ORO Blog

AI-Driven Procurement Orchestration: How Grünenthal Achieved 70% Efficiency Gains

Written by Kate Jeter | April 17, 2025

In today’s complex enterprise environment, procurement professionals often find themselves navigating a labyrinth of systems, departments, and compliance requirements. What should be a streamlined process becomes a frustrating journey through disconnected tools and manual workflows. However, as demonstrated in a recent webinar with the German Association for Materials Management, Purchasing, and Logistics (BME), there’s a better way forward with AI-powered orchestration.

The Procurement Challenge: Navigating the “Spaghetti Maze”

For most large organizations, procurement isn’t the linear, well-organized process that it appears to be on paper. Instead, business users encounter what Emily Rakowski, CMO at ORO Labs, describes as a “Franken-stack,” a cobbled-together collection of multiple ERP systems, source-to-pay tools, contract management solutions, and risk assessment platforms that don’t communicate effectively.

This disjointed environment creates significant challenges:

  • Business users waste time switching between multiple systems
  • Procurement teams struggle with limited visibility across processes
  • Manual handoffs between departments create delays and errors
  • Compliance and risk management become difficult to maintain

The result? Frustrated stakeholders, delayed business outcomes, and increased operational costs.

Procurement Orchestration: Creating a Single Front Door

Rather than ripping and replacing existing systems – an expensive and highly disruptive approach – procurement orchestration offers a more elegant solution. ORO Labs has developed an AI-powered platform that creates a single “front door” for all procurement-related activities.

This orchestration approach:

  • Provides one intuitive interface for both business users and procurement teams
  • Understands user intent through sophisticated natural language processing
  • Seamlessly integrates with existing systems like SAP Ariba and Oracle solutions
  • Connects with everyday collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams and Slack

The ORO procurement orchestration platform addresses common procurement pain points through the intelligent orchestration of intake management, supplier management, and risk management processes – all without requiring organizations to abandon their existing technology investments.

Real-World Success: Grünenthal’s Transformation Journey

During the recent webinar, Rita Santos, Digital Procurement Transformation Manager at Grünenthal, shared her team’s remarkable journey implementing ORO’s procurement orchestration platform.

The Challenge

Grünenthal’s supplier onboarding and third-party due diligence process was highly complex and manual:

  • 7 different tools created a fragmented user experience
  • 8 macro process steps required significant coordination
  • 5 different teams needed to collaborate effectively
  • Manual questionnaires and risk assessments were time consuming
  • Limited transparency and data accuracy issues plagued the process
The Transformation

Through implementing ORO’s AI-driven orchestration platform, Grünenthal achieved remarkable results:

  • 70% reduction in effort for requestors across the organization
  • 85% user adoption tracked during the transition period
  • Global deployment successfully implemented across 20 countries
  • Positive feedback from both internal and external stakeholders
  • Minimal support requests demonstrating the platform’s intuitive design
  • Automated third-party due diligence renewals enhancing compliance

 “At Grünenthal we believe that digital transformation is not about technology, it’s about people. So, we put people at the center of our digital projects,” Santos explained during the webinar. “I think what we’ve been feeling since the beginning is that our project team from ORO has wanted us to succeed as much as we wanted to succeed, and that’s been the key to keeping the project going in the right direction.”

The Power of AI in Modern Procurement

What makes this orchestration approach particularly powerful is its AI capabilities. The ORO platform leverages advanced artificial intelligence to:

  • Intuitively understand user intent through natural language models
  • Read and extract information from complex documents and files
  • Provide instant recommendations for suppliers based on requirements
  • Blend AI automation with human intervention where appropriate

Future developments will expand these capabilities even further, allowing users to make natural language queries like “What were the last three Pos from this department?” or “Show me performance reviews from top suppliers in this category.”

Keys to Successful Implementation

Based on Grünenthal’s experience, Santos shared several valuable lessons for organizations considering a similar transformation.

  1. Center the user experience in every aspect of design and implementation
  2. Involve stakeholders early in the process definition and tool selection
  3. Build flexibility into timelines to allow for thorough testing and refinement
  4. Implement comprehensive change management to ensure adoption
  5. Start with smaller deployments before building a full-scale rollout

Through following these principles, organizations can achieve significant improvements in efficiency, transparency, and user satisfaction while maintaining compliance and reducing risk.

Transform Your Procurement Process Today

The journey to AI-driven procurement orchestration doesn’t require abandoning your existing systems or disrupting established processes. As Grünenthal’s experience demonstrates, the right orchestration platform can deliver remarkable results by working with your current technology stack.

Ready to learn more?

Watch the Full Webinar – Hear directly from Emily Rakowski and Rita Santos as they dive deeper into Grünenthal’s transformation journey and answer audience questions about procurement orchestration.

Schedule a Personalized Demo – See the ORO procurement orchestration platform in action with a customized demonstration focused on your organization’s specific challenges and requirements.

Don’t let your procurement process remain a frustrating spaghetti maze! Discover how AI-driven orchestration can create a seamless experience for your team and stakeholders.