SAN MATEO, Calif. – August 25, 2010 – Coupa Software, the leading provider of disruptive and innovative cloud spend management (CSM) solutions, today announced the appointments of Steven Sovik as Vice President of Sales, and Tony Dawson as Vice President of Alliances.

In his new role, Steve will be responsible for further growing the global sales organization and accelerating sales of Coupa Cloud Spend Management to organizations of all sizes. With more than 20 years of relevant experience at technology leaders Oracle, Siebel Systems, Andersen Consulting and SupportSoft, Steve brings expertise in rapidly building, leading, and scaling sales organizations at high-growth companies. Prior to joining Coupa, Steve was the VP of Sales for Oracle’s On Demand CRM business, which grew over 100% year during his tenure.

With the newly created VP Alliances role, Tony will be responsible for the development of strategic partnerships and identifying business opportunities for the company’s continued growth. With more than fifteen years of relevant industry experience working with technology leaders including SuccessFactors, Workplace Leaders, Instill and Netscape, Tony brings a wealth of expertise in business development and sales execution. Prior to joining Coupa, Tony had an impressive track record of growing sales as Senior Vice President of Sales at Workplace Answers. Previously, he was a VP of Alliances for SuccessFactors, where he led direct and channel sales organizations as well as oversaw several business units. Tony has also managed sales operations and business development at Instill Corp., served as Vice President of Channel Sales and Business Development at Brience, as well as Director of Worldwide Service Sales at Netscape Communications.

“It’s not often you find a company so committed to challenging the status quo with a better way of doing business,” added Steven Sovik. “With Coupa, companies everywhere can practice smarter spending, and immediately realize savings and greater efficiencies. I am excited to be a part of the Coupa Management Team.”

“Coupa’s platform is fundamentally changing the Spend Management category by helping companies more effectively control their spending in the cloud,” said Tony Dawson. “The Coupa solution is exceptionally easy to use, fast to deploy, cost effective, and consistently helps companies find smarter ways to spend.”

“Steve and Tony have a passion for disruptive technologies and will play key roles in helping Coupa achieve the leadership position in the emerging Cloud Spend Management category of business applications,” said Rob Bernshteyn, CEO of Coupa Software. “Their stellar track records driving new business and developing lasting partnerships position Coupa well for a period of continued explosive growth.”

About Coupa Software

Coupa is the leading provider of disruptive and innovative cloud spend management (CSM) solutions that help companies control their indirect spending and generate savings that go direct to the bottom line. Coupa combines the best e-procurement and expense management capabilities in a single solution that is easier to use, faster to configure and deploy, and more cost-effective than anything available today. With deep domain knowledge in e-procurement and expense management, a best-in-class cloud computing platform, a fast-growing community of customers, and industry-first innovations like real-time benchmarking, intelligent expense report auditing, and crowd sourcing great deals on the Web, Coupa is leading the way in helping companies spend smarter and save more. For more information please visit, http://www.coupa.com or call 650.931.3200.

Contact:
Melissa Biles
LaunchSquad
415-625-8555
coupa (a) launchsquad.com

SAN MATEO, Calif. – August 3, 2010 – Coupa Software, the leading provider of disruptive and innovative cloud spend management (CSM) solutions for squeezing savings from business operations, today announced a significant uptick in the number of retail and franchise businesses selecting Coupa to more effectively manage and control their indirect spending.

Express, Inc., The Limited, Michaels, The Container Store, Dollar General, and a prominent specialty retailer of stylish home furnishings and high quality cookware are among the retailers leveraging Coupa’s platform for their e-procurement needs.

With soft consumer spending renewing worries about a fragile economic recovery, retailers and franchise businesses are investing in process improvements and technology innovations to more effectively control their spending and protect their profits. Coupa Cloud Spend Management offers several advantages to retailers eager to adopt smarter spending practices, including:

• Centralized control over procurement processes and greater visibility into spending at the store level, without having to deploy IT resources or professional buyers in each location.
• Broad adoption with an easy-to-use solution that requires minimal change management and training to learn or adopt, perfect for workforces characterized by non-office personnel, or that have high turnover or seasonal fluctuations in their employee base.
• Ability to segregate content and streamline store-level purchasing through content groups. For example, with Coupa, retailers can segregate catalog items, how to buy policies, contracts, punchout sites and more by region, store layout, or other logical grouping to standardize ordering processes in each location.
• Full budgeting support, including budget remaining checks before requisitions are approved, and roll-up reporting for store-level, and regional (or district) spending relative to budget.
• Universal access via any web browser. As the only true multi-tenant cloud company in the e-procurement category, the software can be accessed from the Amazon cloud via any web browser.  There is no hardware to buy, or software to install.
• Fast time to value. Everything you need to get started is included in a single subscription price and standard implementations are free, perfect for organizations designed to be self-sufficient at the store level, without expensive IT overhead.

“Coupa’s traction in our industry does not surprise me at all,” said Scott Jones, Purchasing Agent and Coupa Project Manager at The Container Store. “The dynamics of the retail business model demand efficient and cost-effective operations. Coupa’s cloud-based e-procurement solution fits that need perfectly. We’ve been very successful with the software.”

The Container Store, a Coupa customer since 2008, eliminated stockpiling and supply over-ordering at the store level by integrating Coupa with its warehouse management and supplier systems. By managing its requisition and purchase order processes through Coupa, The Container Store can accurately charge supply costs to individual stores based on supply usage, instead of more arbitrary measures like cost allocation based on percent of sales volume. The company reduced the number of SKUs managed in-house by 60%, and now processes 50% fewer purchase orders per week. Time savings generated by improved processes allowed the company to act on the spend intelligence gathered to negotiate new contracts for greater pricing discounts.

“Brick and mortar retailers have certain advantages over their online counterparts, but they are also under constant pricing pressure from pure online competitors who do not incur the same costs associated with operating distributed store locations,” said Rob Bernshteyn, CEO of Coupa Software. “It’s absolutely critical that retailers keep a watchful eye over every dollar of spend. And industry leaders are doing so with Coupa.”

About Coupa Software
Coupa is the leading provider of disruptive and innovative cloud spend management (CSM) solutions that help companies control their indirect spending and generate savings that go direct to the bottom line. Coupa combines the best e-procurement and expense management capabilities in a single solution that is easier to use, faster to configure and deploy, and more cost-effective than anything available today. With deep domain knowledge in e-procurement and expense management, a best-in-class cloud computing platform, a fast-growing community of customers, and industry-first innovations like real-time benchmarking, intelligent expense report auditing, and crowd sourcing great deals on the Web, Coupa is leading the way in helping companies spend smarter and save more. For more information please visit, http://www.coupa.com or call 650.931.3200.

Contact:
Melissa Biles
LaunchSquad
415-625-8555
coupa (a) launchsquad.com

SAN MATEO, CA – Coupa Software, the leading provider of disruptive and innovative cloud spend management (CSM) solutions, today announced significant momentum spanning customer implementations, user adoption, new product enhancements and new customer acquisitions.

Coupa has experienced an astonishing 96% subscription renewal rate from active customers, with nearly 20% of revenue resulting from add-on seats to current customers expanding their deployments across their organizations. This includes accelerated adoption of the recently launched expense management product. With a single platform for managing business purchasing and expense reimbursement processes, Coupa is consistently delivering on its promise to provide companies with a smarter way to control spending – regardless of whether that spending originates with purchase orders or employee expenses.

Spend through the Coupa platform has increased by 351% year-over-year, and in the quarter ended June 30th, new annual subscription revenue increased 401% over the same period in the prior year. New customers include Michaels Stores, Greatwide Logistics Services, Vertis Communications, Williams-Sonoma, iPass and many others.

A number of companies across a wide spectrum of industries have recently gone live on the Coupa platform, including Berkshire Bank, UCSB, Diagnostic Health, Graham Packaging Company, and PGi (formerly Premier Global). These companies evaluated the top spend management offerings and determined that Coupa was the best overall solution for delivering powerful business management functionality that would map to their existing processes and workflow.

“Prior to Coupa, our procurement processes were highly manual. Coupa provides greater visibility into, and control over, our spending,” said Dee Harnish, Purchasing Project Manager at Berkshire Bank. “Now we have full automation from requisition to invoicing, with tight integration into our back-end financial systems. Employees are using the solution, and the feedback has been universally positive. A key benefit is that Coupa provides audit trails which track our approvals to ensure that we comply with regulatory requirements. Additionally, Coupa helps us identify savings opportunities by using the tool to effectively analyze our spend.”

Further, a number of these customer deployments feature robust integrations with the leading ERP systems from SAP, Oracle and PeopleSoft. Integrating Coupa’s intuitive and easy-to-use cloud application to complex, on-premise legacy ERP systems is just another example of how Coupa is innovating to change enterprise software.

“Our goal is to remain laser focused on providing our customers the best possible procurement and expense management solutions, whether it be by offering new features, insight and data on how they and their counterparts are spending, or further integrating our system into their existing processes and workflows,” said Rob Bernshteyn, CEO of Coupa. “We’re absolutely thrilled with the uptake of adoption, proof that enterprises across the board are thirsty for a more intelligent, cost-effective and fast way to manage corporate spending.”
In April the company released the first insights from its Cloud Spend Management Network. This is the first of an ongoing series of Coupa data releases to highlight corporate spending trends, analysis and benchmarking to compare a company’s performance against that of others who are transacting through the Coupa platform. As the only true multi-tenant cloud-based company in the industry, the ultimate vision for the Cloud Spend Management Network is to become an index of corporate spending across all categories.

Coupa has also been recertified for SaaS 70 Type II Audit, reinforcing the security, strength and scalability of its software-as-a-service (SaaS) infrastructure.

About Coupa Software
Coupa is the leading provider of disruptive and innovative cloud spend management (CSM) solutions that help companies control their indirect spending and generate savings that go direct to the bottom line. Coupa combines the best e-procurement and expense management capabilities in a single solution that is easier to use, faster to configure and deploy, and more cost-effective than anything available today. With deep domain knowledge in e-procurement and expense management, a best-in-class cloud computing platform, a fast-growing community of customers, and industry-first innovations like real-time benchmarking, intelligent expense report auditing, and crowd sourcing great deals on the Web, Coupa is leading the way in helping companies spend smarter and save more. For more information please visit, http://www.coupa.com or call 650.931.3200.

Berkshire Bank — America’s Most Exciting BankSM – is the largest locally headquartered regional bank. The Bank has $2.7 billion in assets and provides services through 40 branch offices in Massachusetts, New York, and Vermont.

SAN MATEO, CA – Coupa Software, the leading provider of disruptive and innovative cloud spend management (CSM) solutions, today announced that three leading enterprises, Michaels, Diagnostic Health Corporation and PGi (formerly Premier Global Services), have all deployed Coupa for e-procurement. Each deployment features robust integrations with the leading ERP systems from SAP, Oracle and PeopleSoft, underscoring Coupa’s flexibility in delivering solutions that extend existing enterprise investments to make these systems more valuable to their respective organizations.

Coupa’s enterprise grade, multi-tenant cloud platform integrates with all major ERP systems, allowing bi-directional data exchange. The combined result allows Michaels, Diagnostic Health and PGi to extend the system of record capabilities of their ERP systems with a powerful new e-procurement management solution that makes it easier for everyone in the organization to spend smarter and participate in the company’s cost savings programs. The deployments showcase Coupa’s ability to capture rich e-procurement management data and bring it back into core ERP systems to improve overall business operations.

Integrating Coupa to core ERP systems gives companies a complete procure-to-pay solution for controlling company spending. Integrating Coupa’s intuitive and easy-to-use cloud application to complex, on-premise legacy ERP systems is another example of how Coupa is innovating to change enterprise software. Coupa’s open API architecture can deliver complex business objects like purchase orders, purchase order changes, invoices, and receipts in many different formats, making it easier to securely integrate in real-time with systems as varied as Oracle, SAP, and Quickbooks — and all for a fraction of the cost of what most large companies have come to expect from projects involving integration to their core ERP systems.

“Coupa gives us the ability to make our PeopleSoft ERP system more powerful by allowing us to integrate rich e-procurement and management data into these processes and improve our ability to better manage our business and financial operations,” said Pam Estes, Director of Administration at Diagnostic Health. “With its ability to quickly extend and make more valuable our existing systems and its powerful, easy-to use framework for managing procurement, Coupa is the most flexible e-procurement solution on the market today.”
Michaels, Diagnostic Health and PGi evaluated the top enterprise e-procurement offerings and determined that Coupa was the best overall solution for delivering powerful business management functionality that would map to their existing processes and workflow. Their Coupa deployments have all gone live in the past few weeks.

“It’s a new era in enterprise software,” said Rob Bernshteyn, CEO of Coupa. “Business software today is about being flexible, open and delivering valuable solutions that can not only easily integrate with existing systems but, in fact, make those systems exponentially more valuable. Coupa’s multi-tenant cloud platform delivers an immediate, tangible business impact for large enterprises, mapping to their existing ERP systems to improve overall business operations.”

About Coupa Software
Coupa is the leading provider of disruptive and innovative cloud spend management (CSM) solutions that help companies control their indirect spending and generate savings that go direct to the bottom line. Coupa combines the best e-procurement and expense management capabilities in a single solution that is easier to use, faster to configure and deploy, and more cost-effective than anything available today. With deep domain knowledge in e-procurement and expense management, a best-in-class cloud computing platform, a fast-growing community of customers, and industry-first innovations like real-time benchmarking, intelligent expense report auditing, and crowd sourcing great deals on the Web, Coupa is leading the way in helping companies spend smarter and save more. For more information please visit, http://www.coupa.com or call 650.931.3200.

Contact:
Katie Cinnamond
LaunchSquad
914-646-2097
coupa (a) launchsquad.com

SAN MATEO, Calif. – Coupa Software, the leading provider of disruptive and innovative cloud spend management (CSM) solutions, today released the first insights from its Cloud Spend Management Network. This is the first of an ongoing series of Coupa data releases to highlight corporate spending trends, analysis and benchmarking across a number of categories based on anonymous data aggregated from the community of Coupa customers. The ultimate vision for the Cloud Spend Management Network is to become an index of corporate spending across all categories.
At a time when companies are sticking to “do more with less” mandates and remain increasingly cognizant of being smarter and more efficient when it comes to spending, Coupa addresses procurement and expenses head on by delivering a level of visibility into spending behaviors that never existed before.

Coupa Cloud Spend Management delivers the best e-procurement and expense management capabilities in a single solution that is easier to use, faster to configure and deploy, and more cost-effective than anything available today. The platform is already used by companies as varied as Reebok, Salesforce.com, The Container Store, Flextronics, Pandora, Dollar General and dozens of others.

“Coupa has provided us with an unmatched level of visibility into our spending habits, which has enabled us to be smarter and more efficient in tracking and adjusting purchasing behavior moving forward,” said David Howard, director of central purchasing for Reebok-CCM Hockey. “The ease of use doesn’t call for a ton of internal resources and enables us to prioritize where we direct our focus and efforts. With Coupa we have
finally aligned procurement with finance and accounting, which has had a direct correlation with money saved.”

Coupa’s new Cloud Spend Insights look at dozens of operational benchmarks to compare a company’s performance against that of others who are transacting through the Coupa platform. As the only true cloud-based offering in the industry, this repository of data is accessible in real-time and provides the ability to track spending behaviors, see trends over time both internally within an organization, and comparatively across the Coupa community, and set benchmarks to encourage and implement smarter spending habits in the future. Initial findings for Q1 2010 (quarter-over-quarter data based on transactions through the Coupa platform) show:

• Spending up: Median spend increased 5.03%;
• Time saved on purchase cycles: Average purchase request approval cycle time dropped from 19.4 hours to 17.1 hours;
• Categories showing increasing spending: Telco & Internet Services, Technology Services and MRO & Manufacturing exhibited greatest increases;
• Categories showing decreasing spending: IT Hardware, Marketing Services and Transportation Services were the biggest losers;
• Payment terms held steady: Virtually no change in average payment terms, from 31.87 days to 31.79 days.

“Coupa competes in an industry that addresses a critical component to any business – how to manage spending and expensing – yet surprisingly this industry is thirsting for innovation,” said Rob Bernshteyn, CEO of Coupa. “By providing an unmatched level of visibility into the expense pool, we are enabling companies to drill down and audit problem areas of spending, curb “maverick” behavior and halt problems before they start. Customers can also for the first time analyze trends and spending behavior internally, as well as see how they are doing in comparison to the market in general.”

Coupa is the only cloud-based offering to combine procurement and expense management into a single cloud-based platform. It features a single user interface, a single workflow model for approving purchases and reimbursable expenses, one underlying chart of accounts, one set of budget entries against which to credit purchases and expenses, and consolidated dashboards for unparalleled visibility into non-payroll spending.

About Coupa Software
Coupa is the leading provider of disruptive and innovative cloud spend management (CSM) solutions that help companies control their indirect spending and generate savings that go direct to the bottom line. Coupa combines the best e-procurement and expense management capabilities in a single solution that is easier to use, faster to configure and deploy, and more cost-effective than anything available today. With deep domain knowledge in e-procurement and expense management, a best-in-class cloud computing platform, a fast-growing community of customers, and industry-first innovations like real-time benchmarking, intelligent expense report auditing, and crowd sourcing great deals on the Web, Coupa is leading the way in helping companies spend smarter and save more. For more information please visit, http://www.coupa.com or call 650.931.3200.

Contact:
Melissa Biles
LaunchSquad
415-625-8555
coupa (a) launchsquad.com

In a true David and Goliath tale of enterprise spend management software providers, upstart Coupa Software launched a marketing campaign in February to raise awareness for the business benefits of cloud-based e-procurement solutions, differentiate itself from the competition, and invite companies to take advantage of limited-time offers designed to help companies spend smarter and save more.

Featuring Coupa Sam, Spend Samurai and SpendGuy, a tired anti-hero, in a series of comic commercials that emphasize common business purchasing frustrations, the Schooling SpendGuy series introduces cloud computing innovations with substantial impact on how businesses control their indirect purchasing. The first episode of the series, Jumping Through Hoops, tackles the unnecessary complexities and hurdles employees often face attempting to requisition the items they need to do their jobs. Lesson 2, launched just yesterday, contrasts the rapid upgrade and innovation cycles of cloud-based spend management solutions against the slow, painful upgrade paths of on-premise and hosted software solutions.

Inspired in part by rising demand for alternatives to existing e-procurement solutions, the Schooling SpendGuy site features a product comparison matrix that contrasts Coupa’s cloud-based e-procurement solution against the comparable product from its largest competitor.

The campaign includes two limited-time only special offers for companies interested in making the transition to the Coupa’s cloud spend management solution:

• a complimentary migration assessment for any company that wants to consider Coupa in lieu of a potentially expensive upgrade with their existing solution provider
• a full year of Coupa Expense Management (intruduced as part of the Winter ‘10 release), for a limited number of users, with any new annual subscription to Coupa e-Procurement

For more information on the Schooling SpendGuy campaign, and how to take advantage of Coupa’s special offers, please visit:
http://www.coupa.com/resources/product-compare/schooling-spendguy/

Coupa Software, maker of disruptive e-procurement and smarter expense management software for helping companies control their spending, today announced its fifth consecutive quarter of net new bookings growth and overall record results, despite softness in the overall economy. New bookings for the quarter ended March 31st were 281% of the new bookings for the same period last year. Spend through the Coupa e-procurement platform accelerated throughout the quarter; with more than 1.5 million transactions exceeding hundreds of millions in spend. Subscription renewal rate for the quarter was 100%, with many customers adding new seats and expanding their usage of the system.

New customers signed during the quarter include internet radio pioneer Pandora, Berkshire Bank, Premier Global Services, Nelson Staffing, and one of the largest franchises in the Fortune 500, affirming the universal appeal of the Coupa cloud spend management platform for businesses of all types and sizes. They join a growing group of organizations that have been wildly successful with their Coupa implementations.

Pandora CFO Steve Cakebread stated, “As we remain laser-focused on growing our business it is important to have the right financial tools in place for to ensure effective management of spend within established budgets. We’re pleased to use Coupa as one of the primary tools to assist us in our ongoing commitment to that financial goal.”

Coupa introduced a major expansion of its solution in Q1, adding smarter expense management functionality to create a powerful cloud spend management platform that allows companies to procure goods and services from the same system through which it manages the expense reporting and auditing processes. Now companies can leverage a unified solution for managing non-payroll indirect spending, featuring a single user interface, a single workflow model for approving purchases and reimbursable expenses, one underlying chart of accounts, one set of budget entries against which to credit purchases and expenses, consolidated dashboards for unparalleled visibility into non-payroll spending, and dozens of operational benchmarks to compare an organization’s performance against other companies transacting through the Coupa platform.

Like its E-Procurement complement, Coupa Expense Management features several industry-first product innovations that make the solution easier to use, and more valuable to everyone in the organization, including:

• Automated scoring to identify and prioritize the expense reports requiring accounting review and verification, simplifying the audit process
• The patent-pending Frugal Meter, which gently prods employees with in-line notifications when their expenses “seem a little high” or recognizes their thriftiness with “thanks for being frugal” messages when their expenses are well below the category average
• Electronic receipt management capabilities that make tracking your receipts as easy as snapping a photo on a mobile phone and sending an email
• The introduction of a pre-approved purchase workflow that gives managers greater control over, and visibility into, employee spending before the expense report is even filed

“You cannot underestimate the impact of being able to control purchasing and expense reporting from one unified system,” said Rob Bernshteyn, Coupa’s CEO. “Coupa’s performance in Q1 is validation and proof-positive that our Cloud Spend Management platform is exactly the kind of disruptive innovation the market has been waiting for – a powerful but easy to use financial management tool for controlling business spending in the cloud, with all the benefits that software as a service have over traditional on-premise software and hosted solutions. We’re humbled by our customers’ support of our vision.”

About Coupa Software
Coupa is the leading provider of disruptive and innovative cloud spend management (CSM) solutions that help companies control their indirect spending and generate savings that go direct to the bottom line. Coupa combines the best e-procurement and expense management capabilities in a single solution that is easier to use, faster to configure and deploy, and more cost-effective than anything available today. With deep domain knowledge in e-procurement and expense management, a best-in-class cloud computing platform, a fast-growing community of customers, and industry-first innovations like real-time benchmarking, intelligent expense report auditing, and crowd sourcing great deals on the Web, Coupa is leading the way in helping companies spend smarter and save more. For more information please visit, http://www.coupa.com or call 650.931.3200.

“Spend under management” and “operational efficiency” are terms too often tossed around in strategic conversations, but rarely acted upon. At a time when organizations need less talk and more action, Coupa CEO, Rob Bernshteyn, stands out as a true thought leader on how companies can capitalize on smarter spending practices in order to drive down costs and deliver real savings for their shareholders. His vision, determination and bias for action is why Rob has been named one of Supply & Demand Chain Executive Pros to Know in 2010.

“This year’s Provider Pros to Know have shown themselves to be thought-leaders in the Supply Chain industry,” said Andrew Reese, editor at Supply & Demand Chain Executive. “Highlighting the learnings that the Provider Pros to Know have taken out of the Great Recession provides our readers with a wealth of best practices that they can apply in their own supply chains, as well as insights into how leading organizations are positioning themselves for competitive advantage in the Great Recovery ahead.”

With Rob at the helm, Coupa is leading the movement to get all organizations, large and small and everything in between, to spend smarter – a priority for any organization hoping to survive the short-term economic crisis and thrive in years to come.

“The biggest challenge facing businesses today is recession survival. To respond to the downturn, most organizations have already undergone hiring and budget freezes, cut spending and ‘right-sized’ their organization,” said Rob. “But these are only temporary measures that will not ensure long-term survival. Procurement and business leaders must take this time to lay the foundation for smarter spending and seize upon savings opportunities that will have a lasting impact into the future.”

Delivering on his vision, where organizations can operate more efficiently and take real-time action to save money, Rob is driving Coupa to provide the most innovative, easiest to use, fastest to implement and cost effective cloud spend management (CSM) applications in the world.

See for yourself why Rob is a “Pro to Know”. Watch his ProcureCon Indirect keynote at http://www.vcasmo.com/video/CoupaSoftware/7614. To learn more about Coupa Software, visit http://www.coupa.com or call 650.931.3201.

About Supply & Demand Chain Executive
Supply & Demand Chain Executive is the executive’s user manual for successful supply and demand chain transformation, utilizing hard-hitting analysis, viewpoints and unbiased case studies to steer executives and supply management professionals through the complicated, yet critical, world of supply and demand chain enablement to gain competitive advantage. On the Web at www.SDCExec.com.

The full listing of the 2010 Pros to Know will be available in the February/March 2010 issue of Supply & Demand Chain Executive magazine and e-book beginning in the third week of March and on the Supply & Demand Chain Executive Web site at SDCExec.com/2010Prostoknow.

San Mateo, CA (PRWEB) February 22, 2010 — Coupa Software, developer of the category-disrupting e-procurement solution for business leaders dissatisfied with purchasing applications that either sit on the shelf or underperform in delivering expected savings, today announced the introduction of an Expense Management product that adds expense reporting and auditing capabilities to the Coupa Cloud Spend Management platform. With Coupa, companies can control 100% of their indirect spend through one platform, providing unparalleled visibility into, and control over, company spending.

Registration is complimentary.

Connecting All Sources of Spending in the Cloud for Better Control, and Greater Savings

Coupa Cloud Spend Management delivers the best e-procurement and expense management capabilities in a single solution that is easier to use, faster to configure and deploy, and more cost-effective than anything available today. The platform features a single user interface, a single workflow model for approving purchases and reimbursable expenses, one underlying chart of accounts, one set of budget entries against which to credit purchases and expenses, consolidated dashboards for unparalleled visibility into non-payroll spending, and dozens of operational benchmarks to compare your organization’s performance against other companies transacting through the Coupa platform.

Analysts briefed on Coupa Cloud Spend Management offered these insights and comments:

• Chris Dwyer, Research Analyst, Aberdeen Group – “It’s not often you call enterprise software ‘hip’, but it’s a description that fits Coupa’s new Cloud Spend Management platform. The timing for this solution is ideal – given the current economic environment, I suspect demand will be high for this unique solution to how companies manage their non-payroll spending. It’s easy to use, controls all purchasing and expense reporting processes from one system, and includes intuitive audit scoring, dashboarding and benchmarking capabilities, all capabilities that will play very well in 2010, a year in which enterprises will more strategically attack their non-payroll and expense management spending.”
• Mickey North Rizza, Research Director, Gartner – “A cloud spend management platform including expense management execution and reporting and auditing capabilities, provides companies with a very real opportunity to manage and control all indirect spend from one application. Add to this platform real-time analytics and cross-company benchmarking, the cloud spend management application quickly becomes procurement’s best friend.”
• Robert Kugel, Senior Vice President & Research Director, Ventana Research – “Most spend management applications follow an accounting ledger-structured view of the world that prevents people from working the way they normally would. Coupa, on the other hand, has tried to provide an application that operates the way people naturally behave so that they will want to use it. This is even more the case with the latest version of the software, which now includes purchases and expenses, giving organizations a real opportunity to control all indirect spend from a single system. Achieving broad, consistent use of spend management software has been a challenge for companies. High utilization is a key driver for realizing value from spend management software because it enables corporations to save money through greater spending control. It also enhances management effectiveness by giving them greater visibility into future spending commitments.”
• Jason Busch, Editor of Spend Matters – “With its latest release and capabilities, Coupa is moving up-market while not ignoring its core small and middle market procurement constituents. The greater the level of enabling services and insight that companies can deliver as part of a non-installed software approach, the greater the value the solution will generate from savings, compliance and process improvement perspectives. Moreover, Spend Matters research suggest that benchmarking, analytics and data visualization capabilities are becoming the ante to deliver the next generation of procure-to-pay solutions in the Spend Management market. In addition, the combination of T&E capabilities with core procurement makes fundamental sense for middle-market organizations that do not require highly specialized solutions.”
• Jeffrey M. Kaplan, Managing Director of THINKstrategies and Founder of the SaaS Showplace – “In today’s increasingly challenging economic environment, it is essential for organizations of all sizes to more carefully control their spending. Coupa is building on the success of its e-Procurement capabilities to offer its customers an integrated Cloud Spend Management platform which can help them better manage a broader array of their ongoing expenditures.”

The new Expense Management capabilities introduced as part of Coupa’s Feb ’10 release allow customers to:

• Audit expense reports based on likelihood of fraudulent or excessive spending behavior. Coupa Expense Management removes the need for an “all or nothing” approach to expense report verification. Coupa automatically scores each and every expense report, and employee, to identify suspect or fraudulent patterns that warrant further attention from the accounting department and employee managers. Each expense report is assigned an intelligent audit score based on the employee’s historical patterns and details of the current report – the higher the score, the higher the risk of non-compliance with the company’s expense management guidelines.
• Flip approved requisitions into pre-approved line items on employee expense reports. With Coupa, an employee can execute a simple search from within the company’s cloud spend management application for an item she needs to do her job, find the item on Amazon.com at very reasonable cost, and pull it into a requisition that her manager then reviews and approves from her iPhone. The employee is notified that her requisition is approved, and is directed back to Amazon.com to complete the transaction. The completed purchase is then automatically entered into an expense report as a pre-approved line item, and credited to the proper account and budget period, making it much easier for managers to control spending and stay within budget.
• Influence desired employee behavior and develop a culture of smarter spending. With Coupa, you can embed intelligence into your expense management processes to encourage the right employee behavior and eliminate abuses like the employee who knows the per-meal allowance is $25 and submits every meal expense for $24.95. Coupa analyzes each expense report line item as they are entered to determine if it deviates from the category norm. If it’s well below the norm, the employee is recognized with a ‘thanks for being frugal’ message, reinforcing behavior that saves the company money. If it’s too far above the norm, though, Coupa will alert that employee that the cost for the expensed item either exceeds the allowable limit or ‘seems a little high.’ The algorithms that control the notifications are dynamic and move with category averages, making it much harder for employees to manipulate.

“We are extremely excited by the heavy demand for Coupa’s Cloud Spend Management offering by our existing customers, and the growing interest in our expanding offering from companies around the world,” said Rob Bernshteyn, Coupa’s CEO. “The opportunity to leverage one cloud application suite for managing all indirect spend in an easy to use, rapid to deploy, and cost-effective fashion is here; and Coupa is delivering it.”

About Coupa Software
Coupa is the leading provider of cloud spend management (CSM) solutions that help companies control their indirect spending and generate savings that go direct to the bottom line. Coupa combines the best e-procurement and expense management capabilities in a single solution that is easier to use, faster to configure and deploy, and more cost-effective than anything available today. With deep domain knowledge in e-procurement and expense management, a best-in-class cloud computing platform, a fast-growing community of customers, and industry-first innovations like real-time benchmarking, intelligent expense report auditing, and crowd sourcing great deals on the Web, Coupa is leading the way in helping companies spend smarter and save more. For more information please visit, http://www.coupa.com or call 650.931.3200.

In a true David and Goliath tale of enterprise spend management software providers, upstart Coupa Software yesterday launched a new marketing campaign to raise awareness for the business benefits of cloud-based e-procurement solutions, differentiate itself from the competition, and invite companies to take advantage of limited-time offers designed to help companies spend smarter and save more.

Featuring Coupa Sam, Spend Samurai and SpendGuy, a tired anti-hero – in a series of comic commercials that emphasize common business purchasing frustrations, the Schooling SpendGuy series introduces cloud computing innovations with substantial impact on how businesses control their indirect purchasing. The first episode of the series, Jumping Through Hoops, tackles the unnecessary complexities and hurdles employees often face attempting to requisition the items they need to do their jobs.

Inspired in part by rising demand for alternatives to existing e-procurement solutions, the Schooling SpendGuy site features a product comparison matrix that contrasts Coupa’s cloud-based e-procurement solution against the comparable product from its largest competitor.

The campaign includes two limited-time only special offers for companies interested in making the transition to the Coupa’s cloud spend management solution:

• a complimentary migration assessment for any company that wants to consider Coupa in lieu of a potentially expensive upgrade with their existing solution provider
• a full year of Coupa Expense Management (part of the upcoming Winter ‘10 release), for a limited number of users, with any new annual subscription to Coupa e-Procurement

For more information on the Schooling SpendGuy campaign, and how to take advantage of Coupa’s special offers, please visit:
http://www.coupa.com/resources/product-compare/schooling-spendguy/