How money moves through a company says everything about how that company operates. Corporate spending isn’t just about budgets and approvals anymore. It’s a living system of decisions, data, and collaboration. Today’s finance leaders are orchestrating spend, connecting every payment and purchase to the work that drives growth.

Zip’s 2025 State of Spend, based on insights from over 1,000 global leaders, reveals how companies are transforming spend into a strategic, connected process that demands agility and alignment across teams. Finance, procurement, and operations are moving beyond rigid systems and endless approvals toward workflows that are intuitive, automated, and designed for the people doing the work.

AI is certainly accelerating that transformation. Nearly 70% of leaders say it will reshape procurement within two years, removing friction and helping teams work more strategically.

To get there, organizations are rethinking their architecture, favoring flexible, best-of-breed platforms that simplify the full spend lifecycle. Many are already building what Zip calls the “dream stack”: an orchestrated ecosystem of specialized tools that connect finance and procurement workflows from intake to payment. Together, they’re making every workflow smarter, faster, and connected.

The spend challenge: Complexity is outpacing control

Growth multiplies everything: more vendors, more requests, more systems, more risk. What once fit neatly into spreadsheets and email threads now stretches across continents and platforms. Approvals take longer, visibility fades, and accountability starts to slip through the cracks.

Zip’s data shows that as companies scale, their existing finance and procurement workflows simply can’t keep up. The spend categories creating the most pressure today aren’t just indirect procurement costs like software or marketing. They’re ones that depend heavily on human coordination, and business leaders are taking note:

• 40% are re-evaluating investment in professional services
• 38% are seeking more ROI from travel and events
• 33% are focusing on contingent labor and staffing

Nick Heinzmann, Zip’s Head of Research, put it best: “Spend control is shifting from stuff to people.”

​​That shift is exactly what’s challenging finance and procurement teams today. Managing spend requires collaboration, context, and connected workflows, things legacy systems were never built for.

Leaders crave orchestration over consolidation

So what do procurement leaders need to close the gap? They want tools that finally work together. Tools that talk to each other, share data seamlessly, and give everyone, from budget owners to CFOs, a clear picture of what’s happening.

According to Zip’s research, more than 70% of businesses already use multiple tools to manage spend and supplier processes. Nearly half (45%) piece together workflows from existing suites, ERP modules, and point solutions. Only 26% take a best-of-breed approach — choosing the best tool for each job — even though 74% say it’s the model they’d prefer over hybrid or all-in-one approaches.

It’s a major philosophical shift. Finance and procurement leaders don't want to settle for rigid all-in-one or piecemeal systems. They want the freedom to choose the best tool for each job and the AI-powered intelligence to make them work together.

That’s where Brex and Zip come in.

Brex for Zip: Orchestration designed for humans

Knowing that business leaders need time to make this shift a reality, the State of Spend report predicts that 2025 and 2026 will be “bridge years.” Organizations aren’t fully AI-enabled yet, but they’re building the foundation now by investing in tools that prioritize integration, intelligence, and user experience.

However, that bridge isn’t just technological. It’s also human. It’s about building systems that work for people. Tools that reduce friction instead of adding it, and workflows that make collaboration less exhausting.

Brex for Zip gives teams a complete, modern workflow from intake to payment that’s designed to simplify and accelerate key processes. An owner approves budget requests in Slack, an intake auto-routes in Zip, and the card issues instantly in Brex — no more chasing approvals across emails, spreadsheets, and disconnected systems.

Manual oversight is replaced with automation that feels invisible, freeing people to focus on higher-value work, not administrative busywork. The result is efficiency, of course, but also a more human experience that scales with the business, not against it. Because when spend works like people do, businesses move faster

The next era of spend is integrated, intelligent, and best-of-breed

The message from Zip’s State of Spend report is clear: companies are rethinking procurement process flows around people and designing simple, intuitive, and automated workflows.

Legacy all-in-one platforms promised simplicity but delivered rigidity. The future belongs to solutions that are specialized yet seamlessly connected, making work faster and more enjoyable.

Brex for Zip brings that vision to life. It finally syncs procurement and payments in one flow, replacing slow, siloed processes with connected, AI-powered experiences that teams enjoy using.

For more insights on the State of Spend, download Zip’s 2025 report. For information on combining Brex’s global cards with Zip’s AI-powered procurement, contact Brex to see a demo.