Drata Supercharges Procurement Efficiency with Tropic: 10-Minute Admin Work and Better Spend Control

About Drata

Drata is a trust management platform with the mission to build trust across the cloud. With Drata, thousands of companies streamline over 20 compliance frameworks—such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, and more—through continuous, automated control monitoring and evidence collection, resulting in a strong security posture, lower costs, and less time spent preparing for annual audits. The San Diego-based company has more than 500 employees.

Tyler Toft is a Senior Finance Manager at Drata with nearly a decade of finance and analyst experience. His responsibilities include managing Drata’s procurement process from initial evaluation to purchase and renewal.   

The Challenge  

Procurement inefficiencies put Drata’s growth and spend at risk

Drata, with remarkable 100% year-over-year growth, found itself managing an increasing number of procurement requests. The startup wanted to maintain their lean approach to purchasing but their previous strategy became unsustainable as the organization grew. 

Their process was as simple as storing executed contracts in an internal drive, but provided little understanding of spend patterns, made it impossible to manage in-flight requests, and left them at risk of missing renewals.

“We would never know where things got saved — which created more obstacles to pull documents quickly,” Toft explained. Without proactive purchase controls, Drata risked unknown expenditures and potential overspending.

The Outcome

Cut admin time to 10 minutes a day—freeing up time to strategically manage renewals

By leveraging Tropic, the "administrative burden" of manually managing purchases is significantly taken off Drata’s plate. 

Procurement tasks that once took hours—like chasing approvals, hunting down stalled requests, and managing scattered communications—are now tackled in minutes. Tropic AI seamlessly parses Drata’s contract and supplier data, delivering a clear, easy-to-tackle checklist and a digestible overview of every request. With everything at his fingertips, Toft can clear his queue in minutes and focus on what matters: proactive renewal planning.

Toft uses that saved time to be strategic and proactive about upcoming renewals, putting Drata in the best position to negotiate efficiently. 

"The more we can reduce the drastic, super urgent requests, the better," he mentioned. "That has freed up time and lets us be a little more proactive."

Increased spend transparency builds confidence in budgeting and planning decisions 

With clearer visibility into their spend, Drata is better positioned for growth — they can make more data-driven decisions on where their spend will be most effective and aligned with their goals. 

Centralizing spend details and reporting in the Tropic platform gives Drata’s team the ability to simplify the tedious work needed for two core responsibilities of their finance department:

• Budget management: Finance can quickly access historical spending data by department
• Accounting processes: Accounting can locate relevant contract details in seconds to verify invoices and ensure compliance

"For budget planning purposes, my team uses Tropic as a source of truth for our contracts, showing us where we’ve made investments so we can properly allocate resources in the future," Toft said.

Reduced risk of duplicative spend and shadow spend with improved purchase controls

With stronger internal controls in place, Drata can mitigate the risk of approving purchases with unfavorable terms or conditions. 

Before Tropic, Drata’s contracts were scattered, approvals were inconsistent, and some purchases were left to the last minute. Now, with a single signer and a streamlined process, every agreement flows through the right checks: security for vendor risk, legal for compliance, and finance for budget alignment. Tropic delivers full visibility, eliminates chaos, and ensures every contract is vetted, approved, and accounted for.

It all results in a streamlined purchasing process where stakeholders are able to review purchases with all the necessary collected information. As the company’s procurement process evolves—whether that’s adding approvers or changing steps—Toft can quickly adjust their intake forms to collect the necessary information, or edit their workflows to maintain the appropriate controls.  

"The workflows are customizable for our needs, which are ever evolving. Our procurement process a year from now could be very different," he added. "Being able to change those easily by myself is a huge advantage."