Building a Better Back Office for Finance and Procurement Leaders

Facing an increasingly uncertain economic environment, procurement and finance leaders must make every dollar matter. They’re challenged to increase operating margins, combat continued supplier disruptions, and comb through a deluge of disparate data.

While we may not know what the future holds, one thing is certain: there has never been a more important time for Business Spend Management transformation. Coupa is committed to helping the Office of the CFO succeed in the present and withstand any changes the future holds.

That’s why we continue to launch new innovations that help every company and every team unlock their full potential. And at Inspire, we debuted new innovations to accelerate digital transformation initiatives and maximize the value and impact of every dollar a company spends. 

Why is now the time for digital transformation?

Today’s environment requires doing more with less. Back-office teams need technology to help them make faster, smarter decisions that bolster long-term growth and drive profitability. The most valuable technologies right now are ones that capture everything that comes before, during, and after the direct action of spending money. Because at the end of the day, it’s not just about saving money – it’s about being able to unlock resources to make the right spend decisions at the right time. 

Coupa is the most comprehensive BSM platform that integrates with other critical systems to provide a single source of truth for your business spend. 

Maximizing productivity and profitability through efficiencies

It’s no secret that business leaders are feeling increasing pressure to improve their operating margins. One way this can be achieved is by improving overall productivity and agility across the company. New solutions in Coupa bring more transparency to workflows – streamlining processes and maximizing productivity. 

With the newly launched Parallel Approvals, multiple users can make approvals simultaneously. This helps avoid bottlenecks and delays in the approval process. The average requisition-to-order approval time is 15 hours. Yet, high-performing companies in the Coupa community take only 3.6 hours. Parallel Approvals supports any and every combination of approval flows with no disruption to existing workflows. It reduces cycle times while maintaining necessary financial visibility, ensuring that all approvals are appropriate, accurate, and compliant. Parallel approvers can be configured for requisition, PO, and invoice approvals, with support for additional document types coming soon.

With new advancements in Guided Experiences, users can fill out forms in an instant, which then immediately set in motion actions through automation on the required next steps. Processes become easier and teams become more productive. For instance, when onboarding a new supplier, Guided Experiences helps users take the appropriate steps and, if required, even launch a supplier risk assessment. 

At the heart of Coupa's mission is to create a user-friendly and intuitive buying process that requires minimal training for employees, admins, and suppliers. The automation in Coupa helps evolve every user’s day-to-day, grows every team’s impact, and helps every company spend more time on strategic projects instead of manual, error-prone tasks. With Coupa, burnout declines and employee adoption – as well as satisfaction – climbs. 

Combatting disruption with supplier collaboration technology 

Ongoing supply chain disruptions continue to be a huge risk for organizations. And the last few years have revealed an over-reliance on outdated processes and legacy technology. This has resulted in a lack of visibility, with buyers constantly questioning if suppliers are able to fulfill orders. As businesses look to move forward, combatting ongoing disruption by building supply chain resilience is critical. 

Coupa’s new Supply Chain Collaboration suite of products allows back-office teams and suppliers to collaborate at a granular level. Supply chain risks are reduced through real-time collaboration throughout the direct procurement lifecycle. 

In phase one, we’ve launched Purchase Order (PO) Collaboration. PO Collaboration helps businesses gain transparency over their procurement processes and ensure timely delivery of critical direct, indirect, and MRO materials.  

Buyers and suppliers typically handle thousands of orders per week, with each having several hundred PO lines per supplier. To ensure operations run smoothly, buyers and suppliers need a single place to manage orders. PO Collaboration provides central workbenches for both buyers and suppliers where they can manage orders more effectively and collaborate through line-level commenting and confirmations.

Coupa Sourcing Optimization (CSO) has become even more prescriptive with Dynamic Sourcing Guides, tailored to help users run any type of sourcing event – from an auction to a simple request for information (RFI). By providing users with prescriptive step-by-step workflows for any event in CSO, businesses benefit from increased user adoption, as well as process efficiencies.

Driving better decision-making with real-time data

Many businesses are dealing with a data deluge. But, just because you have a lot of data, doesn’t always mean you’re harnessing its power. In fact, in a recent report from PwC, 55% of business leaders rated the quality of their data as low. (PwC, 2022)

To make data more actionable, we’ve tapped into the power of trillions of dollars of spend under management to help our customers gain exponential benefits. We’re continuing to double down on the value our platform provides with Community.ai. 

Pricing Insights now extends to 10,000+ more items to help customers cut costs on some of their most frequent purchases. With Pricing Insights, customers can compare the price they’re paying on a variety of products against what the rest of the Coupa community pays to ensure they’re getting the best price possible. In addition, Community.ai provides specific recommendations on opportunities for you to save money. 

To unlock even more value for our customers, we’ve made advancements to community-powered Insights. With new Insights Filters, customers can further tailor their community benchmark data by chart of account, company size, and more. Businesses benefit from a data-driven perspective on where they stand within the global community and how to improve. Teams get prescriptive insights on where to take action at the right time. 

One BSM platform for all your needs 

At Coupa, we’re co-innovating with our community to not only build a platform that is trusted to solve the challenges of today, but also to help businesses fundamentally change to scale transformations and growth. Every platform innovation we deliver is driven by our north star of ensuring our customers’ success. By bringing more automation, AI, and collaboration into the Coupa BSM platform, we’re providing procurement and finance teams with the technology they need for success.