With the Marine Science Institute at UCSB and CDW-G

As commodity, manufacturing, shipping and labor costs continue to rise and revenues continue to flat-line, buyers, suppliers and e-procurement must come together to find new ways to save. This means looking beyond the “price tag” and exploring how to enable smarter spending, automate workflows, take advantage of value-add supplier networks, and eliminate inefficient manual processes.

Watch this on demand webinar and discover how:

MSI has automated 65% of its purchasing process to empower spend control and visibility.CDW-G is enabling customers to directly integrate for more convenient catalog shopping, direct punch-outs and electronic requisitions and invoices.Coupa e-Procurement is providing the foundation for better buyers and supplier relationships.

With more than three decades of experience between them, Greg Tennyson, Salesforce.com Chief Procurement Officer, and Dave Stephens, Coupa Co-Founder and Chief Evangelist, have successfully implemented procurement technologies and processes at organizations known for their operational excellence, scalability and growth. Watch this on demand webinar and discover how you can:

Confront current economic challenges head-on with easy-to-use, affordable, and fast-to-deploy technology Establish a strong technology, process and cultural foundation from which to launch corporate cost-savings initiatives Develop a procurement baseline and measurement strategy that ensures you are focusing on what works

Register to watch the on demand webinar today.

The Coupa team, along with around 3,000 other supply management & purchasing professionals, descended on St. Louis for a wonderful conference sponsored by the Institute for Supply Management.

We exhibited and had a great event, meeting old friends and making new ones. Here’s what our booth looked like (click to get full size image):

My favorite topic at the show was Green Purchasing. This is such a complex and important area that it is fascinating to wade into and learn the real challenges firms are wrestling with. One attendee who was a high-volume wine manufacturer shared his challenges of vendor “green-washing”. It was tough to know what the truth was on the sustainability of his supplies and the alternatives he was considering.

St. Louis was a fun place for the event. The Arch is a must-see, and Busch Stadium runs a close 2nd. And for those new to Purchasing and Supply Management, the ISM is a great organization to network in & learn from. So consider joining- follow this link to their signup site.

E-Procurement vendors like Coupa love bad times just as well as good times. There’s nothing like a recession to get businesses to pay attention to their operational efficiency and control. When growing revenue seems harder and harder to achieve, a great way to maintain profits is to turn to purchasing automation and control. We’re hearing this more and more these days.

I’ve seen discipline exercised in different ways at different firms. Some very large firms, so used to managing to quarterly expectations, would sometimes turn off their purchasing & travel expenditure programs to control spending. “There’s a travel & buying freeze” they’d say. But these firms already had effective and disciplined buying habits in place.

For small and midsized businesses so intent on growing the top-line, inefficiency and wasteful spending sometimes run wild. These firms can rein in uncontrolled spending quite rapidly through automating and streamlining their corporate purchasing. Coupa can help - with one of the easiest and most affordable on demand e-procurement systems out there. All you need is a web browser to get started. And a desire to maintain profits in turbulent economic times.

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