I’ve just got back from attending Zip Forward in London, where I was speaking on a panel with my good friend Susan Walsh.
I’m really bullish on vendor-hosted conferences, as well as micro events.
They’re not only a great marketing strategy for the software company. Often, they’re also less “salesy” than the larger conferences organised by professional events companies. This one was also a refreshing change from the typical procurement events that these days feel saturated with too many sponsors.
If you’ve been hiding under a rock and haven’t heard of Zip, they’re a rapidly growing intake-to-pay platform. Zip has over 500 active customers across North America, EMEA and Australia.
The conference was a master class in how vendor-led events can offer depth, clarity, and actionable insight, without too much marketing spin.
The tone was fun yet professional, combining polished execution with meaningful engagement. The event felt intentionally curated: designed not for mass exposure, but for high-impact conversations among practitioners and thought leaders.
Without having to run the gauntlet through a sea of salespeople, attendees could focus on what really matters: networking and learning.
Zip Forward Europe: Procurement Innovation and Execution
Every session, panel, and coffee-break discussion felt aligned to these five core themes which I took away from the conference.
Zip structured much of its content around these guiding principles that are critical to modern procurement strategy. Each was explored through a mix of product roadmap reveals, new module announcements, customer success stories, thought leader panels, and executive keynotes.
1. Risk: Bringing Procurement to the Frontline of Risk Management
Procurement has long been seen as a function to control cost and ensure compliance. But at Zip Forward, it was clear that risk management is now a central pillar of procurement’s strategic value.
Zip’s Risk Orchestration features, announced at the conference, are designed to surface risks early in the supplier lifecycle. Supplier due diligence and workflow templates for specific regulations will be embedded into the intake and supplier onboarding processes.
A key insight was that risk isn’t just a legal or IT concern; it’s a procurement priority. Zip’s intake workflows are designed to capture these risks upstream, empowering teams to take preventative action rather than responding after the fact.
2. Resilience: Building systems to withstand Supply Chain disruption
In a world marked by global supply shocks, inflation, and geopolitical tension, resilience is no longer optional. It’s strategic.
Zip Forward sessions underscored how process resilience begins with workflow design. Intake and vendor onboarding need to be flexible enough to support alternative sourcing strategies.
Zip’s orchestration layer supports dynamic routing and multi-team collaboration, enabling businesses to keep procurement flowing even during organisational upheaval.
The takeaway? Resilience is built not just in supply chains, but in the ease and speed of use for the tools and platforms we use to manage them.
3. Compliance: Embedding Governance without slowing things down
Compliance remains non-negotiable, especially in regulated sectors like finance, healthcare, and government. But as several speakers noted, compliance cannot be a bottleneck.
Zip’s approach is to embed compliance into the intake process, ensuring that teams follow the correct controls by design.
Regulation-specific approval workflows and a centralised repository for risk were two featured announced during the initial welcome keynote from Co-Founders Ruhul Zaparde and Lu Cheng.
From GDPR to DORA and anti-bribery regulations, the system allows organisations to codify approval policies and documentation requirements within every workflow.
This “compliance by default” model means users don’t have to remember the rules—the platform enforces them. It’s a much more modern solution to legacy policy documents and manual gatekeeping.
4. Orchestration: From Intake to Integration
Unsurprisingly, the most central theme of the event was orchestration: the concept of connecting and streamlining every step of the procurement process, starting from intake.
This is where Zip continues to shine – and benefit from first mover advantage – despite an influx of solutions in this space.
Intake and orchestration still account for the vast majority of Zip’s revenue and customer base, and for good reason. Their platform serves as a front door for procurement, legal, finance, and IT—bringing requests into a single flow, regardless of department or category.
Rather than being just another procurement point solution, Zip positions itself as the operating layer that connects legacy systems and ERPs such as SAP, Workday, Oracle, and Microsoft Dynamics. This orchestration is what makes procurement feel seamless to the end user and manageable to stakeholders across the business.
5. AI: Real World use cases
Artificial intelligence was, predictably, a key discussion point—but the tone was refreshingly pragmatic. Rather than lofty visions, Zip focused on real use cases already in development or live today.
These include:
- Intake AI – automation of procurement requests
- AI-driven invoice coding
- AI invoice extraction
- Auto-categorisation of intake requests
AI was presented as a complement to orchestration, not a replacement. It enhances decision-making, accelerates routine tasks, and helps Category and Sourcing Managers focus on more strategic work.
Enterprise Growth and Strategic Focus
One of the most notable signals at Zip Forward was the company’s increased focus on enterprise customers.
While Zip initially built its reputation in the mid-market and with high growth tech companies, the product and its customer base is clearly maturing to serve more complex use cases.
This shift was evident in both the roadmap sessions and customer panels, with large-scale organisations sharing how they’ve embedded Zip across finance, procurement, and compliance functions.
Yet despite this enterprise expansion, Zip remains firmly anchored in its intake and orchestration roots. These capabilities drive the bulk of their growth and continue to differentiate Zip from traditional source-to-pay software.
Final Thoughts
Zip Forward was more than just a vendor event. It was a signal of where procurement technology more generally is heading.
The focus on risk, resilience, compliance, orchestration, and AI wasn’t just theoretical. It was backed by product demonstrations, customer stories, and a clear roadmap for continued innovation.
And in terms of the attendees themselves, I was actually surprised to see a whole lot of people I knew there! It was almost like a mini-DPW reunion. Around 200 people attended the event, comprised of a healthy mix of customers, prospects, analysts, consultancies, partners and industry thought leaders.
Note: This is not a sponsored article, and represents my independent take-aways and opinion of the event.
