New benchmarks reveal impact of digital transformation

In addition, in a year that saw the IT industry play such a crucial role in helping businesses adapt to the global pandemic, Coupa’s data reveals the impact these projects have had in three key areas: optimising spend and cash flow, improving operational performance, and reducing risk.

Highlights from the full report include:

• Double savings: Top performers made savings of greater than 6% of their total addressable spend, double the 2-3% achieved from traditional approaches
• Risk was a priority for the first time: Businesses achieved an 88.3% completion rate of risk questionnaires from third parties
• PO approvals were more efficient: 99.2% of total POs were approved and received by suppliers electronically, drastically reducing low-value, manual work and avoiding costly manual errors 
• Digital payments became de facto: 86.6% of invoices were paid digitally – helping to improve working capital, increase savings through rebates for virtual cards, realise early pay discounts, and strengthen relationships with suppliers even further by reducing the amount of time and error in paying suppliers
• Supplier spend remained strategic: 79.6% of spend was ‘on-contract’ which enables teams to negotiate better contracts and lower pricing in future contracts/renegotiations and take advantage of favourable payment terms

“Within the past year in the pandemic, there has been immense change in how as well as the speed at which organizations are turning to technology to accelerate their digital transformation, in particular to how they can improve business performance,” said Peter Truman, Director of Global Technical Architecture, Coupa. “Because the Coupa platform is in the cloud, and leverages technologies like machine learning and AI, it’s incredibly easy to integrate and will immediately provide value to businesses to manage spend with complete visibility and control. This has had the effect of breaking down the old silos of spend ownership and, ultimately, enabling organisations to respond more deftly when disruptions occur.”

Truman continues: “Many IT teams have delivered unprecedented and long-lasting change in their organisations during the last year. While there is still a long way to go, their contribution, alongside leadership teams that have embraced digital transformation, has been why so many businesses could adapt in such difficult times. Our benchmarking data shows what is possible by transforming a critical area like Business Spend Management, and we hope it gives confidence to others looking to build back stronger in 2021.”