How the Fastest Growing Technology Company Achieved Scale with Business Spend Management
Coupa customer UiPath—the #1 fastest growing technology company according to Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500 list—recently sat down with us (virtually) to share their story of how they’ve built business resilience with Business Spend Management (BSM). In the webinar (available here), the global leader in robotic process automation software provides tips on how to scale fast by controlling spend to stretch cash flow and what it takes to build a resilient business today.
A strategy of balancing growth with building efficiencies
UiPath’s transformation journey began in 2019 when company leadership recognized the company’s spend processes—which were mostly manual and offline—would not efficiently scale to support the rapid growth of the company. From using Excel spreadsheets to offline contract signatures and manual supplier onboarding, the company’s systems did not provide the fiscal controls to consistently spend responsibly or to help UiPath make smart investments to support their growth strategy.
The NetSuite ERP was great, but it just couldn’t do it all
The event featured Catalin Lupu, Global VP of Procurement at UiPath, responsible for driving spend management transformation globally, and Vlad Georgescu, a global procurement manager at UiPath and the project lead for UiPath’s spend management transformation initiative. They shared their story of building a more resilient business and what they learned along the way.
[Watch a replay of the webinar to learn how UiPath deployed Coupa’s easy-to-use procure-to-pay process and spend management automation solution that seamlessly connected with their NetSuite ERP.]
The three key components to improving your business resiliency
The webinar goes on to cover three key components of how a company can get control of spend to improve their cash flow and resiliency:
- Gain real-time visibility and control of spend. Because then you know where and how spend occurs and can use that data to reign in spend—or increase investment—in the right areas of the business with confidence. By spending more responsibility, you can stay on budget while reigning in costs—and you can do this without slowing down business while continuing to maintain financial oversight.
- Mitigate supply chain risk. By monitoring supplier health and constantly assessing third-party risk, you can proactively address issues to ensure business continuity and uncover any surprises buried in your contracts before they hurt your business. UiPath recognized their NetSuite ERP was great, but it just couldn't do it all. While it was the financial backbone of the business, the NetSuite ERP platform could not eliminate the manual, paper-based processing involved for purchasing, invoicing, and expense reporting that slowed down operations and increased risk.
- Acquire the agility to invest when the time is right. This means re-evaluating your supplier mix, in some cases consolidating suppliers for cost savings, and in other cases expanding suppliers to ensure operational continuity. It also means digitizing and improving working capital and cash flow management, as well as potentially increasing workforce flexibility with contingent labor.
Learn how UiPath used Business Spend Management to:
- Get leadership buy-in and employee adoption
- Put more than $200M in spend under management
- Achieve 90% of total spend under management and 80% of invoices PO-backed
- Help leaders clearly see what is being spent across the company
- Guide leaders to see where to work with suppliers more strategically
- Mitigate supplier risk with a robust vendor management strategy
- Digitize processes to support longer-term work-from-home initiatives
Listen to the webinar and learn how, with full visibility and control of your spend, you can—as UiPath did—reduce shadow spend, consolidate suppliers, negotiate cost savings, and become more resilient.
