Instead of hiring tier-one support staff to answer basic employee questions about process, Lud brought in more experienced professionals to focus on higher-value work like contract negotiations and supplier relationships. “We didn’t need a bunch of tier-one support staff to deal with questions about which button to push or which code to use,” Lud said. Instead, the team could concentrate on delivering real value to the business.

Zip didn’t just help Udemy solve its immediate challenges–it opened the door to continuous improvement. The team introduced new workflows for contractor onboarding, physical credit card requests, and other processes without adding unnecessary complexity.

Today, Udemy’s procurement team is lean but highly effective, equipped to handle the company’s evolving needs while maintaining speed and compliance. With Zip, they’ve turned a once-overwhelmed function into a strategic driver of business value.