Category Archives: Adoption

Robbie and the Coupa Factory, Part II

Oompa Loompa Doom-pa-dee-do
We can’t stop building products for you!
Oompa Loompa Doom-pa-dah-dee
If you are wise you’ll try it tout-de-suite

What do you get when you’re UI obsessed?
Teams of coders who are distressed
Until they reduce the clicks to one or two
That’s what the ‘loompas will do for you.


Coupa is still trying to make the easiest end-to-end e-Procurement platform on the market, and still innovating new releases on a quarterly cycle.

So what’s changed since our last update in July?

  1. A greater focus on the front office.
  2. A stronger focus on supplier support.
  3. Better Inventory Management.
  4. Universal Search.
  5. Transactional Spend Analysis.

A greater focus on the front office.
This shows up in the form of better budget visibility and better contract management. In Coupa, a user can see what the budget impact of a requisition will be before they submit it, not after the fact. This feature is more powerful than it appears to be on the surface. For example, in one large retail client, every department that used Coupa was under budget, while every department that did not use Coupa was over budget. When people see the impact of a purchase before they make it, they are much more frugal.

With respect to contracts, Coupa has set up a “contract dropbox” where all contracts can be uploaded to the system and real-time spend dashboards by contract. Again, this may not sound that important until you realize that without such dashboard, the average user in an organization does not see the importance, and impact, of a contract. When spend quickly adds up, it becomes clear not only which products and suppliers are critical to the organization, but which contracts — and it also becomes a trivial exercise to determine the cost of buying off contract, which is where a lot of the savings leakage occurs in an average organization. The reality is that most savings available to an organization in the majority of non-strategic and non-high dollar categories lie in off-contract spend. In many organizations, just getting the majority of spend on contract can increase savings 50%. (Given that, on average, savings leakage is 40%, and the majority is due to maverick spending, shifting another 30% of spend on-contract where only 60% of spend was on-contract before increases savings opportunities by 50%.) For example, one company saved 120K in one year just be getting bottled water on contract with Staples!

A stronger focus on supplier support.
Suppliers, who are never charged by Coupa (as this greatly increases the odds that they will use the system) will soon be able to invoice their Coupa clients any way that they want to. In addition, a lot of effort has been put into insuring that their UI is as easy to use as the buyer’s UI.

Better inventory management.
Coupa has created a new API for inventory management and the system can automatically determine if the order is for internal inventory or external inventory. In addition, it now supports configurable lists for items bought on a regular schedule, which support par levels and auto-buy calculations based on current inventory to make it simple for a user to do regular re-orders. In addition, the system can auto-generate GL codes based on user, department, and commodity so that the re-order is charged against the right budget and filled by the right contract.

Universal Search.
One thing that Coupa learned is that its average user did not want to leave Coupa and punch-out to a third party site to find a product or service they needed to accomplish their day-to-day job. In response, Coupa now includes punch-out and other external products and services from partner-sites through scraping and auto-loads. In addition, they have integrated back-end reporting that lets Procurement know when prices change.

Transactional Spend Analysis.
They have implemented a basic data analysis tool (GoodData) that lets a user slice and dice spend by contract, commodity, department, and other basic measures so that they can better understand the Spend Under Management through the Coupa System. While not a replacement for a full-fledged Data Analysis Engine, it now has the same power as any package that contains a canned set of spend visibility reports and a basic report building engine, which is impressive for a Procurement platform. No more heavy lifting in Excel for the simple stuff for sure!


Oompa Loompa Doom-pa-dee-do
They can’t stop building products for you!
Oompa Loompa Doom-pa-dee-dar
They have the goal to take your spend far.

High Definition Adoption Measurement Part VIII

Today’s guest post is from John Shaw (Senior Director, Adoption Services) of BravoSolution, a leading provider of spend analysis, (e-)sourcing, supplier performance management (SPM) and healthcare sourcing solutions and a sponsor of Sourcing Innovation (SI). It is the eighth and final part of an eight (8) part series, which forms a white-paper that BravoSolution is releasing to the general populace today.

Yesterday’s post (Part VII) provided a case study that describes typical challenges faced by a national provider of construction materials. In the case study, a 30,000-foot view might also show positive progression even though only 23% of forecasted spend is being sourced through the system and four (4) users have an average event size that is significantly lower than expected value.

Today’s post completes the series on High Definition Adoption Management by reviewing some best practices for implementation.

From 30,000 feet to Detail:

Best-of-Breed Sourcing isn’t conceptually all that much different then Best-of-Breed software adoption programs. A competent Sourcing Professional knows that an organization doesn’t operate based upon negotiated savings, but upon realized savings. It isn’t until an agreement is implemented and adopted by an organization that the contract yields value to the organization.

The same is true with the tools and process that you select for your sourcing team. The path to success lies in how your team adopts those tools and processes.

Whether you are managing a contract or managing an e-Sourcing implementation you can be infinitely more effective if you understand how it is being utilized by the organization.

If you are starting your journey towards understanding adoption in your organization, start at 30,000 feet. Stop, ask questions, find your initial opportunities and keep digging deeper. Adoption measurement is a journey and the end measurements tend to be different for every organization.

Don’t get lost in the woods!

Remember your business case. Yes, it will naturally evolve over time and those changes will need to be managed and communicated. Overall, it should serve as a compass for helping your Adoption Team navigate your organization, keeping them on track in guiding your organization towards superior performance.

Discuss, Commit and Revisit

Share your data, open a discussion with Category managers on what make sense for measurement in their Category and get a commitment from then on their targets. Make tool usage metrics a regular part of your team communications so the team knows it will remain a priority within the organization.

Now that the series is complete, please show your appreciation for this first-look by downloading the white-paper through this link or the big orange download button below. This will help to ensure that SI is able to bring you more educational pieces on a first-look basis in the future. Thank you.


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High Definition Adoption Measurement Part VII

Today’s guest post is from John Shaw (Senior Director, Adoption Services) of BravoSolution, a leading provider of spend analysis, (e-)sourcing, supplier performance management (SPM) and healthcare sourcing solutions and a sponsor of Sourcing Innovation (SI). It is the seventh of an eight (8) part series, which, when complete, will form a white-paper that BravoSolution will be releasing to the general populace tomorrow.

Yesterday’s post (Part VI) provided a case study that describes typical challenges faced by an energy company in a (European) regulatory environment. In the case study, a 30,000-foot view would also show positive progression even though a number of users are not creating public notices or providing award notifications within the designated time window.


Today’s post provides another example of High Definition Adoption Management for a national producer of construction materials.

Company C: Measuring Efficiency

Our final company is a national producer of construction materials. The organization has recently created its first centralized sourcing team and that team is working diligently to bring more spend under management. The team knows there is an abundance of opportunities to provide value if they can simply find ways to be more efficient in applying their sourcing process to more spend.

When looking at sourcing efficiency, the organization is focused on the following areas:

  • Spend Volume:
    Measurements to track the amount of Spend being sourced through the system.
  • Event Size:
    Tracking how much spend is managed per event, a key indicator of efficiency.
  • Event Speed:
    Breaking the process down into its component steps and measuring duration.

These measurements help us to understand the speed and throughput of spend through the sourcing team.

Symptoms of poor adoption.

Part VIII, the final part of the series, discusses some best practices for progressing from the 30,000 foot view to a detail view.

High Definition Adoption Measurement Part VI

Today’s guest post is from John Shaw (Senior Director, Adoption Services) of BravoSolution, a leading provider of spend analysis, (e-)sourcing, supplier performance management (SPM) and healthcare sourcing solutions and a sponsor of Sourcing Innovation (SI). It is the sixth of an eight (8) part series, which, when complete, will form a white-paper that BravoSolution will be releasing to the general populace this Wednesday.

Last Friday’s post (Part V) discussed the importance of the category to High Definition Adoption Measurement (HDAM) and the process required to transition to HDAM given that understanding. HDAM is achieved when adoption measurement and adoption opportunity assessment have been aligned with organizational objectives and category-specific strategies.

Today’s post provides an example of HDAM for an energy company operating in a regulatory environment.

Company B: Measuring Transparency

Our second company is an energy company operating in a European regulatory environment. The organization receives funding from the government and has a legal obligation to follow public sector procurement regulations. These regulations focus heavily on creating a sourcing process that provides equal opportunity to all suppliers.

Whereas the previous private sector manufacturer (Company A) focused their e-sourcing tool on generating supplier value, this organization’s primary focus is:

  • Process Compliance:
    Specific timeline requirements for public notices and publications must be met.
  • Equal Treatment of Suppliers:
    Communications and Evaluations must be timely and fair.
  • Auditability:
    All supplier interactions must occur in the system.

As in our previous example, we can monitor system activities to understand how user behaviours roll up to this overall business objective.

As we change the focus of the analysis to transparency, the metrics we measure in the system also change.

Now we are looking to understand where system functions tie directly to regulatory compliance. Beyond looking for violations, this data also has the potential to serve a quantitate evidence of fair dealings with suppliers in the event of a supplier challenging an award decision in court.

Here are some examples of the types of data we might monitor and react to:

Symptoms of poor adoption.

Part VII will provide an example case study that describes some of the adoption challenges of a national producer of construction materials with respect to sourcing process efficiency.

High Definition Adoption Measurement Part V

Today’s guest post is from John Shaw (Senior Director, Adoption Services) of BravoSolution, a leading provider of spend analysis, (e-)sourcing, supplier performance management (SPM) and healthcare sourcing solutions and a sponsor of Sourcing Innovation (SI). It is the fifth of an eight (8) part series, which, when complete, will form a white-paper that BravoSolution will be releasing to the general populace next Wednesday.

Yesterday’s post (Part IV) provided a case study that describes typical challenges faced by a large global manufacturer. In the case study, a 30,000-foot view would show positive progression, even though a number of users would not be using the system to maximize supplier value. The case study described symptoms, likely causes, and potential actions by the adoption team to increase value received.


Today’s post focuses on the process that Company A would follow to transition to high definition.

Understand the Category Impact

The interview concept is very important because each Category is different. Patterns that emerge at the 10,000-foot level may seem like problems, but may be a natural result of the constraints of sourcing a Category. In order to make the most of this data, the Adoption Team must be willing to learn about the characteristics of each Category. Just as an e-Sourcing solution isn’t “one-size-fits all” for each company, and it isn’t “one-size-fits-all” for each Category.

The process of interviewing Category managers and discussing data trends observed by the Adoption Team creates an additional layer of data, and it is in that layer of data that we transition to a High Definition view of adoption.

Transitioning to High Definition:

As we drop down from our 10,000-foot view to our High Definition view, we are going to expand beyond the Category and User dimensions to include Category-specific targets over time. We move to this view as we recognize that each Category not only has its own characteristics, but that the strategies deployed in that Category should change over time.

In most organizations, a Category’s overall strategy is determined as part of a periodic review process. As the strategy for each Category is established, the Adoption Team becomes a key stakeholder in this process because it is their job to help the Category Manager use the tools in a way that supports the strategy.

The examples below highlight how adoption goals can be tied directly to the strategy for a particular Category:

Category goals.

It is at this point, when you have aligned both Adoption Measurement and Adoption Opportunity Assessment directly with both your organizational objectives and Category-specific strategies that you have achieved High Definition Adoption Measurement. Your Adoption Team is now in a position to directly enable and monitor progress towards you business objectives.

Part VI will provide an example case study that describes some of the adoption challenges of an energy company operating in a (European) regulatory environment.