The top performers who are able, consistently, to verify and track spending right across a large business are those that set the standard, and these organisations are the ones appearing in the top quartile of the Coupa Business Spend Management Benchmark Report [pdf]. Unlike many business-focused survey papers, the report is based on real-world data and metrics from companies and organisations undergoing a process of transformation involving continuous monitoring and iterative improvement.

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We spoke to Michael Odom, Value Consultant, at Coupa Software, about the report and its implications. The published findings give organisations that need to overhaul their spend processes useful guidance on “what a spend management program should be delivering, regardless of the technology you’re using,” Michael explained. “We see the Coupa Community achieving the amazing results in the benchmark report, and we feel it really sets the bar for finance and procurement teams to see what the right combination of people, process, and platform can bring to their company.”

“When you look at a transformation, you need to make sure that you have the right people in place with the right mindsets to action, and a process that fits in and is right for the business. And the technology ultimately supports both of those areas, it really is a three part equation that you need to get right,” he said.

When a business seeks to change, the technology part of the potential solution is often wrongly thought to provide both the catalyst for and the means to change a company, a misconception that’s common across business functions and not one specifically confined to finance and accounting. Just deploying technology often produces a faster version of the existing undesirable results.

The Coupa report presents 20 KPIs against which CFOs can measure performance in groupings such as ESG, source-to-contract, procurement, supplier management, invoicing, expenses, and payments. By analysing each area and ensuring the resilience of the three P’s (process, people, platform), companies can improve their spend performance. The best performers constantly strive to improve each metric, and thanks to data-based spend management systems, they have empirical information against which they can track progress.

At their most basic, spend management platforms can help prevent mistakes and flag potentially fraudulent spending thanks to rules baked into the software. But traditional algorithms’ yes/no basis for rules may not be appropriate.

“One set of patterns we see as potentially suspicious may be fraudulent activity for one [business] and for another, maybe it’s okay for them. Another great example would be split purchase orders. If I have approval up to $10,000, and I need to go and spend $30,000, it would probably be wrong if I went and raised three requisitions for $9999. Technically, I’m below my limit, […] maybe following the letter of the rules and the policies in place within the system, but I’m definitely violating the spirit of it,” Michael said.

The way to solve for particular use cases is to use cognitive software that learns from and adapts to each company’s patterns of spend, a dedicated AI that trains on day-to-day practice. That’s the premise of Spend Guard, a feature of the Coupa platform that’s helping the best-performing businesses who feature in the Benchmark Report.

“It basically acts as several FTEs (full time employees), when it comes to actually doing audit processes. It’s very difficult for a human to go through and look at all of the activity and all the data that’s flowing through a system – some organisations’ spend could be billions of dollars on an annual basis. It’s just impossible to go through and look at tens of thousands of orders unless you hire a lot of people. And even then, it’s a manual and imperfect solution to a problem that can instead be addressed with AI-based pattern recognition and automation. Spend Guard provides that type of audit capability.”

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Spending doesn’t have to be fraudulent for it to cost an organization. An issue as simple as clerical errors requires staff to manually check records and occasionally chase around the company asking colleagues for clarification. Michael recounted a story of a company in Australia interested in the Coupa platform to reduce costs of that nature. “They identified $800,000 of duplicate invoices. No one was doing anything wrong, per se. It’s just that invoices had been unknowingly raised multiple times. Staff went to enter the invoice and the platform said ‘these invoices are in the system already.’ So they added characters at the end of the invoice filename. Those invoices went through and were paid, and so [the company] had to claw that back. No one was actively trying to commit fraud, but a mistake happened and wasn’t caught until Spend Guard was turned on and detected it. And that’s just one example of where it had been going wrong.”

By resolving inefficiencies in processes and directly saving wasted spend, companies not only see immediate benefits, but the business at large can also improve its performance at a deeper level. “CFOs see activities that are taking place across operations and supply chain, even into areas like HR and IT. Being able to provide information back to those lines of business is important. There’s so much data available through procurement and finance […] for other parts of the business, it’s critical information whether you’re looking at sustainability, or operational efficiency.”

In our next article on spend management, we’ll look at aspects of spending like procurement and ESG and how tying together all the threads of spending can help organisations of any size achieve the type of efficiency metrics exhibited by the best performers listed in the Coupa Business Spend Management Benchmark Report. In the meantime, you can access the (non-gated) report here and learn more about the Coupa spend management platform here. Watch this space.

The post How to perform like the best in spend management appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

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With limited time to produce results, many leaders resort to an expensive Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution overhaul, but this can cause more challenges than it solves. Replacing an ERP or bringing in a new version can lead to significant disruptions as users adapt to new systems and workflows. Data migrations can also be tricky to implement properly, and the ROI of the new solution may not even be felt for another three or four years. Indeed, many businesses will have already made substantial investments in their current ERP systems, which would go to waste in the event of replacement.

Noting these disadvantages, some CFOs and CIOs are discovering how to deliver better business results quicker with a Business Spend Management (BSM) platform. These solutions can take just a year to implement and work alongside an existing ERP so that any existing software investments are not wasted.

Raymond Ngan, the Area Vice President at Coupa Software, told Tech Wire Asia: “BSM is a fit-for-purpose solution delivering high-impact business outcomes at a relatively low investment and lower risk over an ERP overhaul. We do not need to boil the ocean if it is not necessary.”

Tech Wire Asia takes a closer look at five ways BSM platforms can unlock hidden value from a business.

1. Increases spend visibility

Limited spend visibility can create several challenges for a business, including impeding efficient scaling by obscuring the true extent of financial commitments across all departments. Similarly, without a detailed breakdown of spending categories and patterns, companies may struggle to track their capital expenditure accurately and manage diverse financial portfolios.

A BSM platform enhances financial transparency by centralising spend activities and providing a comprehensive overview. This ultimately provides CFOs with the ability to budget and align financial strategies with business goals.

2. Breaks down data silos

Consolidation of information from different departments breaks down data silos. Isolated pockets of information can severely hamper efficiency, hinder collaboration and impede strategic decision-making. After integration with existing organisational processes, BSM platforms create a continuous flow of data that ensures relevant information is accessible to all stakeholders at any time, fuelling cross-departmental collaboration and communication.

3. Reduce environmental impact

With a BSM platform, organisations can meticulously track and analyse their spending across the entire supply chain, identifying areas with high environmental impact. By providing insights into resource consumption, waste generation and supplier practices, the systems empower businesses to make informed decisions that prioritise environmentally sustainable practices. Additionally, companies can conserve essential resources by digitising paper-based processes.

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4. Enables business agility

As the primary user interface, a BSM can integrate with ERP systems, facilitating swift adjustments to financial allocations and expenditure plans. The BSM’s emphasis on avoiding unnecessary customisations streamlines the implementation and upgrade processes, ensuring organisations can respond promptly to evolving business needs without the burden of making time-consuming modifications.

5. Improve supplier relations

Inefficient AP processes and payment delays brought on by low internal spend visibility can significantly impact supplier relationships. Any reputational damage might also have a domino effect on new business opportunities and, ultimately, revenue.

However, a best-in-class BSM can reduce these difficulties and delays through automation. With AI-driven commodity classification, for example, transactional-level spend can be mapped to a standard taxonomy with consistency and accuracy in reporting, making it easier to manage supplier payments.

The Coupa solution in action

XL Axiata, a leading telecommunications group, faced inefficiencies in scaling due to separate processes and ERP systems across its six business units, resulting in low spend visibility. It also placed over seven per cent of spending on capital expenditure but did not have the means to track its financial portfolio accurately.

The company decided to implement Coupa’s AI-driven BSM platform to help it gain visibility over both indirect and direct spending. The solution, particularly its Advanced Analytics feature, connected XL Axiata’s disparate ERPs and centralised all financial data and processes, bringing 94 per cent of spend under management. XL Axiata was able to unlock more capital and improve budgeting and resource allocation for future projects.

Mr Ngan said: “Coupa de-risks and future-proofs your business by streamlining your enterprise-wide spend and insights into supplier risk and supply chain risk.”

CBRE, a global leader in real estate, experienced similar success when it integrated Coupa Invoicing Management. The company faced challenges with a high number of supplier invoices at risk of late payment, plus poor visibility and accountability in the payment cycle, straining supplier relations.

Implementing Coupa’s AI-driven commodity classification engine improved payment fulfilment by almost 90 per cent, streamlining the invoicing process and providing accurate spend categorisation. The solution also resulted in a user-friendly experience for suppliers and AP, leading to a more efficient payment process and stronger supplier relationships.

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With the amount of financial data businesses collect increasing at a high rate, having proper control of data is crucial for informed decision-making. Coupa’s BSM provides real-time visibility into payments across teams, currencies and accounts, allowing organisations to cut wasteful spend and optimise their processes.

Its comprehensive suite of applications, covering areas such as Procurement, AP and Supply Chain Management, provides a unified, cloud-native extension to existing ERP systems. The no-code customisation approach, combined with regular releases driven by customer feedback, enable its users to adapt and innovate.

Coupa’s solution facilitates a touchless AP process with automatic monitoring, ensuring efficiency and accuracy in intake, purchasing and invoicing. It simplifies supplier onboarding, helping to foster stronger relationships and reduces risk through AI-powered threat detection and performance assessment. Furthermore, Coupa’s innovative Community Intelligence, fuelled by a repository of over $6 trillion in anonymised transactional data, offers benchmarking capabilities and prescriptive insights into spend management.

Mr Ngan said: “Coupa’s approach to ensuring customer success focuses on driving a successful, measurable outcome for your business. Our joint success is measured against the success metrics that we jointly sign up for at the get-go of our partnership.”

Find out more about how a comprehensive BSM solution like Coupa can help future-proof your organisation by downloading ‘The CFO’s Guide to Business Spend Management’ ebook or contacting its expert team today.

The post Five ways a comprehensive Business Spend Management platform can unlock growth for your business appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

BSM empowers finance leaders to take a holistic approach to maximizing and controlling spend, providing unprecedented visibility and optimization opportunities; the solution is purely focused on providing quantifiable value to customers—from savings to process efficiency to compliance.

Coupa’s unified BSM cloud platform amalgamates siloed and fragmented finance operations, bringing procurement, accounts payable, expense management, and much more into one user-friendly interface. The Coupa user interface will be familiar to employees from the ubiquity of consumer e-commerce sites on which it’s based, but the simple and clear appearance for administrators, employees, and suppliers belies the scalability and power of the underlying platform.

Coupa seamlessly integrates into popular and niche ERP systems, including NetSuite, SAP, and Microsoft Dynamics, ensuring a continuity-focused transition to the next generation of spend management software.

For global companies, Coupa offers easy and in most cases automated management of regional tax and compliance requirements. Combining centralized control with carefully decentralized execution, Coupa ensures that full compliance always underpins business agility. Informed purchasing and efficiency decisions can always be taken safely, therefore, with global reach and effect yet local compliance.

With a range of solutions ranging from accounts payable (AP) automation to budgeting to AI-powered opportunity management, your finance department will drive growth, not prevent it, quickly developing a strategic role with staff learning to adapt and take on a new digitally fluent stance. Your team will soon be able to address underlying, endemic issues rather than putting out daily fires.

A prime example of where resource distribution in a finance department can stand improvement is expense management. Here, Coupa’s systems ensure reductions in spending leakage and improve employee-employer relations with accurate and timely-paid expenses. Desktop and mobile entry and delegated approval ensure that expense ledgers are updated in real-time. AP departments also benefit greatly from Coupa, exponentially increasing the number of invoices that can be processed per day without increasing human resources.

With Coupa’s cloud-based purchase order system as part of the overall P2P offering, purchase requisitions can be routed to the appropriate area of the delegated authority matrix and approved quickly, and then converted to purchase orders by robotic process (RPA).

From daily employee expense management through to multi-billion-dollar supplier contracts, Coupa’s cloud-based solution is your trusted partner. It provides numerous supplier management offerings including contract management, providing right from a collaborative authoring stage up to negotiation management and final operationalizing, as well as supplier information management, invoicing, and advanced sourcing optimization.

This is followed, via the same interface, with insightful tracking and drawing of Community Intelligence—artificial intelligence applied to Coupa’s dataset of over $700 billion in spend under management. This delivers real-time intelligence and benchmarking to help finance leaders and their teams strategically optimize spend and processes across their organizations.

“We believe in providing a seamless, integrated experience for all Business Spend Management needs and giving employees what they need to do their jobs,” said Raja Hammoud, vice president of Product Management, Coupa Software, (our italics). “Without even thinking about it, they’re getting more spend under management and becoming a strategic part of your […] team.”

By removing repetitive activities and mundane tasks, human error is effectively written out of the finance division’s equations, in Source-to-Payment, in supplier management and in expenses; right across all areas of enterprise spend.

With quantifiable business results, often within days of launching, Coupa’s solutions present real Value-as-a-Service. Unlike traditional Software-as-a-Service models, which focus on offering a product with a certain set of features, Coupa measures its success against the quantifiable, measurable improvement that Coupa’s financial solutions and processes deliver to its global customer base.

What success looks like in your company over the long-term depends on your vision, backed by Coupa cloud software and the largest network of established suppliers in the world, in the Coupa Open Business Network.

With Coupa, the CFO gains visibility into operations, control over processes, removal of errors, a pro-active and empowered workforce. Now far beyond procurement, today’s large enterprise is thinking BSM. To get in touch with a representative from Coupa in your area to learn more, click here or attend a live demo, click here.

The post From ERP roots via Procurement-to-Pay, Coupa brings you Cloud-Native Business Spend Management appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.