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Coupa Launches First And Only Freely Downloadable E-Procurement Solution

Coupa eProcurement Express Simplifies Purchasing, Delivers Unparalleled Value for Mid-Sized Companies

Foster City, Calif. - March 26, 2007 - Coupa Software today announced the availability of Coupa eProcurement Express, the industry's first and only freely downloadable e-procurement software solution. Coupa eProcurement Express is also the first purchasing system designed specifically for mid-sized businesses. The affordable solution combines best-in-class functionality for control of departmental and employee purchasing with simplicity - simple to acquire, install and maintain and simple enough to use that employees actually prefer it for their business purchasing needs.

Coupa eProcurement Express simplifies and improves corporate purchasing by working the way employees do. Unlike traditional enterprise software whose high license cost and need for training makes it unsuitable for mid-sized organizations, Coupa brings the intuitive user experience of consumer Internet sites to e-procurement. The resulting solution tackles the problem at the root of most e-procurement failures - employee noncompliance. For the first time ever, a purchasing tool is easier for employees to use rather than avoid, achieving the unfulfilled promise of e-procurement: increased savings and improved efficiency.

Companies of all sizes can now reap the benefits of e-procurement while bypassing the cost and risk of a traditional enterprise-class software implementation. The product may be downloaded from www.coupa.com or http://sourceforge.net/projects/coupa. And because Coupa eProcurement Express is an open source project, development teams can quickly extend or customize it to suit their unique environments, while also sharing product extensions with the Coupa developer community.

Coupa was co-founded in 2006 by Oracle veterans Dave Stephens and Noah Eisner, who together built and grew Oracle's purchasing solution, popular among Fortune 1000 companies. Stephens, who led Oracle's purchasing applications group, spent nearly a decade building and refining its products, while Eisner pioneered the supplier collaboration field. They formed Coupa in recognition of a common problem: too many implementations of e-procurement failed to produce promised results because of lack of employee buy-in.

"The industry had produced a number of fine purchasing systems, but they all failed the typical employee," said Dave Stephens, founder and CEO of Coupa. "It became clear that the benchmark for usability set by consumer websites was moving faster than enterprise-class companies could keep up. E-procurement needed a complete overhaul."

About Coupa eProcurement Express
Coupa's approach takes best-in-class e-procurement capabilities and weaves in an intuitive, user-friendly and collaborative experience to encourage mass employee participation. This helps to enhance - rather than frustrate - the experience of the average employee who is not vested in the e-procurement system's value, while also making the solution even easier to use as more employees participate.

Specifically, Coupa eProcurement Express delivers the following features:

• Drives the entire e-procurement lifecycle, from employee requisitioning for any type of good or service, through approval workflow, catalog and contract pricing, purchase order automation, receipt and delivery.
• Provides a user interface that replicates a consumer-like buying experience, immediately putting employees in a comfortable, familiar environment while eliminating the need for training.
• Enables purchasing and financial teams to write and publish buying policies, then contextually present the appropriate policy as the employee shops, driving usage towards preferred supply relationships while avoiding off-contract purchases.
• Delivers a community experience in which employees rate products, vendors, and how well certain products worked for a specific company's needs or environment. This constant feedback loop gives procurement the information needed to continually improve buying decisions and vendor agreements.
• Empowers employees to add classification tags based on how real users search for products, so that like-minded employees can share lists and find products faster.

 

"Coupa's vision is twofold - delivering the best procurement solutions to market and at the same time making them available to everyone, even smaller companies that wouldn't previously consider e-procurement," said Coupa founder and vice president of product, Noah Eisner. "When it comes to e-procurement, companies don't want a salesman talking about 'value', long implementation cycles, or exhaustive user training programs. They want to just jump in and use it for themselves and make sure the solution really fits their business needs. Today's Coupa eProcurement Express is only the beginning of bringing a new and much-needed value to more organizations."

About Coupa Software
Coupa was founded in 2006 to fulfill the promise of effective procurement for companies of all sizes. Coupa simplifies purchasing for employees while providing much-needed control for the purchasing department. Coupa's flagship product, Coupa eProcurement Express, is the industry's first open source purchasing solution, providing a cost- and worry-free entry even for companies embarking on a new e-procurement initiative.

For more information please visit www.coupa.com or call 650.585.6306.