We’ve acquired Okko to create a complete procure-to-pay process

The Spendesk mission has been clear since day one: to liberate businesses and people to do their best work through smart, efficient spending processes. That began with better business cards and expense automation, followed by invoice management, and budgets.

Today, spend management gives companies more control and visibility over their spending. 

Now, we’re putting new focus on another burdensome task for many businesses: procurement. Even with user-friendly payment solutions like Spendesk, creating purchase orders, managing suppliers, and anticipating contract renewals is an ongoing struggle. 

But because procurement is often the first step in your company’s spend process, we can’t let it slow you down. It’s time for a smarter end-to-end purchasing experience, from procure to pay.

Because we believe that spending at work should be controlled, efficient, and easy.

Okko brings procurement prowess to Spendesk

We’re thrilled to share that we’ve acquired procurement company Okko, a pioneer in the modern procurement space. The company helps businesses digitise the procurement process, from the initial request to the finalised purchase order. It also brings a collaborative, automated and frictionless process to control spend even before it happens. 

With this acquisition, Spendesk is the first European solution to fully integrate procurement and spend management for businesses of up to 1000 employees.

Why focus on procurement? 

Procurement is a natural extension of spend management.  Many companies have complex and long-lasting supplier relationships. They need comprehensive solutions to the common issues that arise.

Over the past few years, hundreds of our customers have highlighted the need for more support in their procurement processes. And being able to seamlessly execute the ensuing payment and reconciliation steps that follow is a huge win. 

Here are some of the challenges these businesses encounter. Stop us if any of this sounds familiar: 

• You lose hours (or days) on admin, reviewing purchase orders and avoiding mistakes

• You struggle to ensure that team members understand and follow the purchasing process

• Team members avoid the process altogether and go rogue (aka maverick spend)

• You don’t know which contracts are already in place, and how much is committed

• You’re surprised by unexpected contract renewals and price increases

• You find discrepancies between budget forecasts and what is spent

• You devote serious time finding, assessing, and managing supplier relationships

• You need to hire more and more staff just to keep on top of procurement

Procurement is one of those business operations that in theory should be simple, but quickly becomes cumbersome and complicated. Just like our old friends expenses, card reconciliations, and paying invoices.

These are exactly the kinds of issues that modern technology can and should fix. So that’s what we’re doing.

What’s next for Spendesk and Okko?  

With Okko's procurement know-how and our spend management expertise, we're united by a vision of collaborative innovation that's easily adopted by employees – creating a seamless and delightful experience for everyone.

Spendesk development teams are already integrating Okko into our platform and refining our purchase order tools. Our goal is to deliver a streamlined end-to-end procure-to-pay solution, tailored to meet your needs.

You’ll soon have an easy solution to common challenges, including: 

• Vendor management

• Collaborative purchase requests

• Approval workflows

• Contract renewals

Building this into the Spendesk platform gives you an even more robust spend management system to manage your spend from the very beginning. 

End-to-end spend management — from procure to pay

We can’t wait to have Okko’s innovations implanted in the Spendesk platform. Soon, each vital step in your purchasing process – from creating a request to reconciling the payment – will be done in one flow. 

No need for separate policies, tools, and logins. Just one process that everyone understands and enjoys, in one simple platform. 

It’s all company spending, after all. And smart spend management is what we’re all about.