Conferences and EventsContent

Covering Coupa’s flagship conference live, from the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas, for the first time in three years, Spend Matters set out to take the temperature of the Coupa community. Our analysts held numerous conversations with Coupa’s “Spendsetters” — exemplary customers from the Coupa community — as well as other current users, partners and prospects who occupy many industries and use multiple Coupa applications within the Coupa product suite.

鉴于Coupa Inspi以来的持续转型re 2019 — the provider has continued to expand via both organic development and acquisition in the intervening years, including major pushes into treasury, supply chain and T&E — we aimed to gather a sense of Coupa’s current standing in the procurement landscape and the steps it could take to address evolving customer needs.

Specifically, we asked dozens of attendees the following questions:

• How well do you think Coupa is positioned today to address the full scope of procurement challenges (i.e., multiple directions in addition to core savings goals)?
• What do you view as the most important things for Coupa to invest in over the next five years based on your organization’s specific plans or needs?

Sheena Smith reports from the Sourcing Industry Group’s 2022 Procurement Technology Summit: Minding the Gap(s).

She sums up what she heard from CPOs at the summit, which took place in Florida from April 4 to 6, as “please, please, please help us fill the gaps." And she goes on to explain what those gaps are. They include: the talent gap; the where to start with supplier diversity gap; the planning to go carbon-neutral by 2030 gap; the understanding your tail spend/contracts/category strategy gap, and more. And provides a table of the solution providers, based on the sponsors that were at SIG, with the capability to fill those gaps.

Last week, April 5-6, Ivalua held its annual event called Ivalua NOW. This was the EMEA event; the Americas event is scheduled for May and will be in Washington D.C.

After two years of virtual events, Ivalua NOW 2022 took place in Paris, at Musée du Quai Branly, but it was also livestreamed for remote attendees. After le Louvre in 2019, Ivalua selected another prestigious cultural venue, the museum was designed by French architect Jean Nouvel and features the indigenous art and cultures of Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. The Ivalua NOW theme for 2022 was “stronger together” and the key messages were centered on collaboration (internal and external) and on ESG and sustainability.

Read more about company announcements and major milestones.

Coupa CEO Rob Bernshteyn presented at Coupa Inspire Americas 2022 yesterday, April 5, in Las Vegas — the company’s first in-person conference since 2019. Approximately 2,300 attendees were present for his opening speech of the day, which centered on the evolution of industries and how innovations over time in the film industry mirror Coupa’s advancements in business spend management and procurement.

Bernshteyn’s speech highlighted what have been the most prominent themes of Coupa Inspire 2022 so far: a focus on the future and the power of community. Bernshteyn argued for three steps in the innovative process: foundational innovations, unified capabilities and inspired communities.

Read more on those and about Coupa's new product developments.

The recent Amazon Business Reshape was an inspiring event. In just half a virtual day it managed to cover many topical themes featuring customers from all over the globe. It was amazing to see just how diverse the Amazon Business customer base is — from international childcare organizations to financial services, buying any kind of tail spend items from nappies to IT equipment.

这些组织achi了解eving through Amazon Business made for some exceptional customer success stories, particularly in terms of cost savings. For example, Harry Walker, UK Purchasing Director at international childcare, Busy Bees, explained how “by moving our nappies purchasing onto Amazon Business (which may not seem like a strategic purchase but with 42,000 children in UK nurseries alone, it is) and by switching to the Amazon Business brand, we saved 40% on what we were paying before.”

But it’s not just about cost savings — we listened in on some of the sessions, and the themes of purchasing agility, responsible sourcing and digital optimization came through in each one.

After the event we caught up with Molly Dobson, Country Manager UK & Ireland at Amazon Business to find out more about those key themes — and to find out how Amazon Business supports them.

Amazon Business Reshape for Europe and Japan is just around the corner — March 10th to be exact. It’s a free-to-attend virtual half-day event for industry experts, procurement leaders and supply chain decision makers from both the private and public sectors, from enterprise-level to small and medium-sized businesses to startup organizations.

The 2022 event will again feature keynotes, leadership and product sessions and customer and industry panels from some of Amazon Business’ regional leaders and industry experts from different sectors, including retail, IT, manufacturing, facility services and the public sector. They’ll be sharing their experiences, learnings and advice on all manner of cost-saving, efficiency-gaining and CSR-related procurement processes, and how digitalization, agility and resilience feed into those successes.

Amazon Business, its leaders and customers will focus on helping procurement leaders make procurement a value driver and growth lever for the business through digitalization leading to agility and resilience.

The next eWorld Procurement and Supply event in London is just one week away, but there’s still enough time to book your free place.

eWorld 2022 brings together procurement practitioners, consultants, solution providers and media for a day of keynotes, focused briefings, case studies and networking opportunities, and for the first time in two years you can do this in person at the Grand Connaught Rooms.

标题d “Bouncing Back Better: Building a Resilient & Sustainable Future” eWorld is hosting senior procurement, supply chain and finance executives from organizations across the commercial and public sectors to talk about their learnings, experiences and opinions. Learn about the latest developments in technology, market trends and take part in discussing the hot topics in the world of procurement today.

The global challenges, and changes, that businesses have endured over the past 18 months have left many organizations prioritising investment in procurement digitization, not just to automate and future-proof their P2P processes, but just as importantly to help with their ESG/GRC agendas.

How do you know which procurement technology solution providers have augmented their offerings with ESG capabilities? And how do you know the best partner to choose for you?

At eWorld London in March 2022 Spend Matters’ Global Head of Strategic Accounts Jenny Draper, will be delivering advice and intelligence gathered from Spend Matters’ own substantial data-backed research into the global procurement, finance and supply chain technology landscape to help with your ESG tech decisions. Here's what to expect:

Over the course of three days – from 9th to 11th November – ReThink’21 will bring together spend management professionals from across public and private sectors in an all-online event to enjoy dynamic thought leadership presentations, hear about customer transformational journeys and best practice applications, network with their peers, and gain new insights into Proactis solutions.

Centered around the topical themes of evolution, growth and maturity in Procurement and Finance, the event has been designed specifically to help senior Procurement and Finance professionals ‘rethink’ their strategies, process, and mindsets to drive maximum value for their organizations.

All three days are packed with topics covering procurement, purchase-to-pay, accounts payable and supplier engagement from a great line-up of speakers — so plenty of sessions to choose from depending on your mission. Here's what else to expect.

Last week we attended the third annual Amazon Business Exchange (ABX) event alongside more than 1,500 procurement leaders from all sizes of private and public sector organizations across Europe. It was another well-attended and well-executed success for Amazon Business and a great opportunity to learn from Amazon Business customers, senior procurement leaders and industry experts about their successes in driving procurement efficiency savings through streamlining their everyday purchasing processes.

A running theme for the day was how procurement can drive digitalization, have a strategic impact on the organization, and bolster its sustainability efforts and goals. Here we highlight the sustainability theme outlining the key takeaways from a panel session on designing procurement to enable sustainability.

What better way to learn about purchasing transformation than to listen to purchasing leaders who have already done it — and with great success. At Amazon Business Exchange (ABX) Europe on October 5th purchasing leaders from all industries and sectors will be sharing their strategies, learnings and best practice tips to help other procurement, supply chain and finance professionals deliver their transformation projects faster and with less friction.

Amazon for business is specifically designed to bring the convenience, efficiency and value to the B2B buying world that the B2C buying world has been enjoying for some years. To that end, it has designed ABX Europe to bring together the heads of all kinds of organizations to talk about their personal experiences, success stories and best practices as an Amazon Business customer. It’s an opportunity to gain firsthand intelligence to help you successfully transform your own business-buying processes, learn from the experts and avoid the holes that others have already stepped in.

Here's what to expect at ABX.

This week saw the third annual Digital Procurement World (DPW) live-stream its world-famous innovative start-ups DEMO event. DEMO showcases early-stage innovative start-ups in procurement technology that believe they can pave the way for the future of digital procurement. Each gets the opportunity to pitch its solution ideas to, and get feedback from, a panel of judges at an event that brings VC investors, buyers and potential partners together in one forum. Accordingly, DPW likes to frame this start-up opportunity as a life-changing event.

This year, more than 100 start-ups made the grade to compete in the five categories, and 10 were ultimately selected to pitch live to an online audience and a panel of judges, having just 4 minutes to pitch and 4 minutes to answer targeted questions. Read further to find out who the 10 finalists are and what they were judged on. Tomorrow we will reveal the winning firm in each category.