Coupa Offers AI-Driven Features to Simplify Spend Management

Coupa, SAP partner and spend and supply management solution provider, recently introduced over a dozen AI-driven innovations – amounting to more than 100 throughout its spend management platform – to help companies optimize process efficiency, improve productivity, and make it easier for employees to do their jobs, freeing them up to work on higher-value initiatives.

“Our goal to be a margin multiplier for every business large and small worldwide requires a relentless focus on co-innovation with our customers. As market dynamics continue to shift and operating capital becomes more limited, companies are searching for more ways to drive profitable, sustainable growth. Coupa’s leading total spend management platform underpinned by our community-generated AI gives customers predictive insights, prescriptive decisions, and automated actions needed to drive smarter and more profitable decisions,” said Fang Chang, Chief Product Officer, Coupa. “By replacing archaic processes with Coupa’s AI-driven solutions, businesses will run more efficiently, grow more effectively, and operate more confidently.”

With increasing organizational demands on productivity and efficiency, Coupa continues to invest in embedding AI throughout its spend management platform. New AI advancements include:

• Coupa Navi™, our GenAI-based personal agent, became generally available in September. Navi supercharges productivity, up-leveling how customers interact with the Coupa platform by finding document status and approvals faster, accelerating requests, and serving as an always-available knowledge base for instant answers to questions.
• Contract Intelligence, powered by new enhancements, provides customers with risk-informed clause recommendations helping reduce exposure to potential issues. New enhancements also provide GenAI-generated legal agreement summaries, giving users important context whether from third-party contracts or negotiations.

According to recent SAPinsider research, enterprises are prioritizing procurement and sourcing as a proving ground for AI. The report AI: State of Adoption 2024 revealed that 45% of companies are currently using or implementing AI in procurement and sourcing operations or plan to implement AI in 12-24 months. And another 36% are actively evaluating AI applications in procurement and sourcing.

Coupa’s platform provides businesses with one view into all their spend – both direct and indirect. By unifying all spend categories in one place, organizations can maximize savings and efficiency gains. New enhancements helping to maximize category spend include:

• The Coupa Advantage Marketplace offers quick access to a wide range of goods from trusted suppliers – including Schäfer Shop, Staples, and Würth – with pre-negotiated rates and financial benefits. Helping finance and procurement leaders identify savings opportunities, improve spend visibility and efficiency, and eliminate maverick spend, especially for tail spend. From fresh flowers to latex gloves, the Advantage Marketplace provides access to millions of goods helping customers maximize savings.
• Service Maestro enhancements allow customers to create, view, and manage contingent worker records and assignments, providing full visibility into services spend. This enables businesses to drive efficiencies, optimize costs, and comply with staffing regulations.

Air Methods, an air medical transport provider that operates more than 400 aircraft throughout the US, turned to Coupa to transform their back-office operations. Before Coupa they experienced largely manual processes, lacked standardization, and had poor spend visibility. With one platform, Air Methods has digitized its processes and increased visibility and control while fostering greater accountability and opportunities for savings.

“Coupa’s Advantage program has been instrumental in helping Air Methods increase savings and operational efficiencies across our unique complex supply chain and procurement processes,” said Jake Shearer, Category Manager, Air Methods. “By partnering with Coupa Advantage suppliers, we’ve achieved more than $500K in annualized savings, 100% PO-based spend with Advantage suppliers, and a significant consolidation in tail spend all in the first year. We look forward to using the new Coupa Advantage Marketplace to further optimize our tail spend and increase savings.”

“Our September release, and each of our product releases, drives the Coupa platform forward so our customers can reach their ambitious goals. We continue to invest in new and powerful AI use cases, which gives our customers a disproportionate advantage to achieving top-line growth and bottom-line performance gains,” said Chang.

What this means for SAPinsiders

Participate in SAPinsider research. SAPinsider will be publishing a research report in December on AI in the Supply Chain that will explore the key drivers causing companies to adopt AI in supply chain, the primary strategies companies are deploying to operationalize AI in supply chain, the critical underlying capabilities that must be in place in order for AI to deliver durable outcomes, and the leading technology tools and providers companies are using to embed AI into supply chain processes and systems. Take the survey today and let your voice be heard!

Leverage AI to reinvent spend analysis. AI-enabled solutions like those offered by Coupa can automatically classify and categorize spend data by analyzing historical procurement and financial data. Using natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning algorithms, AI can accurately group expenses into categories like office supplies, software, travel, etc., even if the descriptions in invoices are inconsistent. Further, AI algorithms can detect spending patterns and trends in the data that humans might miss. This can include identifying seasonal purchasing patterns, changes in supplier behavior, or discovering categories with higher-than-expected spend.

Rethink contract and compliance management. AI can analyze contracts to identify clauses that may lead to extra costs, missed discounts, or hidden penalties. NLP algorithms can extract and highlight important information from contracts, allowing procurement and legal teams to act on cost-saving opportunities. Also, AI can continuously monitor transactions against contract terms, ensuring suppliers are complying with agreed-upon pricing and service levels. It can flag non-compliant actions, such as overcharges or late deliveries, and provide suggestions for renegotiating better contract terms. And AI-powered systems can audit invoices and POs automatically, checking them for compliance with contractual terms, pricing agreements, and budgetary limits. This reduces manual intervention and speeds up the auditing process.