Coupa Named to Fast Company’s 2021 List of the World’s Most Innovative Companies

Every day, we wake up dreaming of new ways for our customers to obtain maximum value through Business Spend Management. Value has never been more critical than it is today. The world has changed, the speed of business has accelerated dramatically and companies need the most innovative solutions to save money, mitigate risks, spend smarter, maximize supply chain resiliency, and collaborate more to enable them to thrive in any situation.

That is why I couldn’t be more excited to share today’s news.

Coupa has been named as one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies for 2021

This morning, Coupa was named to Fast Company’s prestigious annual list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies, earning a top spot for our solutions that are transforming supply chains to be more nimble and resilient. The list honors businesses that have found a way to make a big impact during a challenging year.

2020 was the perfect storm of economic and supply chain uncertainty, and Fast Company recognized Coupa for our Source Together capabilities that helped nearly 100 businesses, across 20 industries, to procure critical goods and services — including personal protective equipment (PPE), IT hardware, and janitorial supplies — during COVID-19. In fact, the average customer saved 22.5% on average through Source Together.

Source Together: Harnessing the 'Community' for Smarter Spending

The pandemic demonstrated the incredible power of community when countries, companies, and people came together to support one another. Source Together, an innovative capability on the Coupa platform, is an example of how that can be applied to business spending. Acting as the liaison between 1,400+ global business buyers and more than 7 million global suppliers, we saw a powerful opportunity to improve this process by:

• enabling companies to get access to better rates and offerings that they wouldn’t be able to get on their own; and 
• exposing suppliers to a broader community of businesses looking to purchase goods and services they possess.

Source Together brings companies together to pool their spend to source goods or services cost effectively and at scale. Coupa’s Business Spend Management platform helps companies immediately discover and join community sourcing events relevant to their category and industry. These events allow businesses across the Coupa community to present suppliers with a unified bid package. As a result, suppliers receive larger volume deals with direct buyer contacts, and buyers get lower item-level rates they otherwise would never see in the market.

Making a Difference for our Customers

Here are a few examples of how companies were able to quickly find and buy scarce PPE supplies to keep their businesses running:

• At the onset of the pandemic, a leading car manufacturer and a large U.S.-based airline were on the brink of shutting their doors as both companies were unable to find face masks for their frontline employees. They worked with Coupa to quickly activate a Source Together event, where they were able to source the face masks needed (over a million), stay within their budgets, and ensure employees had access to the resources to keep them safe.
• Small businesses, such as Oak Street Health, who were not Coupa customers at the time, were also able to join in on the group sourcing event to fulfill PPE orders at speed, while receiving cheaper, bulk prices with the help of the buying power from larger organizations.
• Zocdoc, a leading digital healthcare marketplace, saved 9.1% on laptops, desktops, keyboards, monitors and headsets to help the company continue to support customers remotely as more doctor visits moved online to support patients during the pandemic.

With Source Together, Coupa ushered in a new era of business collaboration, becoming a lifeline that businesses and suppliers continue to rely on to limit risk. Source Together showcases the power of businesses coming together be smarter and stronger.

We’re honored to be named as one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies for 2021, but our work is far from over. We’re committed to continuing to innovate and bring exciting new products and solutions to market for our customers.