AKIRA Leverages AI to Reduce Purchasing Costs by $10K and Reclaim 160+ Hours Monthly on AP
How AKIRA eliminated tedious expense management workflows and increased procurement and accounts payable efficiency with Order.co.
AKIRA at a Glance
hours/month saved on accounting
saved with AI sourcing in 6 mos
increase in ordering efficiency
The Challenge
Placing orders from different vendor websites created visibility gaps
Manual sourcing took days to find the best prices
Without centralized reporting, reconciling expenses was time-consuming
Kim Arellano joined AKIRA in November 2023 as Senior Distribution Manager to manage the efficient movement of merchandise across retail stores and the ecommerce website, while also overseeing employees’ purchasing activities.
When it came to ordering supplies, “Everyone had different needs, and were all purchasing in different ways,” Kim described. Cleaning supplies came from one vendor, office supplies from another, and clothing hangers from a third. While this system worked when AKIRA had fewer stores, understanding purchasing needs became more challenging as the business scaled.
A lack of visibility into ordering made it difficult to effectively manage inventory. For example, managers would add their branded shopping bag orders to a shared Google Doc and some stores would overorder, leading to supply shortages at other locations. As Kim described, this required “a lot of manual sifting through data” to resolve. Kim also found herself spending a significant amount of time researching cost-saving opportunities for frequently purchased products. “I'm going down this rabbit hole of pricing per item,” Kim explained. “It would take days upon days.”
Since teams didn’t have access to real-time spending information, they couldn’t tell whether they had reached budget thresholds or needed to adjust their purchasing habits. “Everyone just ordered what they wanted," Kim described. Decentralized purchasing data also made understanding how much each store was spending – and on what products – no easy task. The accounting department manually entered and itemized orders based on reports from individual team members, resulting in time-consuming month-end reconciliation processes.
5 Proven Strategies to Streamline Retail Operations and Create Memorable In-Store Experiences
The Solution
Kim and AKIRA’s leadership team evaluated several procurement platforms, looking for a tool that could grow with them. Kim highlighted, “Order.co stood out. Its simplicity made [the team] go with it." A straightforward user interface would mean that employees could get up and running on the platform as soon as possible without extensive training.
In February 2025, AKIRA partnered with Order.co. Kim led the implementation, consolidating all vendors into the system. The onboarding process only reinforced their decision to leverage the platform, as Kim recalled, ”I remember my boss specifically saying that [Order.co] looks so easy,” Kim remarked. “It seems too good to be true.”
With purchases, approvals, and budgets flowing through Order.co, AKIRA's expense management software, Navan, was no longer the preferred system for ordering supplies. Previously, every credit card purchase triggered an email requiring employees to upload receipts and manually categorize expenses for accounting. Order.co bypassed this process, earning immediate buy-in from the team.
The Outcome
Streamlined spend management with AI approvals
Kim leverages Order.co's AI insights for approvals to rapidly spot duplicate orders and potential budget overruns. The feature surfaces purchases that deviate from previous spending patterns and emails relevant approvers for additional review, helping Kim avoid potential non-compliant purchases. “The AI approvals are wonderful,” Kim expressed. “It's been able to help me quickly assess the situation."
In one instance, a store requested an order of several rolls of tape. The AI notified Kim that the same store had received 30 rolls of tape only two weeks prior. With this context, Kim rejected the purchase, keeping the store on budget. Kim explained, "Usually, one person ordered [an item], but someone else didn't know and ordered it as well. It has saved me a ton of time being able to see that."
Time and cost savings through AI-driven sourcing
Kim leverages Order.co’s AI Command Center – a chat-based interface where users deploy specialized AI agents – to handle the price comparison process that used to take days. “I’m using the AI to be like, is there something cheaper? Is there something comparable?” Kim shared. “Huge time saver for us.”
The AI Command Center leverages AKIRA’s specific purchasing history and business context to deliver recommendations tailored to their unique needs. Its intelligent sourcing typically saves businesses 5-10% on products, which has delivered over $10,000 in cash back savings in just six months. Aside from reducing costs, Kim reported that automated sourcing has saved her and her team “countless hours,” which she can now use to focus on her core distribution responsibilities.
Standardized purchasing across physical stores
Unifying purchasing into a single platform created immediate efficiency gains for AKIRA’s 80+ employees. Kim noted, “All their orders are in one place.” Finding order status information is now easier than ever with Order.co’s AI tracking, which consolidates all order statuses and shipment updates. As a result, Kim and her team no longer have to sift through emails to understand whether items have been delivered, delayed, or processed.
Centralized purchasing data also means that Kim can quickly identify ordering patterns and accurately assess supply needs. “Through Order.co, there's a history that we can look at to see that [a store] just ordered [a product] not too long ago,” Kim shared. “It's taken that manual process out.”
Automated, touchless accounting processes
AKIRA’s accounting team leveraged Order.co's NetSuite integration to follow their chart of accounts, which has been “a game-changer,” Kim expressed. “Everything's already itemized. It links straight to NetSuite for our accounting." As a result, the accounting team gained the visibility they needed to identify spending patterns, build accurate budgets, and forecast cash flow requirements for future growth.
Automated GL coding embedded at the point of purchase also ensures that the finance team has visibility over which specific items were purchased from which store and department, and intelligent line-level reconciliation simplifies month-end close workflows. “Order.co has streamlined a ton of what we've done by taking out all those manual processes,” Kim said.
Finding the right procurement platform meant both solving today’s challenges and building an infrastructure to support AKIRA’s long-term growth. Kim and her team have found a partner that’s invested in their success, with Order.co actively incorporating their feedback into product development. “Every suggestion I've had has been met with an eagerness to offer that feature,” Kim shared. “As Order.co grows and develops, so do we. I'm excited to see what the future holds.”