Coupa Recognized for a Third Time in a Row as a Market Leader in Ardent Partners’ 2023 ePayables Technology Advisor Evaluation

For the third consecutive time, Coupa is positioned as a Market Leader in Ardent Partners’ 2023 ePayables Technology Advisor report, with top scores on both axes of its evaluation categories. Ardent Partners notes the following strengths of Coupa as an accounts payable (AP) solution: ease of use, out-of-the-box compliance measures, and leading reporting and benchmarking capabilities.

Why accounts payable automation matters

Nearly 70% of mid-market companies prioritized automating their AP processes in 2022 as old-school strategies no longer work in today’s rapidly-changing business environment. Instead of relying on slow and error-prone processes, finance leaders are turning to AP automation to strategically reduce costs, improve efficiency, and respond to unpredictability with faster, more accurate decisions.

Coupa’s AP software in action

Skillsoft, a cloud-based education software provider, wanted to transform its AP process to get better returns on its spend, but its team was bogged down with manual processes. This led to a low PO-backed invoicing rate and poor financial reporting capabilities, making it difficult to forecast, budget, and control costs accurately. After deploying Coupa, general ledger codes are now automatically assigned up front in the purchase process — not after the fact by AP and procurement. Today, 99% of invoices and 95% of spend are PO-backed, saving Skillsoft’s AP team valuable time and providing better control of every dollar spent.

How Coupa improves your operational efficiency and cash flow

By streamlining, integrating, and automating processes across procurement and AP, finance teams can increase productivity, reduce manual errors and fraud, and gain unprecedented visibility into the company’s spending patterns. This empowers teams to improve cost-savings, optimize their days payable outstanding (DPO), and maximize rebates and working capital. Coupa makes this possible by:

• Unlocking best-in-class AP: Gain multi-level automated invoice validation, dynamic approval workflows, and full mobile access to save time, reduce errors, and keep operations running smoothly. Equipped with these capabilities, top-performing Coupa customers achieve an average first-time match rate of 96.5% and an average invoice approval cycle time of 10.9 business hours. And with a centralized payment hub, payments for AP, treasury, payroll, or tax are all made from one place with automatic reconciliation back to the general ledger. Vendors have access to a self-service portal as well, where they manage their own critical information and data, reducing fraud risk for both you and your suppliers.  
• Prioritizing the user experience: Easy-to-use dashboards and automated workflows encourage higher levels of AP team utilization, which reduces burnout and increases employee retention. Along with three automatic updates each year, Coupa aims to consistently give its users new features that make their job easier and more efficient. 
• Making compliance easy: Over 65% of Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) see processes or technology improvements as critical to managing risk. That’s why with Coupa — from day one — users have out-of-the-box regulatory and tax compliance for over 50 foreign government-mandated electronic invoicing networks and clearance models. No other software, add-ons, or IT setup is required. Not only are tax functions streamlined on Coupa’s platform, but audit readiness becomes easier with audit trails, segregation of duties, controls, fraud and risk monitors, and financial reporting tools. 
• Leveraging community insights: Through the power of Coupa’s Community.ai, customers can benchmark their performance against critical AP KPIs such as first-time match rate  and the percentage of invoices paid digitally. Community.ai also analyzes trillions of dollars in anonymized spend data to provide customers with prescriptive recommendations. Finance teams can then make strategic decisions based on data, not assumptions, to improve efficiency and profitability.

“The solution is enhanced by Coupa’s advanced approach to customer benchmarking and its progressive plans and roadmap for its user community.” — Ardent Partners

Do more with less on a unified BSM platform

Ardent Partners also notes Coupa’s extensive suite of sourcing and procurement (S2P) solutions — from contract management to spend analytics and more — sets it apart from others in the industry. Coupa’s holistic Business Spend Management (BSM) platform enables these solutions to work in sync, unlocks their full value, and scales with a business as it grows. By connecting procurement to payment processes and systems to one platform, companies gain better visibility and control over their spending while also making more informed, cost-effective decisions.