Launched this year, the IDC MarketScape: European Compliant e-Invoicing 2024 Vendor Assessment has positioned Coupa in the Leaders Category. According to the report, “Coupa’s network is a key benefit for the vendor’s ability to offer extensive and reliable e-invoicing solutions. Not only does it mean Coupa has total control over its e-invoicing solution, but with more than 10 million suppliers and buyers already on the network, Coupa has wide reach.” Download the excerpt here.
Why e-invoicing matters now
E-invoicing isn’t just about using less paper at the office anymore. The increasing number of e-invoicing mandates are pushing more businesses toward digital invoicing and forcing them to keep up to date with requirements about how invoices are created, sent, and received. Companies:
- Face fines if they aren’t in compliance with mandates. (In Germany, for example, if a company receives a domestic B2B service without an e-invoice, it could be denied an input tax deduction.)
- Lose a competitive advantage if they can’t adopt more digital invoicing strategies.
- Risk slowing growth if they can’t easily conduct business across borders.
There’s never been a better time for companies to rely on an AI-driven e-invoicing solution. Non-compliance is particularly costly in a time when margins are shrinking across supply chains and finance leaders are looking for ways to drive profitable growth. What’s more, almost all finance leaders agree that more automation would help their companies respond to macroeconomic uncertainties. Businesses built to thrive in this new era don’t simply digitize isolated processes. Instead, they bring procurement and invoicing onto a single, scalable platform that seamlessly provides access to AI innovations three times a year.
Learn more about the evaluation of e-invoicing vendors and see why Coupa was named a Leader.
Coupa’s e-invoicing capabilities help Wintershall Dea stay efficient and agile
Following the merger of Wintershall and Dea, Europe’s leading independent gas and oil company realized it had an opportunity to harness that momentum to drive change throughout the organization. Finance and procurement teams were using up to 20 different applications across regions and becoming increasingly bogged down in manual, error-prone tasks. Compliance was at risk, and these fragmented ways of working did not deliver the business agility that Wintershall Dea prides itself on.
With Coupa’s unified platform for all its global finance and procurement processes, Wintershall Dea achieved what’s known as the “margin multiplier effect” — compounding operational improvements that have an outsized positive impact on margins. E-invoicing has increased by a tremendous 213%, an excellent starting point for the company to comply with Germany’s Growth Opportunity Act (“Wachstumschancengesetz”), which introduces mandatory electronic invoicing for domestic B2B transactions as of January 1, 2025. Teams are also positioned to work faster and more efficiently with approval cycle times reduced by 61 hours. “The Coupa implementation is a really good example of a project delivering tangible benefits for the organization,” says Camiel Schijven, CIO at Wintershall Dea. “Much more time is spent on strategic initiatives rather than checking items that are already compliant.”
How Coupa helps organizations with e-invoicing transformation
High-performing companies in the Coupa community process 83.1% of their invoices electronically, improving compliance thanks to automated controls to match invoices to POs, applying account coding, and routing for approval according to Designation of Authority rules. Coupa’s compliance-as-a-service automatically provides the global benefits of e-invoicing so organizations don’t have to worry about staying ahead of complex and evolving local regulatory requirements. Compliance-as-a-service highlights include:
- Support for 53 countries and counting
- Out-of-the-box delivery — no development needed
- Unquestionable electronic invoice records
- Excellent auditability
- Lower compliance risks than paper processes
- A technical walkthrough report from PwC or KPMG to provide confirmation of compliance and control of fields throughout the process
As the hype around AI quickly shifts to a closer look at purpose-built AI, Coupa’s e-invoicing solution keeps customers connected to meaningful innovation in AI. Our advanced AP automation capabilities use AI to modernize AP processes, including:
- AI suggestions for account codes
- AI-driven Spend Guard, which monitors non-compliant spend in real time
- InvoiceSmash, which uses AI to extract invoice data from PDF invoices received via email
The IDC MarketScape: European Compliant e-Invoicing 2024 Vendor Assessment also recognizes Coupa’s:
- Connections and integrations. Coupa has a vast array of connectors available through its App Marketplace, with more than 100 application connections certified and standardized for the Coupa platform. These include a variety of AP and AR solutions alongside dedicated accelerators for major ERP systems including SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft. Some of these integrations are “instant install,” designed to require limited or no additional support to get up and running, while those that may need support are also designed to be as frictionless as possible.
- Network. Coupa’s network is a key benefit for the vendor’s ability to offer extensive and reliable e-invoicing solutions. Not only does it mean Coupa has total control over its e-invoicing solution, but with more than 10 million suppliers and buyers already on the network, Coupa has wide reach. Additionally, the approach Coupa takes to supplier onboarding — ensuring its free for suppliers to join the supplier portal — is a huge potential benefit for its customers and the expansion of their e-invoicing compliance.
Now’s the ideal time to prepare for e-invoicing
Some e-invoicing mandates, particularly in the EU, may be years away from implementation, but many others are on track to take effect in 2025. The landscape of regulatory requirements will only become more complex from here on out.
“As the market continues to evolve, organizations will have to be proactive in understanding regulatory changes, their impact on operations, and the merits of different vendors in this space to ensure they have the right solutions in the right markets at the right time.”
— Charles Aladesuru, Research Manager, IDC European Enterprise Applications
