Earlier this week, I attended Coupa’s inaugural user conference, Inspire,in San Francisco. It was a winning and impressive display that blended executive and product presentations with client success stories on the main stage and staged unique meals and entertainment around them. I came away with a different view of Coupa, the company, and will share my perspective, as well as some of the announcements that were made this week in another article.

Today, I will share the story of Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated’s (CCBCC) indirect procurement transformation as delivered in a Day One keynote by Patrick Hopkins, CCBCC’s director of procurement.

eProcurement’s Truths

Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated (CCBCC) is the nation’s largest independent Coca-Cola bottler (Ticker: COKE). It makes, sells and distributes Coca-Cola and other beverages while operating in 11 states across the Southeast. It has 6,000 employees and 46 distribution centers and reported revenues of $1.6 billion in 2012.

CCBCC’s story began three years ago when it created a centralized procurement dependent to attack its indirect spend. By Hopkins’ account, at that time, the company had:

• Six disparate order/payment processes
• Widespread use on non-approved suppliers which led to
• Regular use of non-standard and/or non-approved materials
• An eCommerce solution that was not widely accepted and settled its transactions using a p-card

As a result, the procurement organization had no visibility into its indirect spend and needed to make a change [$750 million of direct spend was managed on an SAP system and not part of the scope].

Hopkins’ team developed a procurement strategy that focused on three areas (1) consolidating the supply base (2) standardizing materials and services and (3) automating processes. Deploying an eProcurement system would be central to its success. Enter Coupa.

CCBCC selected Coupa’s eProcurement solution and began a deployment. Hopkins felt that the program would only be successful if the “Four eProcurement Truths” were in place. Here’s what he meant:

Truth #1: The Product Must Be in the Catalog

Hopkins and his team felt that using internally-hosted catalogs was the right solution for Coke Consolidated’s supply base since it consisted of smaller suppliers (Coke would be sharing the burden) and because they felt that internally-hosted catalogs offered a faster system response time than punch out catalogs while offering greater control over scope and pricing. Ultimately, Hopkins’ team was able to offer what he called “an unlimited selection of limited options” to its users.

Truth #2 Users Must Be Able to Find What They Need

To achieve this truth, the team selected Coupa because it believed the solution could support an intuitive, uncomplicated, and simple process, would manage master data with accuracy, consistency, and clarity, and could offer users a unique buying process with a fast response time.

Truth #3: The Data Must Be Right

Here Hopkins stressed the importance of visibility and accuracy – visibility to correct prices and current inventory and accuracy in all master data and in delivery, billing, and accounting.

Truth#4: Users Must Want to Use the System

To drive users away from card usage, they had to develop a process that was “easy, intuitive, pleasant, fast, mobile, and successful.”

They say that in wine there is truth (in vino veritas). CCBCC found its truth in eProcurement (in Coupa veritas?); it also found some very positive results. For example, the indirect procurement team now has an eProcurement solution that

• Helps it capture spend and provide visibility into it
• Integrates to a back-end SAP system
• Offers mobile capabilities for all devices/systems
• Enables and ensures process discipline
• Offers an ability for unlimited supplier expansion
• Has generated a positive end-user response.

CCBCC’s eProcurement experience? In a word….. Inspiring!

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