The following is a case study on Cockroach’s use of Tonkean AI-powered process orchestration written and published by Spend Matters. Read the case study below, or watch Cockroach discuss their use of Tonkean in a corresponding webinar below
Executive Summary
Before partnering with Tonkean, Cockroach Lab’s technology stack included an ERP, finance software and a large S2P technology suite. It found that some of the features available in the suite were too advanced for its midsized organization and that its workflows were too complex for Cockroach’s employees, especially those who did not work in procurement.
Disparate tools that lacked seamless integrations lead to different departments — such as Finance, Legal, IT and Procurement — working in silos, where each department followed its own approval process without cross-functional visibility. Such cumbersome sequential workflows can cause delays and missed steps. For example, a legal department may identify a potential compliance risk late in an approval process, causing setbacks for procurement or other teams. Along with a lack of internal collaboration, there was limited orchestration with external tools and partners. The disconnect between these systems means that data and visibility was unavailable across the procurement lifecycle. When crucial information was not consistently updated across platforms, discrepancies arose, resulting in the need for manual intervention.
All this initially prompted Kevin Stacey, Cockroach Labs’ head of procurement, to dive into the process orchestration market.
Cockroach’s most important considerations when selecting a process orchestration partner were:
1. Integrations: It needed an orchestration solution that could integrate seamlessly into their existing tech stack, especially the S2P suite.
2. Simplicity and accessibility: It needed a tool that would work well for legal and finance as well as procurement and would provide every user (regardless of department or experience) with the same intake UI.
3. Orchestration: It needed a solution that would support both parallel and sequential workflows and approvals across disparate teams, tools and data sources.
4. Contracts management: As it had no CLM software, it needed a solution that could support contract storage.
5. Scalability: Finally, it needed a tool it could grow with over time.
Cockroach evaluated six solutions before choosing Tonkean for its ability to fulfill these needs.
Tonkean has a formal partnership with Coupa, an S2P suite that Cockroach uses for P2P, supplier management and risk management (along with many other prominent enterprise systems). As it had already paid for this S2P tool and its compliance team was familiar with the UX, Cockroach wanted to ensure the intake and orchestration solution it chose would be able to sit fully on top of Coupa and had experience integrating with it. Tonkean fulfilled this need.
Prior to purchasing Tonkean, a PO’s lifecycle was very manual; it lived in emails, and employees often missed steps. Now, Tonkean manages PO lifecycles automatically. Any end user, regardless of department, can use the tool, as it has an incredibly simple and dynamic UI that meets users in the systems where they already work (for example, Coupa for procurement; Slack, Teams, or email for legal and other departments, etc.).
This has had beneficial downstream effects on stakeholder experience and, in turn, on the procurement team’s reputation internally. “Our relationship with the legal and compliance team has drastically improved,” said Kevin Stacy, Cockroach Lab’s Head of Procurement. “It’s now a trusted partnership. I think that’s been a huge benefit, and something I’m looking forward to is just allowing people to do what they’re hired to do, rather than having to focus on manual tasks.
One of the most concerning pain points for Cockroach prior to implementing Tonkean was how slowly POs would move through the procurement lifecycle. Delays often stemmed from sequential and manual processes. Cockroach noted that entire departments, such as compliance, were often missed until the end, halting the cycle completely. Now, Tonkean moves approval chains along automatically and supports parallel approvals. This means that finance, procurement and legal teams can all work on approving a request simultaneously, rather than having to wait for one department to finish before the next can proceed. Before Tonkean, Cockroach’s procurement operations were entirely manual.
Today, Cockroach has automated and orchestrated the entirety of its procurement intake process with Tonkean. Tonkean automates review cycles and approvals, including finance approvals, legal reviews, compliance reviews and procurement reviews. For example, employees now use Tonkean to request NDAs and automatically monitor invoices. The increase in efficiency extends beyond POs and general orchestration. Cockroach has also experienced an 83% reduction in ticket entry time. Prior to implementing Tonkean, the average ticket took 30 minutes to create. Now, the average ticket takes only 5 minutes on average due to Tonkean’s simplified requester experience and contextually-aware intake.
Because Cockroach is a midmarket software development company, it does not have a full contract management solution. It does not need one, but it does need help aggregating contracts that were previously stored across different Google Drive accounts. While Tonkean is not a full contract lifecycle management solution, its contract management capabilities can support growing mid-market companies. Tonkean supports automated renewals, contract storage and contract analytics.
Cockroach is growing rapidly and requires a tool that can grow with the company over time. While Tonkean has out-of-the-box workflows and support, it is also willing to customize as needed for Cockroach. Meanwhile, Tonkean’s no-code process editor empowers the Cockroach team to make adjustments on the fly as their operations evolve. Additionally, because of Tonkean’s formal partnership with Coupa, Cockroach is confident that Tonkean will stay on top of any integration changes.
Cockroach praises Tonkean’s knowledge of its own solution, responsiveness and ability to direct implementation-related questions to the proper resources. In general, Cockroach notes that successful software integrations include clearly defined roles for both the vendor and the customer in order to establish a balance between structure and customization. Its implementation of Tonkean took about two to three months.
Overall, Cockroach is pleased with Tonkean and notes positive feedback from both the C-suite and infrequent/non-power users. In the intake and orchestration market at large, ease of use and configurability are major factors for end-user adoption, and the adoption from non-power users has contributed greatly to the segment’s popularity. Tonkean is no exception, as described by Cockroach.
Since onboarding Cockroach, Tonkean has built upon its solution with enhanced AI functionalities—such as agents and agentic orchestration—as well as proactive data insights and deeper supplier-side capabilities.
Want to learn more about what Tonkean process and agentic orchestration can do for your procurement team? Get in touch.
