Coupa optimization and process re-design

Challenge

This real estate development and management company had a technology gap in its source-to-pay process and elected to implement Coupa, the market leader in the space. They took a technical installation approach, which didn’t focus on re-designing processes to capture the full functionality of Coupa’s platform.

Other concerns included:

• Upstream and downstream stakeholders not being fully engaged
• Key functional requirements were missed: leveraging native system functionality, platform governance, system maintenance, and integration into other core systems
• Under utilization of Coupa

This left value on the table to be realized from their investment in Coupa, so the integration team engaged us.

What we did

• Evaluated more than 500 open tickets to determine common causes for process issues
• Resolved all open critical issues and aged tickets
• Systematically stabilized and optimized the use of Coupa​
• Helped prioritize primary integrations between Coupa and boundary systems to increase automation
• Identified primary business process risks associated with Coupa—including budget inaccuracies, workflow and approval control gaps, and system interface errors—and developed process optimizations to combat them
• Provided training and enablement of end users​ and suppliers

We also developed a list of comprehensive improvement recommendations to address critical issues and drive long-term value to the business. As part of that, we partnered with the integration team on an improvement plan and gained buy-in from the business on priorities and resource needs. We then supported implementation of the improvement opportunities to drive long-term value.

Impact

Through business process redesign, this organization stabilized high-risk processes, including maintaining budgets, establishing new contracts with vendors, and automating approval workflows for requisitions and invoices. They also realized a systematic reduction of more than 125 critical and medium priority open issues. Beyond that, several themes emerged by way of outcomes and impact on the business.

Reduction in known defects:

• 36 percent reduction in new daily tickets
• 92 percent reduction in open daily tickets
• 81 percent reduction in ticket cycle time
• 82 percent increase in integration success rate

Improved supplier engagement:

• Supplier forms were re-designed to meet all business, regulatory, and statutory requirements
• 974 percent increase in suppliers leveraging SIM module

Improved process efficiency:

• 16 percent improvement in first match rate
• 32.4 percent increase in PO-backed invoice rate

This is all helping reduce friction with Coupa and improve the business’s ability to conduct daily operations​.