“Orchestration” has become one of the most popular words in procurement. Leaders say they want intake-to-pay to feel seamless, they want stakeholders to have a single entry point, and they want suppliers to be onboarded without constant exceptions. The vision is clear, but the reality inside most organizations is far from it.
One procurement operations lead put it simply:
"Everyone keeps saying intake-to-pay, but we don’t even have a shared view of what intake is supposed to be. It means something different to every team."
— Procurement Ops Lead, Fortune 500 Tech Company
Suppliers notice the confusion too:
"We fill out the same information three different times in three different systems. None of it feels connected."
— Supplier Contact, Global Consumer Brand
THE HIDDEN PROBLEM: ORCHESTRATION REQUIRES A MAP EVERYONE AGREES ON
Procurement may want orchestration, but very few organizations have aligned on what the starting point should even look like. Intake often happens in one tool, approvals in another, and supplier onboarding in a third. Each function has its own definition of the process, so procurement ends up fielding every exception and making case-by-case decisions.
This isn’t just a workflow problem; it’s an operating model problem. Without a shared map of how requests should flow, technology can’t deliver orchestration, it can only automate the confusion that already exists.
WHAT LEADING ORGANIZATIONS DO DIFFERENTLY
Leaders who have made orchestration real start with clarity. They convene procurement, finance, legal, and operations to map a single end-to-end process, aligning on what “intake” means, where decisions should happen, and how work should progress across the enterprise.
They design with exceptions in mind, creating rules that cover the majority of cases but still provide controlled flexibility for edge scenarios. They invest in systems that can integrate rather than layering new tools on top of disconnected ones. And they measure orchestration not by tool adoption, but by how quickly and consistently requests flow from entry to outcome.
In one organization RiseNow supported, supplier intake requests were taking more than 30 days to complete because each department used its own intake form. By building a single shared intake process and embedding it in the organization’s procurement suite, they cut average cycle time by 60% and reduced exceptions by more than half.
Nick Jenkinson, Senior Advisor at RiseNow, describes the challenge this way:
"Everyone wants orchestration, but very few have agreed on what the orchestra should actually play. Success starts with aligning on a single map of how work flows, and only then can the technology amplify it."
WHY THIS MATTERS
Orchestration isn’t about tools. It’s about building a shared understanding of the work and then designing systems and processes that reinforce it. Without that clarity, intake-to-pay will remain a collection of disconnected steps, and procurement will keep carrying the burden of every exception.
Next up in this series: why savings are still slipping through the cracks, even after years of effort to control spend.
