Oro Labs Inc., a startup working to ease the work of enterprise procurement teams, today announced that it has secured $25 million in early-stage funding.

Norwest Venture Partners and B Capital jointly led the Series A funding round. XYZ Venture Capital, Array Ventures and a number of other investors participated as well.

Procuring products and services from suppliers can be a complicated task in a large company. When purchasing a cloud application, for example, procurement teams must ensure that the application meets cybersecurity requirements, negotiate a favorable price and secure a service-level agreement. A service-level agreement is a contract that provides guarantees against application downtime. 

Other types of procurement initiatives, such as industrial equipment purchases, can likewise involve a large number of steps. In the healthcare sector and other regulated industries, important purchases are often also subject to industry-specific rules.

San Francisco-based Oro has developed a cloud platform designed to help enterprises carry out purchases in a more streamlined manner. According to the startup, its platform makes it possible to create a workflow that describes the various steps involved in a purchase. Employees can then review the workflow to understand what steps need to be carried out as part of a procurement initiative, as well as in what order.

Using the platform, a company could create one workflow for purchasing industrial equipment and another for buying software. Each workflow created in the platform can include a different set of steps. A built-in project tracking dashboard enables business users to check what step needs to be performed next, as well as the timeframe in which a given purchase is expected to be completed.

Oro’s platform also provides other tools to ease the procurement process. As part of its platform, the startup offers a tool that companies can use to store supplier data such as purchase records. The tool includes a search bar that makes it possible to query the data with natural language commands. A procurement team tasked with purchasing a certain type of manufacturing equipment, for example, could use the search bar to find suppliers quickly that are capable of making the required equipment.

The company also offers an extensive set of analytics features. Executives can use the startup’s platform to track how much is spent on specific types of products, such as marketing software, as well as break down spending by department. Oro provides pre-packaged analytics dashboards that can be used without extensive manual configuration.

The platform reduces the amount of manual work involved in procurement initiatives, according to Oro. As a result, companies can more quickly secure products from suppliers. It also makes it easier to ensure that procurement initiatives are carried out in accordance with a company’s cybersecurity requirements and other internal rules.

Complex corporate purchases often involve a large number of manual steps, which creates a risk of human error. Oro’s platform provides a monitoring dashboard that can be used to ensure every step of a procurement initiative is carried out in accordance with company requirements. 

“Oro enables business users to work rapidly with their vendors and suppliers, while following the compliance and smart workflows set out by procurement and legal teams,” said XYZ Venture Capital founder and Managing Partner Ross Fubini. “The team understands deeply the pain points for both of these stakeholders and where legacy solutions fall short.”

Oro will use the funding to hire more employees. The new hires will help accelerate the development and market adoption of the startup’s cloud platform. According to Oro, its platform is already used by multiple midmarket and enterprise customers. 

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