You ' ve described the modern CPO as an orchestrator. So, what does your day-to-day look like at Coupa? What ' s unique about it is that you ' re not only the procurement manager – you ' re also making sure that you are an early adopter of Coupa ' s latest technology. You get all of these tools and amazing functionality that you get to play with.

For a lot of people, the role of an AI agent is still almost like science fiction to them. Could you maybe talk to me about – or kind of pull the curtain back on – how Coupa is using AI agents in its own operations? I ' ve had a key role in deciding how we use AI technology within procurement. The way I ' ve chosen to use it is to start with efficiency – to make sure that any agent that we use is actually bringing value to our processes. The immediate use that I saw value in was efficiency, and now I ' m on my way to making it more effective.

As we start to evolve to have the digital workforce work alongside the human workforce, how do we make sure we don ' t forget that human element? It ' s happened quite naturally and organically. I mentioned earlier that we ' re using AI to be more efficient in our processes, and a natural consequence of that has been that it has freed up time for our operations team. A typical procurement department will always have spend that is low-lying – we can ' t really get to it because there aren ' t enough resources. We ' ve been able to take some of the people on our operations team and assign them sourcing spend, so that they are now not just adding to their skill set but at the same time adding more value to the organisation. We are definitely working alongside AI. It is making us smarter; it is making us faster. The technology is remarkable, don ' t get me wrong, but I think if you use it alongside the people that you have – especially category managers – it makes them that much more effective.

78 July 2026