Coupa Visionaries Council Forecasts Bright Future for Cloud Spend Management

SAN MATEO, Calif. – April 21, 2011 – The inaugural Coupa Visionaries Council gathered at Coupa’s global headquarters last month to discuss the future of procurement and how Cloud Spend Management (CSM) uniquely addresses the fundamental challenges every enterprise must tackle in order to succeed in today’s economic climate.

The evolving role of the procurement function, the need for collaboration between corporate procurement and finance, and the move towards Cloud-based spend management platforms were the top three topics of conversation at the recent Visionaries Council summit.

With decades of procurement experience and dozens of successful spend management initiatives under their belts, the Coupa Visionaries Council had some breakthrough insights during the meeting.

“These Visionaries have been there, seen it, and done that. Their thoughts have been infinitely helpful in shaping Coupa’s vision of on-demand Cloud Spend Management,” said Rob Bernshteyn, Coupa CEO.

“Continually asking for discounts isn’t going to work. There has to be a whole new approach,” commented Jim Baehr, Senior Advisor for Greybeard Advisors, a leading provider of advisory services in procurement transformation, strategic sourcing, and supply chain management.

Blade Network Technologies CFO Mark Verbeck added, “We felt starting with eProcurement was the correct place to begin because it’s really the core of any other activities you might do like contract management or supplier evaluations.” After Verbeck implemented Coupa at Blade, he saw an immediate decrease in purchase order approval time from over a week to just over one day.

The Coupa Visionaries Council is currently comprised of Jim Baehr (Senior Advisor, Greybeard Advisors), Lee Garbowitz (former CPO, Cadbury North America), Bill Huber (Director of CPO Services, TPI), Mark Verbeck (CFO, Blade Network Technologies), and Mike Wilding (CPO, Rent-A-Center).

About Coupa Software
Coupa is the leading on-demand provider of solutions that control and streamline purchasing and expense management for organizations large and small. Coupa Cloud Spend Management delivers an easy to use, fast to deploy and affordable solution for requisitions, expense reporting, approval management, purchase orders, RFQs, inventory and invoicing, with no hardware to buy or software to license. With deep domain knowledge in e-procurement, a best-in-class cloud platform, and a fast-growing community of customers doing business with over 100,000 suppliers, Coupa enables smarter spending practices that empower companies to save money quickly. Learn more at: coupa.com or call 650.931.3200. Read more on the Coupa Blog, or follow @Coupa on Twitter.