First in a series of ’sneak peeks’ at Coupa’s blockbuster summer release.

With layoffs on the rise (the economy shed another 552,000 jobs in May), the topic at the kitchen table these days tends to be about how to cut costs and manage household spending.  Can we cut our cable bill?  Refinance our house? Spend less on travel or entertainment?  It’s no wonder that internet companies like Mint.com and Pageonce.com are growing rapidly.  They help millions of consumers better understand their spending habits, and alert them to recent activity that brings them dangerously close to blowing the household budget and overspending.  I rely on one of these services to provide me with leading indicators of my personal spending.  Lagging indicators, like the bills collecting in the mailbox, don’t help me spend less. By the time you get the bill, it’s too late.  The damage has been done.

Business is struggling too.  But what are companies doing to proactively manage their spending?  Most organizations set annual budgets, but have limited visibility to actual spending throughout the year.  And they certainly have no visibility to leading indicators of potential over-spending.  The situation is actually pretty bleak for most companies, and quite frankly, their application of technology to rectify the situation is lagging.

Come June 15th, that’s about to change! Borrowing some of the concepts from the consumer internet world, Coupa will introduce Spending Alerts and Predictive Spend Analytics as part of its Summer 2009 release. Coupa customers will be able to set alerts to warn the right people if the Marketing Department is on a spending trajectory that will likely cause them to go over budget for the period. CFOs can then drill in to the Coupa application and proactively set some simple controls that can prevent overspending before it happens. The CFO can look at the real-time spending forecast, and then plan accordingly or make adjustments to spending approval levels well in advance of the actual spend taking place. With these simple but powerful before-the-fact insights, smart companies will get on top of spending to get the competitive edge they so need in these tough economic times.

To learn more, check back on www.coupa.com on June 15th, or contact your sales representative for a private screening of the new summer release.

Coupa's new executive dashboards introduce spending alerts and predictive analytics to help companies take corrective action on overspending before it’s too late.