INTAKE & ORCHESTRATION

Today I wanted to speak about direct spend in manufacturing. You know, often referred to as the lifeblood for many companies, but a lot of people are still using very outdated tools compared to their indirect spend. I believe that companies have not invested in managing their direct spend from a technology standpoint because they have always thought of it as being very complex. We have had companies like Coupa revolutionise the indirect procurement space by providing highly usable, user experience-type features and capabilities that customers have adopted. Now I believe the time is right for the direct spend side of the house to start making use of these same high-usability capabilities.

I suppose when a supply chain breaks, most people just look at the immediate cost of a late shipment. From a more strategic standpoint, how can organisations use data to quantify the hidden cost of disruptions? We need to think about how we can connect everything together – from your design, your sourcing, your procurement, all the way to invoicing and payments.

A lot of people, when they talk about being resilient, often see that as a defensive move. How is resiliency within a company actually helping it to gain an advantage over its competitors? Companies need to have an ability to truly understand where the market dynamics lie and, based on where the market is, be able to pivot between focusing on service levels and focusing on resiliency. That level of understanding of what ' s happening in the market and sensing what ' s there in the market is what companies need for direct procurement.

With the pace at which AI is advancing, what do you think your role will look like when we come back to Coupa Inspire in 2027? It ' s very important to see how these AI capabilities are being adopted by the customer, what impact they have on their organisational structures and then form an opinion about how we scale this to other customers. I feel like there ' s a lot to learn.

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