The Spendsetters Award Snapshot: Casey’s

The Spendsetters Awards recognize companies and individuals who have leveraged Coupa’s technology to drive new success in the Business Spend Management (BSM) industry. In this series, we’ll share the unique story of each 2023 winner.

Casey’s Jaime Robles is the winner of the Spendsetter of the Year: Business Leaders Revolutionizing Spend Management 

Casey’s is a Fortune 500 company and the third-largest convenience store in the U.S. They’ve also grown into the fifth-largest pizza chain nationwide, serving communities across 16 states in more than 2,400 locations.

Jaime Robles has 25+ years of procurement and strategic sourcing experience. He is Casey’s Chief Procurement Officer (CPO) who spearheaded the digital transformation of source-to-pay at the company.

Before implementing Coupa in 2020, Casey’s had no formal procurement function, with processes mainly manual and paper-dependent. Digital transactions were less than 10%, and a PO (purchase order) system was not used, leading to poor spend visibility and compliance control.

Jaime took on the challenge of building Casey’s procurement strategy from the ground up and envisioned a procurement ecosystem that could add new tools as business needs changed. While in the beginning stages of rolling out Coupa’s platform, the pandemic hit. Instead of being a potential hurdle, it helped accelerate Casey’s digital transformation. The company needed to increase its digital transactions out of necessity, proving Jaime’s strategy was vital for its success.

“Eighteen months later, we were hitting best-in-class levels of transactional, operational, tactical, savings, visibility, and such,” says Jaime. “Now we’re going to take it to the next level of maturity. How do we go for ESG? How do we go for supplier diversity?”   

By the numbers

After deploying Coupa, Casey’s now has:

• +80% spend under contract 
• +75% of indirect transactions done through catalog-based purchasing 
• +60% reduction in single-source suppliers
• $16 million in spend flowing through Coupa’s vCard program
• 90% of invoices PO backed

These benefits have saved Casey’s over $200 million in three years.

In their own words

“We use Coupa to make procurement invisible. And what I mean by invisible is using technology to give every operational team the data and tools they need to make the best decisions for the business. They have all the power to do their job without a lot of oversight.” — Jaime Robles

Why did you choose Coupa?

I asked myself, “How do we build transparency into our processes? How do we build a self-service model?” The self-service model puts technology at the core and gives my users and internal stakeholders the power to make the best decisions. Coupa was the ideal choice because it offered the transparency, integration, and workflow capabilities needed to achieve this self-service model. Now everyone can see how much they spend with certain suppliers or preferred vendors. They know what kind of contracts we have and understand what we’re spending against the budget. To further expand this ecosystem, we’re now working on a supplier data hub to harness AI capabilities.

What does transformation mean to you and your company?

One word: disruption. Since day one, our CFO gave my team the responsibility of not only procurement but of all OPEX (operational expenditures) and COGS (cost of goods sold) for the company’s P&L (profit and loss). That’s a lot of pressure, and so you have to think outside of the box to deliver results. You need a disruptive mindset to achieve what seems impossible. Despite unforeseen events like the pandemic, inflation, and supply chain shortages, we built a new business model with technology at the center. And we did it remotely in just 18 weeks.

What advice do you have for procurement leaders trying to help their companies transform?

Don’t take no for an answer. You can’t let the IT function or the finance department determine how you’ll operate your procurement team. I think you need to have a clearly defined vision, a strategy to get you there, and a business case to prove why it will work. You have to earn your seat in the C-suite. Make it happen and own it.