When thousands of finance, procurement, supply chain, and IT professionals converged in Las Vegas for 2024’s Coupa Inspire, it was at a key inflection point. Advances in artificial intelligence and other progressive technologies have reshaped the relationship between workers and their technology platforms. Persistent economic headwinds have placed additional pressure on budgets and investments, forcing leaders to rely on platforms like Coupa to maintain margins and improve EBITDA.
Against this backdrop, CrossCountry Consulting’s Coupa implementation experts joined leaders from CenterPoint Energy, Thumbtack, Addepar, and First Energy to discuss their hands-on experience navigating procurement challenges and driving enterprise value by implementing Coupa.
Below are some of the highlights and insights from the panel:
Before You Begin: Building a Solid Foundation
A robust business case lays the groundwork for a successful Coupa implementation, as it will align stakeholders and set clear expectations for the road ahead. Clearly define procurement goals, whether it’s cost savings, improved visibility, or streamlined processes. Conduct a thorough assessment of the current procurement landscape, identifying pain points and opportunities for optimization. This information serves as the charter for the Coupa implementation.
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Data Is King: Cleansing and Migration Strategies
Data integrity can make or break any system implementation. A Coupa deployment is best served by clean, accurate, historical data that enables users to quickly come up to speed with new processes, interfaces, and workflows.
- Don’t underestimate the importance of clean data. “Dirty” data in an old system will only translate to additional issues in Coupa, as the problem is merely migrated over into a new environment. Invest in data cleansing to ensure accurate and reliable information for optimal system performance before migration occurs.
- Migrate historical information. Uploading historical purchase orders (POs) during migration can significantly smooth the transition for accounts payable and suppliers, as these functions will have key info they need within one system rather than living in multiple systems indefinitely. This empowers users to hit the ground running with Coupa and avoids the burden of manual data entry.
- Embrace the power of early supplier enablement. Integrating suppliers into Coupa early fosters seamless adoption and more opportunity early on to get additional users onto the platform out of necessity. Clearly communicate upcoming changes and guide suppliers through the registration and onboarding process to ensure the supplier experience doesn’t suffer.
Integration: The Bridge Between Systems
IT’s involvement, specifically throughout the integration phase, can expedite Coupa time-to-value and shield other departments and users from common integration challenges they may not have expected.
- Lean on IT’s collaboration early on. Involve IT from the start. Their expertise is crucial when navigating ERP system integrations and ensuring all data flows smoothly between platforms. One example shared in the panel was an initial estimate of 16 integrations ballooning to 28, which underscores the potential complexity involved. IT can help procurement, finance, and operations teams manage and solve challenges as they arise.
- Expect to reverse engineer and iterate as needed. Anticipate the need for reverse engineering existing integrations to achieve optimal functionality. This will entail an iterative approach to fine-tune integrations to meet user needs and serve updated workflows within Coupa.
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Change Management: The Key to User Adoption
Preparing for, managing, and reinforcing change is the fastest way to recoup a Coupa investment. This requires a coordinated, all-hands effort to increase users’ comfort within the system, sunset legacy processes and tools, and enhance the speed and efficiency of new procurement processes.
- Leverage the partnership of the power trio. A successful implementation hinges on collaboration between the “power trio” – finance, procurement, and IT. Each department plays a critical role in driving adoption and ensuring the system meets its intended objectives on-time and on-budget.
- Gain executive buy-in and stakeholder engagement. Secure buy-in from executives in all relevant departments to champion the project internally. Actively engage stakeholders to garner support and address their concerns through a variety of means, such as 1:1 meetings, townhalls, email communications, and working sessions.
- Plan for ongoing support and knowledge transfer. Effective training goes beyond the initial go-live phase. Provide ongoing support to users as they navigate the system, and conduct regular user training and satisfaction surveys to understand where additional support could be needed. Document customizations, screen-record common workflows, and ensure knowledge transfer sessions are reaching all impacted employees.
Go-Live and Beyond: Securing Long-Term Success
Coupa’s impact will most immediately hit certain teams before others. However, as more users and workflows are onboarded, additional use cases will become evident – even outside procurement. To build credibility and prove ROI early on, there are several key areas to focus on:
- Start with sourcing to deliver value. Demonstrate the value proposition of Coupa by implementing sourcing functionalities early. Delivering cost savings quickly fosters trust and buy-in from stakeholders by showing measurable results. And because sourcing touches many different departments and needs, it’s a critical value center that can drive sustainable high-dollar savings and compliance that any decision-maker can appreciate.
- Prioritize user and supplier friendliness. Designate user champions and solicit feedback to ensure the system is intuitive and meets their needs. Clunky navigation, redundant clicking, and buried features, among other UI concerns, represent a significant obstacle to full adoption, so staying close to real user issues is imperative to realizing ROI.
- Consider a phased rollout by region to facilitate a smoother transition. This allows each region to adapt and understand the system’s benefits at its own pace rather than disparate teams and markets being forced into a global environment for the sake of hitting a deadline. The wins generated from each region’s phase can also inform subsequent rollouts.
- Establish a post-production support (PPS) model to ensure the platform continues to deliver promised value post-go-live. An effective PPS model can reduce downtime when enhancing the system, enable smooth release/upgrade management, and allow for the addition of new functionality, features, or modules.
The incredible insights and partnerships generated from 2024’s Coupa Inspire will inform – and inspire – organizations’ procurement journeys in the months and years ahead. Ready to take procurement to the next level at your organization? Connect with CrossCountry Consulting.