One of the best ways to learn about your investment is to hire a Coupa consultant to guide you through the implementation process. If you have made the choice to transform your procurement capabilities beyond what you could ever imagine, welcome to the Coupa family. Prepared to be impressed.
Coupa Procurement
Coupa is a cloud-based SaaS program that was developed to assist businesses of any scale with their spend management structure. In order to maximize every penny that comes in and goes out of the business, it is important to know where the best opportunities for savings are, and what best way there is to spend at any given moment. Procurement is only one small part of the capabilities of the platform.
Between sourcing, forecasting, and managing vendors there is a lot of room for error when the entire structure is based on one human’s perspective of the spending outline. The Coupa platform can introduce the company to a broad view of potential sources, investment opportunities, and management strategies.
Beyond the typical structure of a procure-to-pay process, the Coupa platform helps the entire process, from source to pay to be as effective and efficient as possible based on the needs of the company.
The Source-to-Pay Solution
When it comes to the element of source-to-pay there is no doubt that a company has to have the best practices possible for the needs of the establishment. Since every organization is unique, there will be a unique process for each company. Standard, best practices do not work for businesses that require a technique that is beyond “standard.”
Although procurement is a word that is used generally to explain a certain procedure in a business that has to do with buying and spending, sourcing is the overall base of the operation. Without quality sources, a business will have issues.
The basic steps for a practical source-to-pay endeavor are:
- Planning
- Sourcing
- Buying
- Paying
Although every company will vary, these four essential steps can bring the structure of the purchasing department to its optimal potential if they are done correctly.
In the planning stage of every procurement cycle, there is a need for everybody that is involved in the purchasing department to visually inspect the inner workings of each step and see where they can be improved or left alone.
The Coupa platform simplifies the planning step because all of the pertinent information is right there at the fingertips of the people that make the financial decisions for the company. What this means is that there can be less time and energy spent on the planning phase of the process because the entire layout of the process will already be available for all to see.
Strategic Sourcing
Strategic sourcing is one of the most important factors for the health of a company. When it comes to spending in an effective way, if the sources are out of line, the entire company can suffer from it.
Some of the factors that qualify for a great source are:
- Price of goods or services
- Ability to offer great deals
- Reliability of source
- Availability of goods or services from the vendor
- Potential for ROI
The difference between manual sourcing and sourcing through the Coupa platform is that Coupa has the ability to seek out and compare some of the best matches of sources for a company based on certain parameters and needs.
For example, if the company needs a certain type of filter for a piece of equipment the software can search for sources that carry the filter type, the prices that many vendors offer it for, the availability of the filter, and the track record of success of the vendors that supply the filter.
On an even larger scale, the platform can search through millions of vendors that offer goods and services varying from baby clothes to gutter cleaning…and everything in between. With the help of artificial intelligence, the best of the best sources can be located, listed, and compared to each other. The decision to go with any of the vendors can be made by the platform, or by the administrators, based on the settings of the software.
Digital Transformation Integration
Most of the businesses that are thriving today are in existence simply because they did not fail to transform their practices from the physical realm to the digital realm. The way that the world is shifting from analog to digital it is easy to see that in order to keep up with the times, people need to convert to a digital platform, at least on some type of level.
The Coupa platform is equipped with a structure that can easily integrate with other existing programs. Whether a company is just starting out on its digital transformation journey or has been implementing technology for a long time in order to get the highest value of the Coupa implementation, Coupa makes it simple to interchange technologies and work effortlessly throughout various platforms.
Accounts Payable Automation
With the Coupa platform, it is possible to turn the old way of accounts payable into a new and improved version that automatically invokes paying and processing of spend. It is possible to cut out excess time and energy that could be used in other places by automating expense report reconciliations without using people and resources to generate them.
In the event that a company receives early payment discounts, the software can locate the dates, accommodate the payment and get the discounts with every payment resulting in maximum savings and value.
Since Coupa is such a comprehensive application once it is implemented and dialed in there is not much room left for any errors. An error-free solution that delivers automatic processing is a critical tool in the success of a business.
Spend Management
The way that a company spends its money can either pull the business underwater or raise it above other businesses. Spending money can result in great losses or establish great gains. The way that the procurement element of Coupa works is that it allows each step of the procurement process to be examined and optimized for the best results.
Although there are probably millions of skilled and experienced procurement professionals that absolutely are good at what they do, there is no comparison to an application that is programmed to find and implement solutions that are most beneficial for the bottom line of any company.
- See spending trends
- See potential opportunities
- See potential failures
- Forecast spending opportunities
By optimizing a spending strategy that saves money and brings more money back, the Coupa platform is a sure way to build revenue for the company and ensure larger returns in the future.
Conclusion
Coupa implementation is, by far, the most comprehensive strategy that a company can set forth for the success of every dollar spent. Procurement is only a part of the whole. Coupa gives a great view of the entire company on a level that is easy to see and understand.
By bringing each aspect of the company into one central platform that issues alerts, generates reports, suggests vendors, shows downfalls and opportunities all in one place everybody that is involved with the spending element of the company can see exactly what is going on with finances, and where the finances can be cut back, or further invested upon. Coupa procurement is the best solution a company can provide its company for optimum health and effective spending practices.