Coupa + Amazon EC2 = Energized Procurement!

One of the great things about the blogsphere is we don’t have to wait for them to stop the presses to get a great story in at the last minute. We just type, save, publish – and presto! – you get the latest news as soon as we get it, as it happens, and, when you’re really lucky, before!

Tomorrow, the latest press release from Coupa will blanket the wire, traditional e-Procurement companies will cringe, and new age technophiles will rejoice. For tomorrow, the world’s simplest e-Procurement system will be available on-demand to enterprises of all shapes and sizes at a fraction of the cost of traditional e-Procurement systems. Just like SalesForce.com revolutionized the CRM world, Coupa is revolutionizing the e-Procurement world – and then some! By basing their new services on Amazon’s EC2 Virtual Grid Computing Cluster, they are ensuring that they’ll always have the computing power required to ensure rapid response times, regardless of how many users decide to use the system at exactly 4:55 p.m. to get that last order of the day out before they leave.

Normally it takes a big merger, acquisition, or introduction of a brand-spanking-new technology to shake-up a market – but Coupa has achieved puree with nothing but open source and a revolutionary pricing model. They don’t know it yet, but I’d say at least three quarters of the e-Procurement companies I track over on the resource site are in dire straits once procurement professionals realize everywhere that it doesn’t cost in the high six, or even seven, figures for basic enterprise e-Procurement anymore – and that it doesn’t require a six month roll-out plan either! Specifically, I predict that any company trying to make a living just selling decade old order management, e-RFX, e-Invoicing, and catalog management technology is headed for extinction. Unless they are also providing advanced payment solutions, supply chain finance, inventory visibility, or other advanced service offerings – they’re going to have a very tough time competing with a true multi-tenant on-demand e-Procurement platform with unlimited scalability and exponentially decreasing costs on a per-user basis as your organization grows.

This brings us to their transparent four layer pricing model – the first of its kind – that is designed to make the Coupa e-Procurement system affordable to even the smallest 3-guys-in-a-garage start-up while simultaneously making it best-value for your large enterprise who’s still struggling to embrace the 21st century and just needs a basic e-Procurement system. How affordable? How valuable? Although the exact prices won’t be available until tomorrow, I have it on good authority that a 10-user organization can get started for as little as 3K a year (and maybe a little less)! And – you better be sitting down for this one – a 1000 user organization can get started for under 50K per year! That’s less than $50 / user / year! And the enterprise package also includes their new “Quick Start” program which gives you a dedicated solution delivery expert, guidance on collection of key company information, and assistance in configuring your Coupa-On-Demand instance – including chart of accounts, users, suppliers, contracts, catalogs, approvals, and integration advice.

Coupa has also been working hard since their last release to extend their functionality, and now supports a number of common office supplies and electronics vendors using punch-out and cXML order delivery (including Office Depot, Office Max, Dell, and VWR), direct quickbooks order import via Traxian for small businesses, and an integration web services layer that automates the movement of data in and out of Coupa-On-Demand using XML and an open API that supports seamless integration with accounting systems and ERPs.

And I’m sure there’ll be goodies aplenty on their newly designed web-sites that will be live tomorrow. That’s right – Sites! In addition to Coupa.com, there’ll also be a new Coupa.org site as well that will provide a dedicated home for Coupa Express, the world leading open source project for e-Procurement that has already surpassed 9,000 downloads and will probably pass the 10,000 mark before the month is up!

So watch the wire – and check out Coupa*! The e-Procurement revolution is at hand!

And, for those of you still wondering, this post fits in perfectly with the Sustainable Sunday theme : On-Demand e-Procurement that uses Amazon EC2 Virtual Computing Grid to only consume as much resources (and energy) as is required to support your needs and keep your costs low helps you sustain your procurement initiatives!

*Wouldn’t Coupa make a great sponsor of Sourcing Innovation? They’ve been pretty innovative lately.  Feel free to leave any comments – including dissenting ones! – below. I know they read this blog from time to time.