BrightFarms Transforms Indoor Farming Operations with the Right-Sized Procure-to-Pay Solution

The opportunity

Tomer Attar joined BrightFarms in 2022 as Director of Procurement to source and pay for packaging, raw materials, consumables, and services across the company’s five farms. Without a purchasing platform, his team had “no set processes and procedures” for ordering products. Tomer shared, “Consumables were purchased in all ways and forms, which led to inconsistencies and uniformity issues."

Without a product cataloging system, whenever Amazon didn’t have items that teams needed, employees sourced replacements from alternative vendors to keep operations running. This highlighted an opportunity to create more structured procurement processes that could proactively avoid supply chain disruptions while ensuring vendor compliance and price consistency. For the AP team, manually sorting through invoices to validate each transaction was time-consuming and subject to error, which could lead to delays in supplier payment and discrepancies during month-end book close tasks.

While Tomer recognized that his team “needed a better way of purchasing with increased controls on items, vendors, and invoice processing” as the business expanded, he recognized that the legacy tools he’d leveraged in previous roles wouldn’t be the right fit for BrightFarms. Those solutions often bundle extensive functionalities made for large enterprises. For BrightFarms, paying for features they wouldn’t utilize simply wasn’t an option.

The solution

BrightFarms sought a procurement platform that could deliver comprehensive procure-to-pay tools without enterprise-level complexity or cost. According to Tomer, "Order.co filled that gap.”

Standardized procurement and vendor management

Tomer highlighted that Order.co’s seamless integration with their Staples Advantage account was a “super success story.” All he had to do was log into his account through the platform, and the products he and his team had previously ordered were “all in there. It was perfect,” he shared. Tomer then created custom product catalogs loaded with pre-approved products in categories like fertilizer, food safety items, and janitorial supplies, making it easy for teams to order essentials without the risk of purchasing from unfamiliar vendors.

The complexities of overseeing procurement across multiple farms were replaced with widespread organization and standardization. “With Order.co, we managed to centralize purchasing, which led to developing vendor relationships, price management, reporting, as well as better integration with our ERP system,” Tomer highlighted.

Invoice control and financial integration

With high volumes of monthly spend now flowing through one platform, BrightFarms’ AP team can be confident that every invoice reflects accurate pricing from approved vendors. The AP team can ensure consistent pricing across purchase orders and invoices through the platform’s automated 3-way matching capabilities, and automatic GL coding drives organized spend data. As a result, BrightFarms eliminates countless hours of tedious manual reconciliation.

The platform also helps BrightFarms maintain consistent cash flow through consolidated invoicing and Net 30 terms across all vendors. Order.co pays suppliers immediately in their preferred payment method on BrightFarms’ behalf and sends a consolidated invoice covering all purchases made over the previous month. These invoices automatically post to BrightFarms’ accounting platform, NetSuite, to keep their books updated without extra effort.

Data-driven growth capabilities

With comprehensive reporting capabilities, Tomer and his team now have better access to spending trends across locations.

As BrightFarms continues to scale, real-time spend insights will be increasingly valuable for efficient growth. “Order.co’s reporting features allow us to make better decisions, as we understand our purchases better.” Tomer shared. “Our increasing utilization of the platform leads to better item and vendor assessment, and leads to new opportunities for value creation.”