Coupa Acquires LLamasoft to Connect AI-Powered Supply Chain with Spend Management

At Coupa, our vision has always been a comprehensive Business Spend Management platform that helps organizations maximize the value of every dollar spent, whether that dollar is direct or indirect spend. We do this by tapping into a wealth of data across nearly $2T of spend under management, empowering our community to be smarter together—continuously learning from each other’s spending patterns, global supplier risk management profiles, and behavior-based insights to optimize every aspect of that spend.

Aligned to this vision, Coupa recently announced the acquisition of LLamasoft, a leading provider of AI-powered supply chain design and planning software. Just like Coupa helps businesses make smarter decisions across their business spend processes, LLamasoft uses data and AI to help organizations make smarter supply chain decisions, faster. 

This acquisition not only is a testament to our focus on bringing all elements of business spend under one Business Spend Management (BSM) umbrella—from sourcing to payments and from inventory management optimization to supply chain management—but also to our relentless dedication to offer the most advanced technology to help our customers spend smarter, simpler, and safer.

In an independent analysis of the acquisition, IDC Research notes:

“The acquisition further extends Coupa's existing direct and supply chain capabilities for procurement, treasury, and legal operations by adding a myriad of demand and supply chain planning capabilities across network, inventory and transportation optimization, demand planning, supply chain planning, and sales and operations planning. These collapsed workflows will drive business resilience, digital innovation, and optimize results.

[It] closes the gap for procurement and finance teams and the C-Suite to now have total spend visibility into indirect, direct, services and complex spend types and have critical visibility to the cash and outlay impact immediately as supply chain decisions are made. The ability to connect procurement decisions with supply chain design and overall strategy means a more integrated planning capability and moves companies a step closer to resiliency and optimization. In this surprise but relevant move, Coupa is providing organizations greater visibility and agility through the connection of demand planning and supply chain.” Read IDC’s full analysis here. (IDC - Coupa Buys LLamasoft, Connecting Spend with Demand and Supply Chain Planning Capabilities - IDC document #lcUS46980220, published November 02, 2020)

Together at Last: Procurement and Supply Chain Management, Powered By AI

Our goal has always been, and remains, to help our customers work more effectively with suppliers and drive more value from their spend—whether indirect or direct. Our product and acquisition strategy focuses on identifying areas where technology deficiencies cause organizational weakness through the lack of visibility, control, or compliance. It is in these areas where we can create value and deliver a clear ROI.

Both Coupa and LLamasoft help break down business silos, provide greater visibility and control, and are relentlessly focused on customer success—driving value for our customers. We believe that all spend should be managed under one platform.

Whether in times of economic growth or uncertainty, having a comprehensive platform to control and manage all spend allows CEOs, COOs, and CFOs to mitigate risk and drive value. Step one is consolidating all spend on one platform. Step two is tapping into the power of all that data to optimize decisions.

It’s Time to Apply Community Intelligence Across All Business Spend

Now, more than ever, business leaders need to react to pressures to adapt faster, improve the business, and push boundaries to make better decisions. The rapid pace of change can be felt across all businesses and is not going to slow down. To retain a competitive edge, businesses must seek an edge across the entire business spend lifecycle.

For supply chain professionals, especially in product companies where direct spend is 70 to 80 percent of total spend, this means offering insights for better decision-making across business planning. It also means enhanced supply chain agility, supply chain risk mitigation, and efficient inventory management software, helping companies spend as effectively as possible in any economic environment. As supply chains grow increasingly complex, it’s necessary to be nimble and ready for anything, such as shifting from large boxes to ship food products to restaurants, to an increase in cans and bottles for home use.

But this acquisition is not just for the benefit of our many product-focused customers. With LLamasoft’s powerful AI technology and renowned data science talent, we continue to invest in delivering powerful spend insights, prescriptive recommendations, and the most cutting-edge technology to drive the most optimized spend processes—across both direct and indirect spend. This will help all of our customers achieve their goals to spend smarter. To us, it’s all business spend, and it’s all ripe for optimization.

By integrating all business spend in one platform with the most advanced machine learning and AI-powered technology, and tapping into nearly $2T of spend under management across the Coupa community, businesses now can maximize the value of every dollar spent. With LLamasoft’s powerful digital supply chain AI technology and supply chain analytics, we can deliver even greater savings and efficiencies to our customers, and ensure they are ready to make the smartest decisions—no matter what comes their way—in our rapidly-changing world.

For more information on the LLamasoft acquisition, read our press release here.