By Kate Jeter, Head of Global Field Marketing
Every procurement transformation starts with ambition, but it only becomes real when someone sits down to design how the processes and workflows will actually take action. That’s where implementation experts come in: translating big-picture goals into concrete workflows, integrations, and user experiences that people can trust and use every day.
In this edition of Inside the Implementation, we look at implementation through the eyes of Mackenzie Grant, Senior Manager of Digital Solutions at ORO Labs and a long-time advisor in procurement and source-to-pay technologies. With more than a decade of experience across industries including manufacturing (like a major toy manufacturer), life sciences, consumer products, pharmaceuticals, and financial services, Mackenzie has seen firsthand how orchestration uniquely connects processes that legacy tools leave siloed and rigid.
For him, orchestration isn’t just a technology layer, it's a dynamic system with multiple extensions that connect across different technologies. It bridges the gap between data structures and business processes through a central core that enables seamless alignment and flow.
When the Vision Becomes Tangible
Implementations often begin with stakeholders deeply focused on their own piece of the puzzle: a category manager obsessed with cycle times, a finance lead fixated on controls, or an operations team just trying to keep requests from stalling. Their priorities are real, but often narrowly defined and disconnected.
Mackenzie sees one of his core responsibilities as stepping back to synthesize those perspectives into a shared problem statement. As he puts it, “Taking feedback and being able to articulate a common challenge in layman's terms across these different groups of stakeholders is one of the most important aspects.”
This starts simply: asking teams to walk through their current-state processes step by step. “When you ask them to show us how it’s done today, because orchestration could be quite flexible, they see fragmented processes as normal,” he explains.
The turning point—and the moment vision clicks—comes when the implementation team plays back what they’ve heard and demonstrates a live version of a smoother, connected process. Imagine building a requisition workflow that auto-populates supplier data pulled from an existing contract record, then routes it dynamically based on spend thresholds, regions, or category rules. What was once a maze of emails, spreadsheets, and system toggling becomes one guided, end-to-end flow—possible only because orchestration connects intake directly to execution across disparate tools.
“Helping clients understand and articulate the gaps... and then us being able to build it and show it happening in real time, how these challenges can often be removed, is probably the best way to convey the message moving forward,” Grant shares. In that pivotal moment, stakeholders realize they’re not just digitizing old workarounds; they’re redesigning procurement for coherence and speed.
Large enterprises that ORO works with rarely flip the switch overnight, and Mackenzie considers quick wins as “foundational building blocks” rather than isolated features. He loves the LEGO analogy for complex models like the Falcon 9 spacecraft: “You might start by building the cockpit or the platform that the ship could be launching from. People can already objectively see what it is you’re working towards based on the shape of what you’re building.”
In procurement orchestration, those blocks build incrementally:
Requisition workflow: Capture details, auto-identify suppliers via integrated lookups, push to an ERP—proving data flow without re-keying.
Contract object: Add header, supplier name, payment terms—pre-linked to the requisition for instant progression.
Sourcing/onboarding tie-in: A new supplier request triggers parallel actions, like RFPs alongside compliance checks or bank validations.
“Just identifying the supplier and adding the detail to the requisition is one piece,” Grant notes. “I need to create a contract—so the same principle applies... When I start to tie all these foundational blocks together, that’s where the magic really happens. The data is flowing from each one of those objects, connecting at the right time, and eliminating the need to be redundant.”
In one manufacturing rollout, this approach let teams visualize a full production requisition journey—from raw materials intake to supplier qualification—in days, not weeks of manual bridging. Orchestration’s conditional logic ensured high-volume toy runs routed to preferred vendors automatically, a quick win that built instant momentum.
Transformation at enterprise scale takes months, not weeks, and effort from all sides. Stakeholders may question the process, wonder when tangible value appears, or struggle to see why the future state beats their familiar (if frustrating) reality. “A lot of individuals... have a hard time conceptualizing what the value is going to be until you snap all those pieces together,” Mackenzie observes.
Perseverance comes from clear communication and early demonstrations. “It’s simplifying that message... and being clear, concise, and calm that they need to have trust in the process,” he says. One tactic: building out demo pieces ahead of schedule. “I’ll actually build out pieces just to show from a demo perspective that this is what we’re working towards. It’s not perfect, but incrementally as we continue to demonstrate the product through agile sprints, they’re seeing their feedback being collected along the way—change this word, why is this missing.”
Examples include tweaking a field label per feedback, refining a routing rule for escalations, or showing contract data pre-filling from requisitions. This responsiveness shifts perceptions: from “configuring a tool” to partners proving orchestration’s non-linear power—like back-and-forth approvals or multi-system handoffs handled automatically—winning over the “80% on the fence.”
Organizations arrive with heavily fragmented setups: 2-3 ERPs from M&A, regional variations, siloed teams, and bolt-on tools. Diagnosis ties to long-term strategy. “Are they planning to migrate their old businesses over into [a] new ERP? This is probably the right structure,” Grant says. Multi-ERP ongoing? Orchestration acts as the additive umbrella, mapping common data models so a requisition in one system triggers fulfillment in another—without future redesigns.
In a pharmaceutical project, this future-proofed rules for clinical trial suppliers across regions and ERPs, surfacing invisible compliance gaps (e.g., geo-specific validations) that siloed tools hid—saving costly rework down the line.
Go-live matters, but it’s “a bit anticlimactic” compared to design demos. The peak? Taking a tolerated pain—“the process is how they are”—and solving it. “Many tools are built with a linear approach... we’re going back, forward, left, right, whatever way you want,” Mackenzie says. Demo a high-value requisition triggering parallel sourcing and legal review? “Whoa—that’s the wow moment.”
Change management is crucial: orchestration is procurement-first, solving challenges legacy finance tools ignored. Advocates encode rules (“start here for contracts; upload and get guided”), driving global adoption.
Implementation reveals that orchestration isn’t just another procurement tool—it’s the connective layer that turns fragmented activity into a unified experience. By snapping together foundational building blocks like requisitions, contracts, and integrations, ORO enables data to flow additively across intake, sourcing, onboarding, and fulfillment—eliminating redundancies no legacy system could touch. Clients move from siloed workarounds and linear processes to flexible, guided journeys where requests navigate complex landscapes (multi-ERPs, regional rules, vendor handoffs) through one intelligent framework.
For Mackenzie, the true payoff is that “wow” demo moment when stakeholders see problems they accepted as normal get solved in real time, proving orchestration’s power to reimagine procurement beyond what finance-first tools ever delivered. Strong change management seals it: with procurement buy-in and internal advocates, go-live becomes the launchpad for a smarter operating model where every request follows encoded rules, compliance, and supplier strategies—without manual stitching.
Want to learn more about how ORO can transform procurement at your organization? Book a demo with one of our experts.