‘Orchestration’ was the theme of the day at ORO Imagine, an official side event to DPW Amsterdam 2024. Procurement professionals came from far and wide to discuss success stories and the future of the industry. During the buzzing event, we sat down with Sebastian Ebers, Procurement Digital Enablement Lead, and Martin Ward, Senior Digital Procurement Manager, from Roche to dive into their company’s experiences with orchestration.
Ebers heads up the digital procurement team and has been with Roche for 10 years across many roles in procurement, category management, sourcing, and beyond. Ward is a Senior Manager within this team and has spent four years at Roche, with a rich background in procurement.
As is the case for many businesses, the drive to adopt orchestration came about because end users demanded it. Through UserExperience (UX) Labs, Roche sought feedback and discovered that customers wanted – and deserved – more than what was available to them. “There were disjointed UIs, overwhelming user interfaces, and insufficient flexibility leading to dead ends in the journey and limited adoption of our strategies and content,” explains Ebers. “Discovering that eventually led us to think about orchestration. We needed something to put on top of our solutions to radically simplify the user journey while improving automation and lead times – something going beyond guided buying, but considering the entire ecosystem and leveraging the latest GenAI capabilities.”
Simplifying the landscape
As a result, Roche is working tirelessly to deploy its ‘Navigator’ in April this year. From Roche’s perspective, its existing technology prior to orchestration was simply too complicated for the casual user. A change was needed. “I mapped out all the different technologies we had in procurement at Roche,” says Ward. “I looked at it and I remember thinking, ‘this is a complex world to navigate’. It was very difficult to understand where to start and where to finish. And if I would struggle, you can bet an end user would. It needed to come together functionally, whilst also making sense to the business users we serve. That, for me, is the purpose and intent of orchestration in procurement.”
There are multiple domains where orchestration will make a difference within Roche. The landing page, which is the literal front door that detects your intent and guides your procurement journey, is one of them. “Additionally, knowledge management is an area where we’re imparting information, sourcing policies, how-to’s, and instructions – that’s another domain,” says Ward.
“There’s also all upstream activities, which are really crucial in terms of understanding whether or not the end users should interact with a specific team. And there’s also downstream – going straight to the point of purchase, because there’s no need to slow down an end user if we already have the contracts for them to just add to their baskets and check out.”
The best of both worlds
Roche’s strategy with orchestration is a ‘best of both’ approach. It maintains the underlying core procurement suite, while complementing it with different solutions to introduce additional capabilities, bring more efficiencies and/or create a better user experience. “Orchestration circles our entire digital landscape,” says Ebers. “My advice to anyone looking to implement orchestration is to start small, but go fast and add more use cases over time.”
The temptation is to get excited and implement too much at once, but staying true to your actual current pain points is more important. “Having a main purpose and listing out all the different areas orchestration is going to help with, that’s key,” adds Ward. “It’s important to do your due diligence as this is a fast moving market with differentiated vendors and be sure you’re partnering with the right organisation, but at some point you have to make a decision, understand the risks, note them down, and then move forward.”
Choosing ORO
For Roche, this was ORO Labs. The reason Roche chose ORO is that ORO didn’t need to be educated on the problems that it needed to solve, because it has already been in that space for a long time. “They know what to tackle and how to tackle it,” says Ebers. Ward adds: “They’re also a great team, which makes the process more enjoyable. We’re also in an area where we’re breaking ground; we’re bringing together complex problems and solving them with new technology. Tackling that with an organisation that’s a bad match would make it even more difficult. With ORO, it’s the opposite; they make everything easier.”
It’s still early days for orchestration, but at ORO Imagine, we heard multiple success stories that point to its widespread adoption. It’s set to further involve AI as that develops too, and streamline procurement in a way that’s never been seen before. “We’re just at the start of this,” says Ward. “We’re collectively embarking on a journey where we will find more and more use cases that will vary by organisation. Not all AI is equal, so we have to rightsize the type of AI to each use case, but it will give the impression to the end user that what they need is delivered in a seamless way, through one layer – the orchestration layer.”
