Coupa Expense Management’s Frugal Meter Adds That Little Something Extra to Encourage a Cost-Conscious Corporate Culture

Coupa's patent-pending Frugal Meter recognizes when employees are being frugal, and when they're not!

Last night I went out with some co-workers. After we dined on yummy Thai, I snapped a photo of my dinner receipt on my phone and emailed it to my Coupa Expense Management receipt Inbox —(Yes, we Coupa employees use Coupa for all our purchasing and expense reporting too)—and then logged on this morning to complete the report. I loved that I didn’t have to save the hard copy of the receipt. The image of the receipt was waiting for me in my Receipt Inbox, ready to be dragged into an expense report. And when I did drag that receipt into the report, *poof* a little “Thanks for being frugal!” note popped up on the screen. It made me laugh out loud in the middle of one of my co-worker’s serious stories, but when I turned to my screen to give him a glimpse of my screen, he smiled too. “Wow,” I told him, “I guess I could’ve had another bottle of wine after all.”

The thing is, I come from an ad agency background where I had to travel all the time, and like most people, I inevitably loathed the expense reporting moment that faced me upon my return home. The system I had to use was so ridiculously unintuitive, it would sometimes take me 3 to 4 hours to submit some of my longer reports. So the ease of use of Coupa’s system was a real relief to me.

The thing is: It doesn’t take much to enable people to do their expenses if you make the experience easy for them.  Coupa Expense Management is both easy to use and very powerful. The Frugal Meter not only gives props to those who are spending less than the norm on their expenses, it also gently warns people who submit expenses that are slightly higher than the average that their expenses “seem a little high”. Business rules keep the process moving, as users will be alerted if they need to upload receipts or provide some kind of justification for a larger expense. It only took me about 2 minutes to submit my meal expenses, and I even got a laugh out of it.

Rob Bernshteyn explains Coupa’s Frugal Meter and intelligent auditing (an auditor’s dream feature) features in the video below. Got any other features you think would be useful in an Expense Management application? Make a comment. Let us know!

I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Katy Murray, Chief Financial Officer of Taleo recently to ask her about Taleo’s experience with Coupa e-Procurement. She was full of insight and actual experiences to share, including why Taleo chose Coupa, what Taleo’s procurement process was prior to Coupa, and which Coupa features were most useful for Taleo’s Spend Management.

If you don’t know much about Taleo, here’s the gist: More than 4,200 organizations use Taleo’s SaaS and on-demand services to attract, hire, and retain top talent with 3,000,000 users processing 175 million candidates from 200 countries/territories in 30 languages.

Here’s the video:

With the Feb ‘10 release of the Coupa’s new Expense Management solution, I thought it might be enlightening to do a little field research on what the general public felt about Expense Reports.  So I took to the streets of the SOMA neighborhood in San Francisco, armed with a video camera and a simple question, “How do you feel about expense reports?” The result is this highlight video.

Admittedly, there was very little method to the madness here. Basically, I was just looking for off-the-cuff, authentic answers from real San Franciscans. We ended up capturing quite a few opinions, with the overriding sentiment being that people wanted:

• Expense reports to be automated
• Expense reports to be mobile
• Simpler receipt management

Not really any surprises there, but each person had a unique way of expressing their pain points with preparing expense reports, and all were interested in hearing more about how Coupa’s combined Expense Management and e-Procurement SaaS solutions simplify all indirect spend matters. We’ll highlight the key features that make Coupa Expense Management unique in an upcoming post. In the meantime, check out the expense reporting and auditing demonstrations, and let us know what you think!

Last Week’s ProcureCon Indirect 2010 in Charolotte, NC had quite a few highlights. One major highlight–although unrelated to Procurement–was that it snowed in a part of the States known for its mild weather. That was big news and confounding to many local stores that closed down due the elements. (Meanwhile, the Chicago natives were laughing and shaking their heads at what they deemed “flurries”.) In terms of key topics, panel discussions covered a range of subjects, but a few--like organizational structure and building credibility with senior executive teams, were especially noteworthy. But the biggest highlight of all may have been Rob Bernshteyn’s keynote “The Next Generation of Spend Mangement”.

Those of us around the Coupa offices already know how convincing and entertaining Rob Bernshteyn, Coupa’s CEO, can be. But for the unsuspecting souls who witnessed his “Journey Through Time” keynote at the convention last week, Rob’s refreshingly un-corporate approach to presenting the past, present, and future of Spend Management was a real eye-opener. During the presentation, there were a few “oh no he didn’t” moments, and even more nodding heads. The feedback was fantastic, with many attendees calling Rob’s presentation “the best presentation at the entire conference”.

(SPOILER ALERT!) Here’s a brief synopsis of the presentation for those of you who like to read the end of the book first.

INTRO: Rob opens with the question: How can you spend smarter and save money? He answers his own question by noting that it’s impossible to answer that without thinking of the times we’re in.

PAST: This intro allows him to dive into his “Journey through Time”. He speaks to the technology, the people, and the pop culture, and the current events from post World War II all the way up to the 90’s. He clicks through images of the young Rolling Stones, gas guzzling cars, and land line phones. He points out that Procurement was just starting, and America’s economy was booming. It was kind of all administrative and less strategic. Key quote: “We had a seat a table, but it wasn’t the table we wanted to be at…We were a diamond in the rough.”

TODAY: Where are we now? Well, we may still be listening to the Rolling Stones, but they’re older now. The cars? They’re built for fuel economy. And the phones are as mobile as we are. This type of change is just as apparent in the Procurement world. Technology has changed, and with it comes something called SaaS. SaaS is a reaction to the enterprise software problems of the 90’s, where you spent millions and got little. Now with Cloud-based SaaS software, employees can contribute to the bottom line, and there is visibility into the budget that was never there before. There is super fast deployment and easy integration with legacy ERP systems. And all this is happening on the web so you can transpose information within the company with information on suppliers outside the company. These systems are highly flexible, social, and insightful. Key Quote: “Now Procurement has a seat at a table, and the right table. You have a chance to partner with the CFO’s and to not only be the diamond in the rough, but the jewel.”

FUTURE: What will happen in the future? Rob shows images of the hottest TV show called “American Idiot” instead of “American Idol”, the Rolling Stones looking especially geriatric and 3-D computer screens that pop images. The technology? Software will take advantage of artificial intelligence and become “smart”. We’ll be able to log on once online to have access to every site we need, and employees will have applications at their fingertips that empowers them to help control spend. And those who do manage their spend will be rewarded.  With revenue being so hard to come by,

Key Quote: “Procurement will have a a seat at the front of the table…The spotlight is on us in the Procurement realm today. We have an opportunity to seize the moment.”

Teaches Companies there is a Better Way

Coupa today launched a new product comparison page to showcase our views of the differences between Coupa e-Procurement and Ariba Buyer. Of course, we did it Coupa Sam style, with a new (short) movie that pits our favorite Spend Samurai against procurement’s other superhero. In this first episode of a 3-part series, we take a tongue-in-cheek look at the ease-of-use problem plaguing procurement solutions, and showcase how Coupa completely simplifies the process for getting employees what they need to do their jobs, without giving up the controls you’ve come to expect from an e-procurement application.

We had some fun with the creative, but the point we’re making is serious. We are staking our claim that after nine product releases over the last 21 months and acquiring more than 100 customers, Coupa has arrived. We can’t match Ariba Buyer feature for feature, nor do we care to, but Coupa e-Procurement is a viable option for any organization considering adopting new technology to more effectively manage their procure-to-pay processes. We more than satisfy the 80/20 rule in a cloud spend management application that delivers superior value for effectively managing a company’s indirect purchasing.

Here’s our promise to any organization considering investing in an e-procurement solution: give Coupa a shot to earn your business, and we will prove to you that:

• Coupa is far and away the easiest enterprise software solution for e-procurement, making the broad adoption you need to increase spend under management an achievable opportunity.
• Coupa is the easiest solution to configure and fastest to deploy, accelerating time to value with speedy implementations.
• Coupa is the most cost effective way to manage indirect purchasing. As a true multi-tenant cloud spend management application, Coupa does not require companies to buy hardware or software or pay separately for upgrades. One subscription covers it all, and at a fraction of the cost of other solutions.
• Coupa’s executive dashboards and alerting mechanisms make it easy for managers to monitor and control spending as it occurs, and prevent departments from going over-budget.
• Coupa’s unique iRequest and iBuy features make it easier for everyone in the company to participate in company cost saving initiatives and contribute greater savings by crowd sourcing the best deals on the Web from within the e-procurement application.
• Coupa can make believers of executives skeptical of procurement’s bottom line impact. With the market’s only true performance benchmarking capabilities, companies can track their progress against 18 key performance indicators, and how they compare against the market, for metrics ranging from requisition to approval cycle times, requisition rejection rates, savings as a % of spend, and more. Give management the confidence they need that your cost savings programs are working.

So sit back, enjoy the first movie in our Schooling SpendGuy series, and share it with your friends and colleagues. And if what you see makes you scratch your head just a little, give Coupa a call. All we ask for is a chance to earn your business.

Coupa was in the news today for reporting record growth in revenue, customer acquisition, and spend through it’s e-procurement platform in 2009. Needless to say, we’re happy to have so much to smile about at we kick off the new year.

But we wouldn’t have nearly as many success stories if it weren’t for our exceptional customers, like John Dickey, Purchasing Manager of the Phoenix Coyotes (featured in the video above). It takes vision and courage (and usually some carefully recruited executive support) for a purchasing professional to be successful in selling their organization on the need for a new procurement solution. And we want to thank you all for being a catalyst for saving money and operating more efficiently within your company.

Coupa customers come in all stripes, across a wide range of industries and backgrounds, as you can see by watching our customer video testimonials. Check them out. One of them probably has a story similar to your own organization’s story.