Use Case 

CrossCountry Consulting and Las Vegas Valley Water, also known as “The District,” partnered to transform the end-to-end procurement and buying process.  

The District delivers reliable, quality water – tested and treated in its facilities – to more than 2.4 million people. Prior to Coupa, purchasing at The District occurred in an asset management application that had been customized with 25 custom applications to support purchasing. Buyers were forced through an exercise with eight clicks and two different screens to deliver Purchase Orders (PO) to Suppliers.  

Invoice volume was growing, AP headcount was increasing, and The District needed an application that would support their growing footprint and $500mm in annual spend.   

Our Approach 

Coupa was selected as the Business Spend Management (BSM) application following a competitive RFP process with legacy solutions. Key selection criteria include:  

  • Coupa’s mobile capability. The District staff is in the field maintaining and ensuring clean water can be delivered to its constituents. The purchasing application selected had to meet the fast pace and dynamic environment of end users who were often not at a desktop computer.  
  • The free and simple-to-use supplier portal. Supplier portal registration fees at other legacy solutions slowed adoption and would not deliver desired efficiencies and goals for AP. 
  • Coupa’s open API to support integrations with third-party systems. The District required integrations with inventory applications, and an open API was critical to ensuring existing systems can remain in place with Coupa as the central intake point for new vendors, purchasing, invoices, and expenses.  
  • Its native integration for transactions via purchasing cards. Purchasing cards provided the fastest way for field staff to procure required materials. Each night, settled transactions via corporate card integrate to Coupa, which are then submitted and approved by end users, helping timely expense submission and the month-end reconciliation process.  

Our Impact 

The District implemented six Coupa modules, which provided a central BSM platform and transformed the Procurement and Accounts Payable function. Following the Coupa implementation, the legacy and customized asset management application was retired, allowing all indirect spend to originate via Coupa. The impact at the organization was felt across stakeholder groups:  

  • Buyers received the benefits of automation, removing their cumbersome and time-consuming process to deliver POs. Each PO was delivered in an automated fashion, and buyers are able to spend more time on value-add tasks like cost negotiation and sourcing. 
  • End users received mobile capability for expense submission, invoice approvals, and integration to over 15 different catalogs all enabled by CrossCountry Consulting alongside employees from The District to support ongoing supplier enablement post go-live.  
  • Accounts Payable received the benefits of invoice automation and the ability to support increasing invoice volume with less staff.   

Jim Haining, Chief Procurement Officer at Las Vegas Valley Water, noted “CrossCountry was so essential and important to the success of this project. The current state assessment and process mapping was critical for us in defining our future state, and we enjoyed the partnership and journey with CrossCountry’s consultants.”