Coupa Acquires Exari - Uniting Advanced Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) with Coupa's Business Spend Management Platform

John Callan
John Callan
Sr. Director, EMEA Product & Segment Marketing, Coupa

John Callan is responsible for product marketing and go-to-market strategies for the Coupa Spend Management platform. John earned his Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Minnesota and a dual degree in Engineering and Mathematics from University of Dublin, Trinity College.

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Earlier this month, we made a really exciting announcement: The acquisition of the leader in Contract Lifecycle Management, Exari. We warmly welcome our new colleagues from Exari and together we will continue to work hard every day to ensure our customers’ success. 

It’s worth taking some time to explain the thinking behind this acquisition and our plans to rapidly unify the Exari capabilities with our Business Spend Management platform.

So, let’s talk about why: Why did we acquire Exari? As our CEO, Rob Bernshteyn, has said on numerous occasions, Coupa’s acquisition strategy is focused on adding key, advanced power applications around our unified, organic transactional engine. And so, this acquisition further delivers on our vision of Business Spend Management by extending and enhancing our Contract Management “Power User” application solution, further proof of the “C” in Coupa, which is, of course, our Comprehensive vision.

What Coupa CLM Advanced will help our customers do is maximize the value of their $1T in core transactional spend and all their spend processes and data captured in the Coupa BSM Platform. And of course, the Exari team is a great cultural fit for Coupa. I can attest to that personally already in my interactions with folks there. Responsive. Thoughtful. Smart. So, in all, it really is a beautiful synergy!

Let’s talk some more about Why: As you probably know, the contract forms the foundation of all commerce. “Commerce” being defined as simply the activity of buying and selling, especially on a large scale. Without the contract, parties and counter-parties do not have a clear understanding of their obligations, risks, terms, conditions and any other aspect related to their commercial relationship.

The uncomfortable fact today though is that in most businesses, the contract—that core instrument of commerce—is completely disconnected from the business’s actual spend, and all the processes and data that surround and support that spend. Which, when you think about it, doesn’t make any sense whatsoever, especially when we consider that the contract is the foundation for agreeing on what you will spend with a counter-party, when, and under what conditions. Contracts also crucially outline the risks and obligations that exist on both sides of the spend transaction.

The result of this disconnect is that businesses can’t actually realize the savings that have been negotiated into the contract. They encounter higher risk due to the business inadvertently using wrong suppliers or wrong contract language with an agreement, and they miss opportunities for savings, better payment terms, or even finding new suppliers due to poor visibility across all aspects of a contract.

This is why the union of Exari’s advanced CLM capabilities with Coupa’s Business Spend Management platform makes so much sense. By joining forces, we will enable companies to maximize the value from one of their most important assets—their contracts—by combining them with our contract repository, over $1T in core transactional spend on the BSM platform, and expanding into our other power user applications where the use of contract data is critical. Then, when you think about the possibilities offered by sharing contract data via Community Intelligence, what we have here will be a truly game-changing offering.

Our product teams are already working very hard to unify Exari’s advanced CLM capabilities with the Coupa BSM platform to ensure a seamless experience for users to enable them to:

  • Easily create and manage compliant contracts (including those previously created)
  • Operationalize contracts against business spend transactions across the spend lifecycle (from sourcing & negotiation through to supplier performance)
  • Turn negotiations into real savings through on-contract purchasing, and reduce risk through compliant contracts
  • Automatically turn contract data into information such as risk scores using intelligent contract data extraction

So, exciting times ahead! We look forward to continuing to work with our customers to ensure that with this acquisition we are delivering real, measurable value when it comes to Contract Lifecycle Management and its place in Business Spend Management and ultimately, ensuring our customers’ success.