Cambium transforms procurement from operational function to strategic asset

The challenge

When standing up a procurement organization, teams often initially prioritize using existing systems over buying a new tool. For Cambium Learning Group, that meant using a custom-built workflow developed by information security and compliance teams that lacked basic procurement fundamentals. “Things that you would think from a procurement standpoint would be core, like contract start, end dates, and total contract value, weren’t included,” Mike Viola, Director of IT Strategic Sourcing, shares.

When Mike joined Cambium in 2024,  every software purchase followed the same steps, regardless of scope or risk. Evaluating a $100 software license could take just as long as a $500,000 enterprise agreement, with average cycle times stretching to 45 business days. 

Requesters had no idea how far along their requests were in the approval process, and cross-functional handoffs between procurement, legal, infosec, and finance were fragmented across systems, email, and chat. Frustrated by the slow pace, employees frequently took matters into their own hands. Mike adds, “People were placing orders on personal credit cards or signing commitments without reviews.”

When renewals came up, the team relied on business units to proactively flag them, which rarely happened with enough lead time. The breaking point came during renewal negotiations for one of the company’s largest vendor contracts. Despite having worked with the vendorfor over a decade, there was no system of record for the scope of the agreement. “We basically had to build all that from scratch,” Mike says. “I was negotiating seven renewals at once with one of the world’s largest SaaS vendorsin my second or third week. Going through that experience made me not want to do that again in 12 months.”

The solution

Mike evaluated multiple procurement solutions, including Coupa and Workday’s procurement suite, but his direct experience implementing Zip at his previous company gave him a clear vision of what it could deliver. “Having worked with Zip, I knew it would meet all the needs we were looking for,” he says. The implementation was completed roughly six months later.

One of the most significant changes was introducing financial approval checkpoints that simply hadn’t existed. “That’s given us visibility and resulted in additional conversations that may not have happened before,” Mike shares. Finance became a key stakeholder in the rollout, gaining upstream visibility into spend for the first time.

Zip also transformed how requesters and other cross-functional teams collaborate. Requesters can comment directly within Zip, ping specific reviewers, and track their requests, while infosec, legal, and cost center managers operate within one orchestrated workflow. “That’s added a layer of self-service enablement that just didn’t exist before,” Mike adds.

Cambium’s lean procurement team of four including Mike has been able to maintain and evolve Zip without a dedicated operations manager. The no-code workflows allow the team to make updates and customize processes as the organization’s needs change. 

Renewal tracking has been another area of transformation. Zip is now configured to notify requesters 90 days before a renewal comes due, and the procurement team proactively plans around their renewals calendar. “Now ideally we are looking at two to three months of planning time where we can actually create a negotiation strategy,” Mike shares.

The result

The impact of Zip at Cambium has been measurable and far-reaching across cycle times, savings, compliance, and the perception of procurement itself.

Within the first six months of launch, Cambium decreased its procurement cycle time from an average of 45 business days down to 15-16. “That was one of the most immediate, most noticeable impacts for our organization,” Mike says. “Things are actually getting approved so much faster.” The team is also processing roughly 25% more requests annually than under the previous system, handling approximately 2,400 requests per year. 

Since rolling out Zip, Cambium has identified $1.2 million in savings, driven largely by proactive renewal management and structured negotiations. With 90-day renewal alerts and a forward-looking calendar, the team now has two to three months of planning time to build negotiation strategies.

With the new processes, Cambium has logged fewer than 10 rogue purchases, and when they do occur, the team uses them as opportunities to bring those stakeholders into the process. “We can tell those stakeholders: we’re going to put this agreement into Zip for you so that next time around you’re going to get a proactive reminder,” Mike says.

Cambium’s end-of-year experience survey scored the new system at 4.2 out of 5, with users highlighting visibility into the end-to-end process and transparency around who is working on their request as the biggest improvements.

With almost 100% of IT spend now managed through Zip, Cambium is expanding the platform enterprise-wide, starting with marketing and professional services. The team is also exploring Zip’s AI capabilities, including price negotiation agents, benchmarking agents, and a custom agent for commercial term review that would flag auto-renewals, pricing escalators, and other key terms for the procurement team to evaluate. 

All of this has shifted how procurement is perceived across the organization. Where the team was once seen as a bottleneck, stakeholders are now engaging earlier—coming to procurement before they’ve even started vendor research. “Zip has given us that platform to see things at the 10,000-foot view, which in our organization is so important and is such a key part of how we’re adding value back to the company,” Mike shares.