7 Stories Coupa Saw as Major Developments in 2018

Faster than you can say “e-procurement,” 2018 has gone by in the blink of an eye.

It’s been a year of contrasts—we experienced the exhilarating heights of the largest bull market in history at the start of the year, then pondered the potential signs of its end when markets faltered in the second half. We saw AI continue to march steadily into the business world, even as many companies just finally began to get their arms around digital transformation. And all across the political and economic spheres, we saw the important role that communities play in solving problems, even as those problems, like Brexit and immigration, continued to confound us.

So as we close out the year, we thought we’d look back at a few of our top stories from the Coupa Blog that capture some of what made 2018 so unique. They run the gamut, touching on the themes of finance, spend, risk, and technology, and give you a good sense of what we, at Coupa, saw as major developments over the course of the year.

Here they are, in case you missed them the first time, or would like to revisit with us:

How CFOs can see the future
CFOs are always trying to predict the future, but one thing many couldn’t see was the major shift happening in their own roles. In this post, Todd Ford, CFO at Coupa, shares his advice on the transition from being a financial CFO to an operational CFO, and how leaders can embrace new ideas to better predict their companies’ futures.

Welcome to the Era of BSM—Business Spend Management
In the business world, there’s a long tradition of technology acronyms, and they all have their own life cycles. Some, like enterprise customer management (ECM) are vogue for only a handful of years, while others, like enterprise resource planning (ERP) seem to have more than 9 lives. In this article, Coupa CEO Rob Bernshteyn introduces us to BSM, business spend management, and why, as an evolution of all that came before, it’s such a powerful and relevant concept today.

Why pre-approved spend is the ultimate benchmark
As companies undertake digital transformation projects, one of the most obvious metrics is a reduction in manual effort and paperwork. But it’s a tautology that hides measurable value—of course digital transformation will reduce manual work, that’s the point. In this post, Ben Mlynash, Director, Solutions Architecture, Professional Services at Coupa, walks us through a key metric that demonstrates measurable value: the percentage of spend that’s pre-approved.

The biggest problem in B2B payments isn’t money. It’s data
Payment terms to suppliers continued to lengthen in 2018, and the trend has been ongoing for the past decade. Long payment terms benefit buyers but put suppliers, especially those in the long-tail of the supply chain, at severe financial risk. In this piece, Ravi Thakur, Senior Vice President, Business Acceleration, at Coupa explains how data has historically been the problem that created this situation, and why data now is also the answer.

How to use automation to speed expense report approval
Waiting for an expense report to get approved is a common pain shared across employees in almost every business in every industry. But making this process faster and more efficient isn’t just good for employees, it’s incredibly valuable for businesses as they look to reduce errors, produce more useful data, assess risk better, and use resources more wisely. Automation has reached a stage, here in 2018, where all of these things are achievable right now.

Building a Risk-Intelligent Culture
As the years go on, businesses often become more complex. Their links to their customers, suppliers, data systems, grow more entrenched and more important. This, of course, exposes them to greater risk. And risk is an area that many companies struggle to deal with. In this post, Ahmad Sadeddin, Senior Economist at Coupa, outlines 3 key steps to building a risk-intelligent business culture.

How to Discover New Suppliers Using Community Intelligence
Community intelligence has been a major development at Coupa that we’re incredibly proud of. We see community intelligence as the natural evolution of big data on business platforms. In this post, Vincent Toesca, Vice President, Product Management, at Coupa, details our thought process behind developing community intelligence and how it helps solve the crucial problem of assessing suppliers.

From all of us at Coupa, thanks for reading, commenting, and engaging with us this year. We look forward to bringing you more exciting and interesting content next year, whatever 2019 has in store, so please stay tuned! Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!