BREAKING DOWN SILOS
IN PROCUREMENT
WITH A BSM PLATFORM
Coupa Software ’ s Michael Schanker explains to Procurement Magazine how industry leaders can breakdown silos in procurement with a BSM platform
WRITTEN BY : GEORGIA WILSON
Michael Schanker , VP of Strategic Marketing , Coupa Software
Spending the early years of his career at Siebel Systems , Michael Schanker , VP of Strategic Marketing at Coupa Software likes to parallel Business Spend Management ( BSM ) to CRM . “ It ' s something that I ' ve lived and experienced ,” he says . “ Siebel Systems was really the creator of the CRM category , there wasn ’ t one before .” Instead companies operated with multiple organisational silos : “ Now nobody questions the fact that you have to have a CRM strategy and platform .”
Being an enterprise software veteran , Schanker sees the same parallels happening in BSM . “ This is why I like to use this parallel , it ' s the same sort of thing . I can see the same thing being created before my eyes .”
Continuing with the similarities between CRM and BSM , Schanker likes to use the analogy that “ before CRM people had sales or service or marketing software and processes , but no one had thought to unify all that into a single platform . Now it ' s something that people take for granted because it ' s all centered around the customer . Similarly , BSM platforms
68 April 2021