Coupa

Coupa’s cloud-native BSM platform provides users with end-to-end processes to help companies get the visibility they need to spend smarter. Coupa helps businesses manage their spending across all procurement, payment, and supply chain transactions. This is done using an automated 2- and 3-way invoice matching process using the platform’s unified procure-to-pay process.

Coupa is a platform that’s designed for everyone and is built for scale, allowing different companies to continue using it as they grow. The unified platform approach that Coupa has allows businesses to manage their purchases and other expenses in only one place while also taking advantage of automation.

Coupa Features

Businesses will be able to select from Coupa’s suite of spend management applications to let users and suppliers conduct all their spending activities in one platform. Users will be able to request a custom quote for a Coupa plan based on the applications they intend to use. Some of these applications include the following:

Procurement

Coupa’s procurement application improves the procurement experience by giving businesses full visibility and control. Both purchase requisition and order processes can be simplified and tracked in real time for users to get the most pre-approved spend in the procurement system.

Users will be able to use several procurement software tools through Coupa, including Coupa Procure, Coupa Open Buy, Coupa Services Procurement, Coupa Budgets, Coupa Spend Guard, Coupa Inventory Management, and Coupa Contract Lifecycle Management. These solutions can make e-procurement easy by simplifying requisitions, reducing rogue spending, and efficiently keeping track of the budget.

Invoicing management

Users will be able to improve cash flow and streamline accounts payable by reducing paper invoices, automating payments and billings of matched invoices, and conserving money by capitalizing on discounts and stretching DPOs.

Coupa’s invoicing management solution comes with Coupa Invoice Automation, InvoiceSmash, Spend Guard, and Coupa Global Compliance. These help capture invoice data without any manual work by automating data extraction and invoice processing.

T&E management

Coupa’s intelligent expense management solution delivers basic expense processing, controls costs, reduces spending leaks, integrates end-to-end expense management processes, automates reporting, and complies with regulations using intelligent audit algorithms. Coupa’s T&E management gives users the flexibility they need with their expense management software while being able to seamlessly use the advanced capabilities they need. 

Coupa Pay

Coupa Pay gives users a complete picture of all their spending and payments. Using Coupa Pay helps users to manage all of their payments to employees, suppliers, and subsidiaries from a single platform, allowing them to optimize cash flow and gain greater visibility and transparency over all financial data.

Strategic sourcing

Using Coupa allows users to have new sourcing opportunities to find the right suppliers to meet their needs. Users will be able to tailor sourcing events, analyze supplier bids and maximize infrequent sourcing resources with supplier insights, scenario analysis, intelligent opportunity identification, and collaborative decision-making.

Using Coupa Strategic Sourcing will help alert users on sourcing opportunities, get cross-platform spend visibility, run routine sourcing events, manage complex strategic awards, comply with risk management policies, and connect sourcing with purchases and contracting.

Contract management

Coupa allows users to automate contract workflows to increase value and decrease risk by having visibility on all the terms of all contracts. End users will be able to take advantage of a guided experience to highlight risks for legal review and ensure that there are appropriate protections for the contract.

Contract lifecycle management with Coupa gives users access to accelerated contract drafting, streamlined collaboration, accelerated negotiations with MS Word, and optimized contracting processes. 

Treasury management

Users will have greater visibility into their money and payments and be able to make smarter financial decisions. Financial risks are also reduced thanks to AI-driven fraud controls and bank functionalities built into the platform to improve a company’s operational performance. 

The Coupa Treasury has multiple functionalities, including cash and liquidity management, debt and investment management, risk & exposure management, multilateral netting, reporting, forecasting, in-house banking, payments, fraud protection, and SWIFT services.

Suite synergy

Businesses will be able to unlock more value from Coupa’s products by seamlessly integrating them with other BSM applications. They will be able to integrate the procurement product with Coupa’s contract lifecycle management product, the invoicing product with Coupa Pay, and other combinations of Coupa’s products.

Coupa Benefits

Using Coupa helps companies spend their money faster and automate certain processes. Some of the clear benefits of using Coupa include the following:

Custom platform

Thanks to Suite Synergy and Coupa’s suite of products, users will be able to create a custom platform that meets their needs, depending on the products and integrations they choose. Users also won’t have any problems using the products since they are all accessible on one platform. The fact that users can only get a custom quote also means that the cost will vary per integrated product, so there’s a chance to lower the costs of a plan to make Coupa more affordable for smaller businesses.

Coupa as the core of a BSM ecosystem

Coupa will function as the core of a user’s entire BSM ecosystem. This platform provides users with a central hub to connect them with different marketplaces, technology partners, payment providers, and the user’s own IT landscape. Coupa gives users immediate connections to many leading marketplaces, banks, payment providers, technology partners, and the Coupa community.

Integrating Coupa with different ERPs—including Oracle, NetSuite, and SAP—is easy. Additionally, Coupa’s open and straightforward approach to software integration makes the cost of maintaining the integrations much lower than that of more complex systems. Users also have the option to integrate only what they need instead of being forced to use heavy lift integrations that other systems typically require.

World-class assurance and reliability

Coupa’s foundation is its ability to deliver a scalable and secure service; therefore, users will be able to manage the platform with confidence Both small and large businesses will have a secure cloud-based service hosted on Amazon’s EC2 Elastic Compute Cloud that comes with multiple disaster recovery systems and failovers.

Coupa also has a Governance Risk and Compliance department that maintains policies, processes, and documents to help users understand Coupa’s security compliance certifications. Coupa achieved the highest levels of security certification, which includes HIPAA, SOC II, PCI DSS, FedRAMP, and ISO27001.

Reduced burden on IT

Small businesses will be able to use Coupa as a secure platform to manage their spending while also taking full advantage of the reliable web hosting on Amazon EC2 Elastic Compute Cloud. Smaller businesses that can’t afford to hire an in-house IT team will be able to stay confident with the platform as all aspects of the platform’s infrastructure, security, redundancy, and failovers are managed by Coupa.

The fact that the solution is scalable and secure makes it even more enticing for small businesses when they get an affordable custom plan. Also, Coupa features a consistent 99.9+% uptime, which means most users won’t have problems accessing the platform as long as they have a good Internet connection.

Flexible platform

Coupa is a flexible and extensible platform with over 10 million available configuration options, hundreds of API integrations, custom objects, and a Process Builder to tailor Coupa to a business’ needs. IT teams will also not run into major upgrade projects when the platform gets updated since Coupa uses no-code customization.

Pricing

Users will need to contact Coupa to get information on the cost of using the platform’s suite of products. Coupa is scalable, and all manner of businesses can use the platform, which means even small businesses can afford to use it. The pricing is subscription-based, and there is no free trial or free plan available.

Conclusion

Coupa is an excellent cloud-based BSM platform that is accessible on any platform that has internet access. Both small and large businesses can easily use Coupa to manage their company’s purchases and expenses, and all they need to do is get a custom quote by contacting Coupa directly. Not having clear pricing upfront may be off-putting for some users, but being able to get custom pricing for a scalable solution should be good enough. Additionally, being able to use strategic sourcing and treasury management can help companies save more money in the long run by allowing them to make smarter spending decisions.

This platform offers plenty of customizability for its users, which allows them to personalize it according to their needs without having to integrate unnecessary third-party applications or Coupa products. This f allows users to cut costs by only integrating the necessary products in the platform while still ensuring the user has the features they need to take advantage of Suite Synergy, Coupa’s secure web hosting, Governance Risk and Compliance policies, processes and documents, and Coupa Pay to help manage all the payments a company makes.

Coupa is a comprehensive, open, and user-centric BSM platform that’s ideal for different users thanks to its scalability. With increased financial data visibility provided by Coupa, any business can spend more wisely and benefit from streamlined expense and contract management processes.