- Coupa Software Inc (NASDAQ: COUP) — a leader in Business Spend Management (BSM) — has announced a new set of products that extend its cloud-based platform to give customers increased spend visibility
Coupa Software Inc (NASDAQ: COUP) — a leader in Business Spend Management (BSM) — has announced a new set of products that extend its cloud-based platform to give customers increased spend visibility, help mitigate supply chain risk, and increase business agility to adapt to change. During this time of global economic uncertainty, Coupa’s latest enhancements utilize the power of the customer community and enable businesses to be more resilient and ultimately spend smarter.
“With so much unpredictability in the world, companies are being challenged to quickly respond to and navigate through the fallout from COVID-19,” said Raja Hammoud, executive vice president of products at Coupa. “More than ever, these businesses need real-time visibility into their spend, the ability to mitigate their supply chain risk and cautiously manage their cash flow. We’re excited to provide our BSM community with the new capabilities to help them adapt to the current times and spend smarter every day.”
Now finance and procurement teams need to make quick decisions about where to cut costs and shift spend in order to protect businesses. And this requires real-time visibility and complete control of spend across the entire organization. Coupa’s BSM platform unifies all business spend ranging from sourcing to contracts and invoicing to payments. The newest capabilities enable teams to act decisively.
1.) Big Data Powered Prescriptions — Utilizing data from the Coupa community, prescriptions are now ranked based on the total estimated impact that actions will have on the business. And this feature makes it easier for teams to know what actions to take to reduce costs and increase team efficiency.
2.) Automated Spend Controls — New capabilities and controls automatically block purchases that exceed negotiated contract value and allow for the instant pausing of contracts, invoices, orders, payments, and supplier information request forms.
3.) Democratized Shipment Tracking — Coupa now gives small- and medium-sized suppliers the ability to provide buyers with the same level of shipment tracking that larger businesses have historically provided. And Coupa integrates with over 15 carriers, including UPS, FedEx, USPS, and DHL to give end users visibility into the shipping status of orders, including expected delivery date and detailed shipment history.
To minimize supply chain disruptions, businesses need to monitor supplier health and identify emerging risks or potential delays. And to achieve this, Coupa added several new features to automatically augment risk monitoring and mitigation:
1.) Continuous Supplier Performance Monitoring — New capabilities are continuously collecting employee feedback while spend and contract transactions occur to identify and alert customers of inherent and residual risk in the supply chain.
2.) Prevent Sourcing & Payment Fraud — Coupa Spend Guard further utilizes the power of the Coupa community to detect suspicious spend in real time across sourcing, purchasing (including supplier collusion), payment currency deviations, invoicing, and more.
3.) Unified Risk Processes — Customers can now start supplier risk assessments like Pandemic Related, InfoSec, and GDPR directly from the sourcing event process, increasing synergies across sourcing and risk teams.
Businesses now need to be prepared to pivot priorities and work processes to adapt quickly to change:
1.) Greater Payment Flexibility — Coupa Pay has expanded capabilities across the B2B payment continuum to include options like early payment discounts, payment authorization authority, batch payments, virtual card payment delivery via cXML as well as guided bank account creation to give businesses and their suppliers even more payment flexibility.
2.) Unified Spend Views — Coupa has consolidated goods and services spend, including work orders and contingent labor to enable informed decisions on overall spend and contingent workforce. And this visibility gives customers the agility to add temporary workers at the right time and avoid disruptions through tenure limit notifications – a key lever companies use to protect their business.
3.) Centralized Categories — With centralized dashboards, companies are able to take immediate action based on key category insights and prescriptions presented while embedded project management enables streamlined tracking of tasks.
“Now is the time for companies to get all their spend managed through one Business Spend Management platform,” explained Mickey North Rizza, program vice president at IDC. “Having complete visibility of spend will give financial leaders the ability to recognize unrealized savings, potential fraud, and opportunities for increased spend efficiency so they weather volatile market conditions, even during the most challenging times.”
