From Silos to Synergy: How Tropic’s API Automates & Connects Your Spend Ecosystem
In today’s fast-paced business environment, disconnected procurement processes can lead to inefficiencies, wasted time, and compliance risks.
Join us to learn how Tropic’s API enables you to create a truly connected spend and procurement ecosystem.
Awesome. So we're going to get started.
We have a lot to cover today in our thirty minutes, so we'll jump right in. Excited to share more about the Tropic API. Thanks for everyone for coming today.
We're excited to talk about the benefits of integrating your SPEN systems with Tropic. I am Heather Quitos. I am part of the marketing team here, and I will go over a couple of housekeeping details before we get into the webinar with our esteemed speakers. So first, the session is being recorded. So everyone will receive a link to the recording later this week. If you do have any questions, please use the use the q and a box at the or q and a button at the bottom of your screen or on your Zoom panel, and we'll address them at the end of this presentation.
Our speakers today are leaders of the Tropic Product Organization. We're joined today by Srinivas, who is our chief product officer, and Erica, who is our director of product. So excited to jump in with all things API today. Srinivas, I'll let you take it away.
Thank you so much, Heather. Thank you everybody for taking the time to join us. I'm really excited to partnering with, Erica here to talk about how we're going from silos to synergies.
I'm just gonna take the opportunity very briefly to sort of set the table for you all.
Why are we focused on this topic, and and just get into a little bit of of the data that's supporting the need for, better better integration across all your systems and processes and the data.
Spend management, a lot of growth happening in this space. Lots of market dynamics that are really driving a lot of new problems in this area. Looking at a lot of outside research and our own personal research and surveying we've done with customers and prospects, proliferation of data, over fifty percent year over year growth in the volume of data that's available and accessible to you is is great, but it's also hard to make sense in heads and tails of all that data that's flying at you. Seventy percent of leaders are reporting that they're seeing a lot more increases in spend related risks. Orchestration solutions like Tropic can help mitigate these risks by providing end to end visibility and more cohesive management of all these complex procurement ecosystems.
And last but not least, but seventy percent of leaders are seeing automation as an imperative. It's essential, but it's really hard to get right today. Self-service and automation are becoming critical for making sure we handle all the increasing complexities for you all.
And given that resource constraints are a reality in this day and age, it's important that procurement teams, office of the CFOs, really increasing adoption of automation and tools. These are the sorts of things that we anchor to and make sure we're focused on to deliver valuable solutions to you all.
But software alone can't solve all of these problems. So when we look at the market dynamics here and and the the data that you just saw, you know, data challenges, the overwhelming nature of data is something we need to get right. You're working with limited resources. There's process challenges and orchestration challenges internally, and making sure that we're relying on bringing all of that information together is a complex task. And trying to solve all this with just point solutions is just creating more clutter than it is driving clarity. Right? We also know that spend management can exclusively be solved with software because we can never replace that human judgment and decision making that's so critical to making sure we're managing our company spend effectively and efficiently.
So we're here to solve all these problems, and the way we tackle it is in the form of our intelligent spend management solution.
So what does that really mean? If we were to break apart the way we approach intelligent spend management, our focus is really to make sure we're unifying your spend data and your processes to help you drive better action and decisive action. So where does that start? We believe in a strong foundation of data unification. What does that really mean? We wanna give you the best visibility into all of your supplier and spend relationships.
So making sure you have all your contracts in one place, making sure we can get visibility into your spend that's coming through your ERP systems and your accounting systems, making sure we can see what are all the tools and software and and providers that your your employees are logging into through usage integrations, and then making sure we're providing the API and webhooks necessary to plug into your other source systems to be able to bring all that together.
Having all that in one place is great, but having all that at your fingertips automated through you know, and automating all your processes and processes and approvals is all even better. So focusing on all the way from your intakes and your request to facilitating the full workflow and approval, making sure you're staying on top of your renewals when that calendar time comes in, making sure your POs are being, created and managed as part of your overall ecosystem, and then you're able to effectively pay for what you actually purchased and ensuring you're getting the full value.
If we go further in the way we solve intelligence spend management is adding more intelligence to that. Sorry, Heather. If you go back to the previous slide.
And we have used our expertise and experience of managing eleven billion dollars of spend under management to bring you insights and data at your fingertips. So being able to provide you with price benchmarks of over two hundred suppliers and being able to submit the request and be confident in the proposal that you receive based on the pricing intelligence.
Plugging into all of your different source systems to identify shadow suppliers or shadow spend that you aren't aware of to better manage your financial risk, making sure your, FP and A teams have the best visibility for planning and budgeting by looking at what were you spending before, what was contractually spend, and what is the actual spend, and making sure things are in control for budgeting processes, and so on and so forth to help you get the best intelligence around all the suppliers that you're working with.
I'm really excited to double click into this this webinar with Erica here to talk about how we are enabling you all to bring all that data together and orchestrating and using that data to facilitate their the the intakes, the approvals, and the overall, process that's within Tropic, but also outside of Tropic and be able to orchestrate all of those, procurement life cycle and purchasing life cycle. So with that, I will turn it over to Erica.
Awesome. Thanks, Shree.
K. Now that we've established why data unification is so critical for effective span management, let's explore how our API makes this possible. Tropics API is the connective tissue, that brings your procurement ecosystem together.
At its core, our API is designed to eliminate silos that traditionally plagued procurement processes. It allows data to flow seamlessly between Tropic and your existing business systems, whether that be your ERP, financial platforms, ticketing systems, or contract management solutions. What makes our approach different is that we've built our API with both technical teams and business users in mind. While the technical foundation is robust and flexible, the real power comes from how it enables the business outcomes, having faster procurement cycles, automated workflows, and real time visibility across your entire spend ecosystem.
So let's dive into how we came up with these specific use cases, and then I'll be going over the specific use cases with you.
So when we designed our API, we worked closely with customers to identify the most impact impactful use cases that would deliver immediate value. These are areas where integrations between systems create the most significant efficiency gains and visibility improvements.
So the use cases that we'll cover today represent about eighty five percent of the integration request use cases we've received from our customers, which means there's a high likelihood that your specific needs and probably why you even joined today's webinar will align with the capabilities that we already support. What's important to understand is that these aren't just technical integrations. They're business process transformations that eliminate the manual work, reduce errors, and create a truly connected procurement ecosystem.
So let's look at some specific examples on how this works.
One of the most powerful use cases for our API is the ability to orchestrate purchases across your entire business ecosystem.
This solves a common challenge where we hear from procurement teams, the need to coordinate purchasing activities across multiple systems and how painful that is. With Tropic's API, you can create a unified procurement workflow where requests are initiated in one system, Tropic, automatically flow where approvals and negotiations happen and then continue their journey down to downstream systems like your ERP or financial platform or TPRM, etcetera. This eliminates the all too common scenario where purchasing information gets trapped in silos leading to duplicate data entry, reconciliation headaches, and lack of spend visibility.
Instead, you create a single coordinated process that maintains data integrity across your entire ecosystem.
Let's look at, a specific example of how this works with purchase orders in the same way.
So purchase order creation is a perfect example of how our API eliminates friction in the procurement process.
We do have integrations with NetSuite and Coupa if you use those.
But traditionally creating and tracking PO across systems involves multiple handoffs, manual data entry, and constant status tracking. So with our API, you can now trigger PO creation in your financial system directly from approved requests in Tropic.
So that would include essential information like your supplier details and approval documentation and request information, flow seamlessly between systems, reducing manual entry and potential errors. Even better as the PO moves through its life cycle in that other system, you can have status updates be posted directly to that request activity feed in Tropic, providing that consistent record of progress and change. This creates that comprehensive visibility without requiring users who really, really hate logging into multiple systems, having to do so or sending emails to ask and bother you about updates.
This integration ensures everyone has access to the same information and creating that centralized record.
If we go to the next use case use case that we have, it's contract management.
And this sounds simple in title, but it is very, very, very powerful for your organization.
So we know that the API delivers tremendous value, here, and we frequently hear from customers that their contract data lives in multiple places. That could be your CLM, other shared drives, email attachments, or even vendor portals. And our API allows you to establish a single source of truth for all of your contracts while still leveraging specialized systems for specific functions. You can create contracts in Tropic and automatically sync them to your document management system or vice versa.
When contracts are updated, whether that's a renewal or an amendment or a cancellation, the changes can flow bidirectionally to ensure all systems have the current information.
This is particularly valuable for procurement and finance teams that need accurate contract data for budgeting compliance renewal planning. So the end result that you maintain the specialized functionality of your contract management tools while eliminating the data silos that typically cause visibility problems and renewal surprises or even the need to have a bunch of people have licenses for that other system.
So the next use case that we have is, creating and managing your supplier. So as you know, supplier information is super critical to have that dataset, and it often becomes fragmented across all the systems. Your finance platform may have vendor payment details, your security team tracks risk assessments, and procurement maintains relationship and performance data. With Tropic's API, you can create and maintain a unified supplier profile that will synchronize across all of the relevant systems. So when you add a new supplier in Tropic, their information can be automatically propagated to your ERP, payment systems, and security platforms. Similarly, when supplier details are updated in any system, like a change in payment terms or contact information, those updates can flow back to Tropic and any other connected systems. This approach ensures everyone in your organization is working with accurate and update information.
And then our final use case addresses a fundamental but often overlooked aspect of procurement automation, user management. As your organization changes, people change, people join, they change roles, they leave. Keeping user access properly aligned across the system is crucial for both efficiency and security. So our API actually allows you to automate user provisioning and deprovisioning, ensuring the right people have access to the right information at the right time. And when a new team member joins your procurement function, their user account cannot be, can now be automatically created in Tropic based on their identity in your directory service. And then similarly, when someone changes roles or leaves the organization, their access can be automatically adjusted or removed, and you can delegate to another user via the API all of their open tasks, etcetera, to main maintain proper, segregation of duties and security controls.
So this integration reduces administrative overhead, ensures consistent application of access policies, eliminates security risks that come from outdated user accounts, and is a perfect example of how seemingly simple integrations can deliver significant value.
I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about customer impact that we've already had considering that we've just released it. The level of interest and adoption we're seeing speaks to the real business need with this capability.
One of our first API users, a technical lead at a growing ecommerce company, shared that integrating with Tropics API was an overall positive experience, appreciated our docs on the rest rest API, and the webhooks were easy to use. And, he appreciated retrying requests for errors on our side.
We already have several organizations implementing the API at various stages. Some have completed their integrations and are seeing efficiency gains, while others are actively building connections to their existing systems. We're also engaged in strategic design partnerships to explore innovative use cases beyond the ones I cover today, which helps us identify solutions that can benefit our entire customer base. What we're consistently seeing is that the API acts as a multiplier for Tropics value, transforming it from a standalone platform into a central hub that orchestrates your entire procurement system, eliminating those silos and creating seamless workflows. We didn't just create an API to check off the box for what customers were saying they needed. We listened. We took action to deliver true business value.
Thank you, Erica.
Really excited about all the the capabilities that have been written up with our APIs and webhooks.
In terms of next steps, would love to have you all explore our API documentation if you wanna go to the next slide, Heather.
The link was shared with you, by Caitlin from our team in the chat. Definitely take a look. If you're interested in learning more about any specific use cases or, wanna pressure test any, any of those use cases and how we can light that up with our API and webhooks, definitely reach out to your account manager to get started. And for our our prospect friends on the call, if you are interested in a a traffic demo, please go ahead and click the link and, let us know in the post webinar survey as well.
And last but not least, as we always do in our product road map, or product webinars, I wanna leave you all with, what's coming next and look ahead a little bit. So a few things I'm excited about, that are coming around the corner. Number one, we wanna continue giving you confidence in paying for the suppliers that you're contracting with, and it's really excited about, this two way match capability that's gonna be powered and enabled by AI. So you can bring your AP automation tool, whichever one that you're using, and we'll facilitate the two way match through, some AI capabilities there.
Erica is actually working on triggering and initiating workflows based on dates and other conditions. Today, we trigger a lot of workflows from, forms, but we're gonna be able to support our friends in in security to be able to trigger the next security assessment for a tier one type, vendor, based off of those dates and other conditions that we're gonna be lighting up as part of the the workflow's capability.
Also really excited about number three here, our policy agent. We've got version one of our policy agent live for you all to use. We're really excited about enhancing our procurement policies and preferences capability where you can come and actually store a lot more operational policies and preferences that our our AI driven policy agent is gonna continue to use and really excited about all the enhancements that are coming there. And then last but not least, we have version one of our Ironclad, CLM integration.
I'm really excited about our version two because it's, I guarantee, gonna be the most user friendly Ironclad integration in the category. We're, putting a lot of bells and whistles, relative to other players within the category to help you orchestrate and bring, in ironclad into the life cycle of the, workflows and approvals.
So stay tuned for more.
But with that, I'll turn it back to you, Heather.
Thanks, Sri and Erica, for running through all of the great things that are coming, on deck and a little look into the API. We covered a lot of use cases.
So if you have additional questions on what you just saw, throw it into the q and a, and we'll we'll open it up for a couple minutes of q and a here. So one question that came in, from Dragon. I hope I'm saying your name correctly. But, I think, Erica, this might be for you. Any way to use, the API to pull actual spend data from from an ERP or reporting systems, that currently don't integrate with Tropic into Tropic?
Yeah. So we've gotten this question a couple times, and it's definitely a use case in which we would love to have a conversation. Because when you say that question, there's a lot of different things that that could mean to you and what's important to you to be brought over. So that's one of those, let's have a conversation. Let's talk about it. Let's see what we can make happen.
Amazing. Another question that we came that came in, that is common is, do you have a list of all of the systems that the API has already connected to, or, you've seen, with our current customers?
Yeah. I could definitely get that list. It's changing every day, but we do have a way to track that. So that is something we could totally get.
Awesome.
We'll leave it open for couple more questions. If anybody has anything else, this is your time to hear directly from our product team. And as mentioned before, if you are interested, you're not a Tropic user, and you want to, learn more about this API and the rest of our intelligent spend management platform, please go to tropicapp.io/demo. We'll put the link up here.
You can definitely go, send a send a request, and we'll our team will get back to you. And if you are a Tropic customer first, thank you so much for joining our webinar today. Please get in touch with your account manager as well. They're happy to, put you in the right direction with getting started with the API.
Alright. Looks like we have a quiet audience today, which is totally fine if you do have any specific questions on how you can use the API to connect your spend systems. Again, prospects, new customers, potential customers, please go to tropicapp.io/demo, and we're happy to chat with you. If you're an existing customer, definitely reach out to your account manager, and we're happy to take another call and dive in further.
Other than that, Srinivas and Erica, thank you so much for sharing all of the product knowledge today. We hope to see all of you on our next webinar. Again, you'll get a link to the recording tomorrow. And if you have any other questions, we're just a message or an email away.
Thank you both. Thanks, everyone.
Thanks, everyone.

Our Speakers

Srinivas Somayajula


