Air Methods Transforms Procurement with Coupa

Air Methods, an air medical transport provider that operates 400 aircraft through bases located throughout the U.S. and transports 70,000 patients a year, chose Coupa to completely transform its business spend management processes.

Though it briefly considered SAP Ariba, said Mike Kingzett, Senior Director of Business Transformation, his team did their own due diligence. “We met with several vendors and included various internal stakeholders in those meetings to get their feedback.” In the end, it came down to SAP Ariba and Coupa.

Coupa had the exact capability to help Air Methods achieve its three-pronged strategy, which included building out a fully-staffed procurement team (including a strategic sourcing arm), leading the first wave of sourcing to quickly achieve cost savings, and implementing new procurement technology to automate and capture those savings.

Coupa gives the team access to a hugely powerful tool — data. Air Methods uses the powerful data tools in Coupa to gain a stronger position at the negotiation table. “Having the data helped improve our relationships from transactional to strategic and put us into the driver's seat.”

“The sourcing savings we delivered leveraging Coupa was $20 million in annual savings in the first wave,” he said. The team now has consistent procurement processes, improved spend visibility, and much better relationships and contracts with suppliers.

“One of the biggest things that Coupa did was help us to get our arms around spend and reduce the number of suppliers, which we cut by 43% (8,400 to 4,700).” Read the Air Methods case study to learn how Coupa helped the company decrease its supplier base, reduce overdue payments from 5% to 1.8%, and speed requisition cycle time from more than one week to less than one day.