Senior Product Manager, platform and integrations, Bizongo, 2023 to 2024

A procurement platform for SMEs

Buyers and suppliers ran purchase orders and invoices from their own systems.

The problem

About 35% of scoped platform transactions were handled by Bizongo staff relaying purchase orders, invoices and proof of delivery between companies.

A commerce and financing network cannot scale if people carry its documents by hand.

What the evidence said

Prospects already had Tally, SAP or another ERP. They feared double entry, worried about sharing data and could not see the return.

SAP integrations took six to eight weeks each.

What I decided

I rejected asking companies to abandon their tools. Integration came first: POs, catalogue and prices, invoices, GRN and proof of delivery, through standard templates per ERP.

I evaluated 26 integration vendors and standardised the APIs. And I only prioritised integrations where Sales could show a margin gain, because each one carried real cost.

The result

114 companies transacting and ₹173 Cr in purchase orders by Q2 FY24, with more than 3,000 invoices worth about ₹78 Cr.

Partner onboarding fell from 10 hours to 1.

Every dot is one company transacting on the platform
  • 114 companies by Q2 FY24
  • 54 were already on it in Q1
Companies on the platform
Purchase-order value, ₹ Cr

What I took from it

Platform adoption failures leave no incident ticket. I had to go and find them in customer conversations.

Figures are from Bizongo appraisals, product records and my resume, for the period shown.