"Omnea has completely transformed the procurement experience for our employees, approvers, and procurement team. By systemising human controls, requesters have a seamless experience, approvers get complete context, and my team no longer spends time manually gathering supplier information, chasing approvals, or telling stakeholders what is or isn't acceptable."
Phil Thomas joined Hargreaves Lansdown as Group Head of Procurement in December 2022 with a mandate to diagnose the challenges and lead the digital transformation of the function. He quickly identified three core problems.
Using offline forms and email for intake and approvals was unintuitive and required significant training. Requesters grappled with complex processes — new spend requests often arrived late, incomplete, or outside the system entirely. Approvers struggled to find the context needed to make quick, informed decisions, leading to slow cycle times and frustration on all sides.
Shortfalls in intake meant the procurement team had to manually input requests and supplier information across Coupa, spreadsheets, and Workday. Workflows lacked automation, requiring constant human intervention to progress — making it difficult to know where requests were, what next steps were needed, and slowing down contract governance.
As a regulated financial services business, ensuring compliance and mitigating risk was critical. But approvals were fragmented across multiple systems, making it laborious to track who had approved what and why. Renewals relied on manual tracking, creating space for unnecessary or unnegotiated spend to fall through the cracks.
"Instead of focusing on strategic initiatives and driving value, my team was stuck wrestling with an inefficient patchwork of systems, offline forms and email. It was a frustrating experience — not just for us, but for every requester and approver across the business."
— Phil Thomas, Group Head of Procurement
After a thorough evaluation of the market and their existing tech stack — including considering additional investment in Workday or Salesforce — Hargreaves Lansdown chose Omnea as a modern, purpose-built intake and orchestration platform.
Requesters are guided through a conditional intake that only asks for necessary information, with the right approvers automatically involved and notified. Approvers get full visibility of pending reviews with a tailored summary to make fast, informed decisions. Workflows are built and optimised in Omnea's no-code builder — no specialist consultants or developers required.
Omnea creates a single source of truth for supplier information, contracts, and renewals. Suppliers onboard directly via the Supplier Portal. Renewals are managed through an intuitive calendar that surfaces what action is needed and when — removing the risk of missed renewals and unnegotiated spend.
The full context of every relationship is recorded in one system, facilitating "Deal Panel" review meetings for high-value and complex requests. Once all approvals are complete, an Omnea workflow block issues a "Certificate to Sign" — removing ambiguity around when a deal is fully reviewed and who the correct signatory is. A complete, accessible audit trail is available for all approvals in one platform.
Hargreaves Lansdown replaced a patchwork of systems, forms, and email with a single, centralised platform. Procurement is now tracked in one place, delivering clear governance, transparency, and efficiency across the business.
By prioritising user experience, Hargreaves Lansdown simplified procurement workflows to drive adoption across teams. Automation drastically reduced administrative burdens, enabling faster approvals and more efficient decision-making.
Full visibility into approvals and financial activity through a clear audit trail — previously a hugely manual and time-consuming process across scattered systems — is now available at a glance. Critical for a regulated business administering £155bn+ in client assets.
"Omnea has streamlined our operations and tech stack, providing a scalable platform that meets our needs today and will continue to support us in the future. By replacing multiple fragmented systems, forms and emails with a single, centralised platform, we now have a single view of our data — and have transformed our processes to be significantly more efficient and transparent."
— Phil Thomas, Group Head of Procurement
Since adopting Omnea, Hargreaves Lansdown has transformed its procurement process—replacing fragmented incumbent systems and manual processes with a centralized, automated platform that streamlines operations, enhances visibility into spend, drives process adoption and “systemises human controls”.
Phil Thomas
Group Head of Procurement
Financial Services
2,400+
Bristol, UK
What problems needed solving?
Phil Thomas joined Hargreaves Lansdown as Group Head of Procurement in December 2022 with a mandate to diagnose the challenges and lead the digital transformation of the function. He quickly identified three core problems.
Using offline forms and email for intake and approvals was unintuitive and required significant training. Requesters grappled with complex processes — new spend requests often arrived late, incomplete, or outside the system entirely. Approvers struggled to find the context needed to make quick, informed decisions, leading to slow cycle times and frustration on all sides.
Shortfalls in intake meant the procurement team had to manually input requests and supplier information across Coupa, spreadsheets, and Workday. Workflows lacked automation, requiring constant human intervention to progress — making it difficult to know where requests were, what next steps were needed, and slowing down contract governance.
As a regulated financial services business, ensuring compliance and mitigating risk was critical. But approvals were fragmented across multiple systems, making it laborious to track who had approved what and why. Renewals relied on manual tracking, creating space for unnecessary or unnegotiated spend to fall through the cracks.
"Instead of focusing on strategic initiatives and driving value, my team was stuck wrestling with an inefficient patchwork of systems, offline forms and email. It was a frustrating experience — not just for us, but for every requester and approver across the business."
— Phil Thomas, Group Head of Procurement
How did Omnea help?
After a thorough evaluation of the market and their existing tech stack — including considering additional investment in Workday or Salesforce — Hargreaves Lansdown chose Omnea as a modern, purpose-built intake and orchestration platform.
Requesters are guided through a conditional intake that only asks for necessary information, with the right approvers automatically involved and notified. Approvers get full visibility of pending reviews with a tailored summary to make fast, informed decisions. Workflows are built and optimised in Omnea's no-code builder — no specialist consultants or developers required.
Omnea creates a single source of truth for supplier information, contracts, and renewals. Suppliers onboard directly via the Supplier Portal. Renewals are managed through an intuitive calendar that surfaces what action is needed and when — removing the risk of missed renewals and unnegotiated spend.
The full context of every relationship is recorded in one system, facilitating "Deal Panel" review meetings for high-value and complex requests. Once all approvals are complete, an Omnea workflow block issues a "Certificate to Sign" — removing ambiguity around when a deal is fully reviewed and who the correct signatory is. A complete, accessible audit trail is available for all approvals in one platform.
What were the business impacts?
Hargreaves Lansdown replaced a patchwork of systems, forms, and email with a single, centralised platform. Procurement is now tracked in one place, delivering clear governance, transparency, and efficiency across the business.
By prioritising user experience, Hargreaves Lansdown simplified procurement workflows to drive adoption across teams. Automation drastically reduced administrative burdens, enabling faster approvals and more efficient decision-making.
Full visibility into approvals and financial activity through a clear audit trail — previously a hugely manual and time-consuming process across scattered systems — is now available at a glance. Critical for a regulated business administering £155bn+ in client assets.
"Omnea has streamlined our operations and tech stack, providing a scalable platform that meets our needs today and will continue to support us in the future. By replacing multiple fragmented systems, forms and emails with a single, centralised platform, we now have a single view of our data — and have transformed our processes to be significantly more efficient and transparent."
— Phil Thomas, Group Head of Procurement
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