Workato is “Drinking its Own Champagne” on the Anniversary of its Procurement Transformation

Procurement is a specialised field that plays a crucial role in delivering tangible value that supports growth, promotes innovation, builds resilience and drives value through efficiency,” notes Ashim Kapai, Senior Director and Head of Strategic Sourcing and Procurement at Workato. Since arriving in early 2022, he has aimed to merge the best of the company’s innovation with market-leading platforms, to revolutionise Workato’s procurement approach.

Hi Ashim. Perhaps you could begin by introducing Workato, its core service mission, and how you came to be a part of its ongoing evolution?

Workato is a unified integration and automation platform that allows an end user to connect many disparate systems and to facilitate them talking to each other. As such, it is a low code/no code platform that enables individuals with no technical knowledge to navigate the automation landscape.

I have almost completed a year here at Workato and was brought in specifically to build and scale the procurement organisation, and it’s definitely been a fun ride. 2021 was certainly different to 2022 which was a whole new ballgame. It has been exciting, but has added a certain pressure to evolve our procurement function in a way that allows us to navigate the uncertainties of 2023.

You mentioned 2021 and 2022 there, and I’m sure the impacts of 2020 are still lingering too. To that end, what were the specific challenges and bottlenecks you encountered when entering the organisation a year ago?

You’re absolutely right – it’s been a trickledown effect of the past three years as a whole, in terms of supply chain disruption which highlighted the vulnerability of traditional operating models that many procurement professionals are trying to navigate even today. These shortcomings include a lack of reliable long-term planning, growing concentration of supply, limited insight into supplier economics, a lack of collaboration across functional teams, and a failure to adopt and scale proven technologies that could reduce transactional loads.

However, we know from studies related to the financial crisis of ‘08/’09 that companies who invested during the downturn were the ones who outperformed post-downturn. How companies respond today positions them to outperform in the future. It is not about bringing spending to a standstill.