StackAdapt saves 15% on spend while scaling procurement with Zip

The Challenge

Before implementing Zip, StackAdapt's procurement team operated in a very disjointed environment. As a team of one managing procurement for a rapidly scaling programmatic advertising platform, Head of Procurement Nadine Winkler faced significant obstacles that inhibited strategic decision making.

"When you don't have visibility into what your spend is, where your renewals are, or really where any of your transactions are coming from, you don't have the ability to be strategic," Nadine shares. Without a centralized system to manage intake, requests came in through multiple channels, including Freshservice tickets, Slack, and email. The requests then ended up in a Google Sheet, where they were manually updated. Any legal and security reviews happened in separate tools that had no sort of integration.

With no way to monitor renewals, procurement operated in constant firefighting mode. "You would have something come across your desk within the last three days saying the renewal is due," Nadine says. "So it was almost near impossible to do any workload management."

The end user experience was equally frustrating, with employees. "You would submit a request and kind of throw it over the fence, and then you have no idea where it's sitting," Nadine says. Procurement became the sole point of contact for all status inquiries. "You get Slack messages from either the VP all the way down to an individual contributor asking, 'Hey, what's the status on this?'" Without a proper system in place, many purchases fell outside the official process entirely.

The solution

StackAdapt selected Zip after evaluating multiple solutions. "We wanted a vendor that understood what we needed at the time of  purchase, but could also support what we would need six months or a year down the road," Nadine explains.

Zip provided a centralized platform where all stakeholders, including procurement, legal, security, and finance, could collaborate in a single tool. The platform's configurability proved critical. "As a company that's scaling and growing, we're constantly evolving and constantly changing, and we need a tool that is adaptable to that," Nadine notes.

The implementation team helped Nadine successfully get up and running before year-end close, despite being a solo procurement professional. "I wasn't able to do that without the support of Zip’s team," she says. "They were like, 'Here, we'll do as much as we can to get you up and running. And when you're live, don't worry, we're here to support you after the fact too.'"

The results

Since implementing Zip, StackAdapt has achieved measurable improvements: 

• 1,300+ requests completed through the platform
• Cycle time reduced by 50% (from 60 days to 30 days average)
• 15% savings on tens of millions of dollars in PO-backed spend in 2024

"Having everything centralized is huge because then you have an understanding of what's upcoming, what your current workload is like, and where everything is sitting," Nadine says. The transformation has driven company-wide adoption, with requesters now able to see exactly where their purchases stand. "They have the ability to be like, 'Oh, it's sitting with legal,' or 'It's sitting with the FP&A team for approval.'"

The accounts payable team has also benefited. Work which  previously fell on AP, such as vendor onboarding, invoice validation, contract verification, now happens on the front end. "We make sure that our requests are compliant, we make sure that we have contracts in place, and we make sure that we have POs issued," Nadine explains. "So when it comes to the AP team, the invoice automatically matches and it significantly reduces their time to close."

Nadine's team has grown from one to three, which is a testament to the program's success. "I always say knowledge is power," she reflects. "If you do not have all the data and information, it is impossible to be strategic. "For now, when I look back, having Zip implemented, I have all of the data and all the information I need to be strategic."