Noah Eisner reflects on Coupa values, then and now

Let me set this up:

Back in late 2005, when Coupa was nothing more than a couple guys in a coffee shop, I sat down and penned (ok, typed) what I later referred to as our manifesto.  It was before a single design was done or a line of code had been written. It was an attempt to define why it was important to build the company that is now known as Coupa.  Like a writer tries to define his or her voice, we needed to define what Coupa e-procurement was all about.  I needed to convey how we would innovate in an area that was sorely under served. This was what I wrote down that day in 2005.  I’ve edited out a couple of things, but it remains mostly intact:

The Coupa Manifesto (Circa 2005)

Enterprise applications have always suffered from user adoption mostly because of usability of the app.  Despite SAP/Oracle’s, others focus on better UIs, the problem is actually getting worse…not better.  What’s happening is that the benchmark for highly usable applications is moving too fast for enterprise apps players.

History
*  Early 1990’s. No one was on the Internet, home computers were a rarity, so people used computers at work…and thus the business apps were the benchmark of usability.  These weren’t great, but they were simple and worked for the few people that had jobs that required being on a computer.

*  Mid-late 90’s. The web came along.  The sites were very basic at the start…but got more robust (sometimes too cluttered) towards the late 90’s.  At that time, people were getting used to these sites which were different from the apps they had at work.  That’s when a company like Oracle released their first Internet ready app (10.7NCA, 11.0), but it was just the same app deployed in a different architecture.  So there was no real user benefit.  At this point, the usability benchmark might be shared by enterprise apps and the Internet (despite their user interfaces being very different).

*  Early 2000’s. people were now comfortable with the web.  Site design improved so most sites were highly usable with relatively dynamic content.  Most people had home computers by now and were spending a good deal of time on the Internet.  The enterprise players start releasing their first real Internet-looking business applications, but they are slower, less intuitive, etc.  This is the 11i and mySAP release timeframe.  Despite the Internet-looking nature of these bizapps, user adoption suffers because of the shortcomings.  People only use the apps if they have to (generally to perform transactions).  Internet apps are clearly ahead in the usability benchmark, and this is really starting to matter.

*  2004-2005. The next generation of websites are released.  These sites (called 2.0 sites) are richer but simple, more dynamic, more open, more collaborative and build in social networking.  People, especially the next generation of business users (teens, early 20’s), are now using these sites as a form of communication with friends and others on sites like Flickr, Digg, Blinklist, Yahoo Answers and more.  A lot of these sites have interactivity with AJAX.  Meanwhile, enterprise apps have hardly changed since the early 2000’s.   The usability benchmark is now accelerated in favor of Internet sites.  The companies that make these apps are planning to have a platform ready for the next generation of apps in the 2008-9, but by that time, the Internet sites will be so far advanced that the enterprise apps will be on the equivalent of where Internet sites were in 2003.    Business people will revolt if this gap isn’t closed.  You’ll see even a larger shortfall in user adoption.

So, at Coupa, we are going to bring Web2.0 to enterprise applications.   We’re starting in Procurement because that is our domain; it’s a big market, has a high ROI, and mostly because Procurement activities will benefit from Web 2.0 techniques.  The enterprise apps of today (or those planned for 2008) have nothing collaborative or “sticky” in them.  People do everything to avoid spending time on them.

We will change this. We will make business apps that people actually like to use. Imagine all users being able to go onto their Web2.0 application to buy things where they can drag items into their shopping cart (interactivity), post reviews of good items, read others reviews to know what seems to work (community), set items as their favorites which are viewable to others so those become the “most popular” items by the community (like Digg), being guided by others on difficult buys, maybe tagging items for easier searching.  The business users utilize their network of other users throughout the application instead of trying to track down someone in Procurement.  The business people won’t have to revolt anymore, and a more realistic visibility into spend will be available for Procurement…finally.

That was it–Our original Manifesto. In my view, what we’ve done over the last 4+ years holds to our beliefs.  We’ve delivered simplistic applications that deliver value, instead of confusing applications that deliver headaches and cost.  And we’re continuing to rapidly innovate with great capabilities in 2009.  And that’s not where it ends. Stay tuned for a couple exciting announcements planned for 2010.