Last week, California got pummeled by a series of storms.  For skiers already up in Lake Tahoe, that’s good news.  For others it meant mudslides, power outages and frequent flooding.

The flooding was problematic, especially depending on where you lived.  Schools were shut down schools, businesses closed and the roads were a nightmare for drivers.  This reminded me of a story told to me by one of our customers that I recently had the opportunity to visit.  The customer, a manufacturer, bought parts and supplies from many local suppliers.   That’s great, except that many of these suppliers are located in areas susceptible to flooding.  And the customer could not afford to go offline.

So management asked her to produce a flood preparation plan.  In it, she needed to evaluate which suppliers were in problematic areas and what the alternatives were.  That kind of analysis across your company’s supply base can be tedious.  But she had a a much better idea.  She went onto her Coupa e-Procurement application and right to the Coupa Dashboards.  Immediately she had a view of her supply base on a live map.  Then she overlaid her county’s floodplain maps to quickly identify her largest risks and who she needs to turn to if those suppliers went offline.   An analysis that could have taken weeks (if not longer) was a snap. Here’s a sample of what your map might look like.  Easy to drill up, drill down, highlight any of the red pins and you’ll see which supplier it is and some info on them.

I’ll be honest.  When our development team came up with the idea to include this mapping feature on our dashboards, we didn’t have the use case of flood planning in mind.  It was a fun, quick project and very much an example of next-generation usability, web 2.0, power of the cloud, etc.  And yet we now know that the feature has been super helpful for our customers in ways that we never could have imagined.

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!

Any other Coupa customers have a story about how they’ve used Coupa uniquely (or just have something to tell us)?  Please let us know!

Email jeannie.christensen@coupa.com with the details of how you’re using Coupa, and she’ll get your innovation posted to the Coupa Cabana.