THE 2024 TOTAL SPEND MANAGEMENT BENCHMARK REPORT FOR SMALL AND MIDSIZE BUSINESSES
KPIs to Make Margins Multiply™
This report provides finance and procurement leaders at small and midsize businesses with benchmarks and actionable insights based on Coupa community performance. Learn how to use Coupa’s AI-driven S2P platform as a margin multiplier.
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Structural cost pressures. Tighter financial conditions. Cost volatility. Increasingly complex supplier relationships. Today’s economy is fundamentally different. And in this new era, the ways that most companies are continuing to do business aren’t designed to build margin-multiplying capabilities that drive profitable growth. The companies that can’t adapt are the ones that close their doors forever.
To guide business transformation, finance and procurement leaders can look to best-in-class performance in total spend management. How are top performers using AI, data, and advanced technology to multiply margins and make smarter decisions? This report features community-powered benchmarks across 16 KPIs to help leaders answer questions like:
- To what extent is my business capable of stopping margin erosion?
- How can I transform our company’s spend management to gain a margin multiplier? Where will I need to invest?
What makes Coupa benchmarks unique?
They span
16
benchmarks
in KPIs across ESG compliance, source-to-contract, procurement, e-invoicing, payments, and expenses.
They’re driven by
15
years
of Coupa advances and co-innovations in AI and machine learning.
They draw from
$6
trillion
in global cumulative transactional spend from a network of more than
10 million
buyers and suppliers.
Sneak peek: Key benchmarks for finance
Explore all 16 benchmarks
Overall savings
WHAT IT MEANS
Traditional spend management approaches typically yield 2% to 3% in savings relative to overall spend. Top performers this year saved far more by applying total spend management best practices.
WHY IT MATTERS
- Total spend management is becoming essential for profitable growth, as finance leaders focus on controlling organizational spending in an increasingly complex, uncertain world.
- A total spend management platform provides finance leaders with crucial visibility into company resource use.
- Increased visibility across all spend types, from cost of goods sold (COGS) to operating expenses, helps leaders fund their company's growth through ongoing and disciplined spend control.
HOW TO IMPROVE
Pre-approved spend
WHAT IT MEANS
The total amount of invoiced spend linked with approved POs.
WHY IT MATTERS
- Finance teams can inspect each transaction before the spend is committed and control costs in real time to meet targets and increase working capital.
- AP generates accurate accruals without follow-up when teams have greater and earlier visibility into spend that’s committed but not invoiced.
- It helps lower operating expenses since it’s more likely to go onto negotiated contracts, resulting in lower prices and better terms.
- Virtual cards help streamline pre-approved spend. Teams can increase liquidity by driving card rebates and optimizing the card’s payment cycle.
- Fraud prevention is more robust when more invoices are matched against POs automatically.
HOW TO IMPROVE
Invoices paid digitally
WHAT IT MEANS
The percentage of invoices tied to digital payments out of all the total electronic invoices processed on the Coupa platform.
WHY IT MATTERS
- They enhance risk mitigation. Digital payments improve payment security and fraud detection through additional control mechanisms and AI-driven learning.
- AP teams work much more productively with touchless operations. Digital payments reduce manual work to increase SG&A efficiency, and they enable automatic reconciliation.
- Teams can also see which payment to make when, without error. This creates more opportunities to optimize working capital and manage cash through virtual cards and early-pay discounts.
- It’s easier to strengthen relationships with suppliers when they know they’ll be paid – in the right amount, on time, and consistently.
HOW TO IMPROVE
Baseline your performance.
Measure yourself against the industry.
Take the right next moves for competitive advantage.
