The Top Coupa Procurement Analysis Complications
Executive Summary
- Purchasing software analysis is often a process that just declares the company is ready for a purchasing system.
- This article explains the top complications when trying to obtain an unbiased outcome.
Introduction
Procurement software analysis is fraught with complications. Procurement applications like Coupa procurement that have partnerships create an extra complication in terms of getting independent advice. In this article, we cover these complications and how we surmount them.
Our References
See our references for this article and related articles at this link.
Complication #1: Selecting a Conflicted System Selection Advisor
This is normally not a mentioned item. However, there is a greater probability that the company will select a financially biased system selection advisor for their system readiness assessment that has financial relationships that it does not disclose to you. This means that they will most often rig the purchasing software analysis to state that the company is ready for a purchasing system. And of course, if the vendor recommends the advisor, then the advisor will simply recommend that specific vendor’s procurement software. It is really just that simple.
Coupa works with a series of partners. Obviously, or what should be obvious, is that none of these companies can be objective about Coupa. They all have consulting groups that as soon as a procurement software analysis is commissioned, begin pushing for the customer to buy and implement Coupa. Some of these companies are Indian consulting firms, which means that Coupa has no standards for who it partners with and does not put its customer’s interests very high. Companies that have these types of partners only care about sales.
Complication #2: Not Questioning The Assertions of Vendors and Consulting Firms
Procurement software came about because of the shortcomings of ERP systems and to provide for enhancements to ERP purchasing functionalities, more efficient purchasing management, better ability to group vendors, better visibility to the purchasing spend, and other improvements over ERP functionality. Furthermore, ERP systems have always been a liability in purchasing because procurement systems are inherently collaborative, and ERP systems tend to be more about sharing data within the company versus collaborating with customers, suppliers, contract manufacturers, etc.
Coupa procurement is one of the most popular procurement applications and is certainly better than using an ERP system. However, whether it is the best option versus all the alternatives in the market for a particular situation, is of course a different question.
Anyone who hires the vast majority of advisors to perform a purchasing software analysis or evaluation will invariably just have these unproven assertions repeating the claims of software vendors back to them. If the advisor does not repeat these assertions, they can stay goodbye to any partnership and therefore deal flow that they receive from software vendors.
Listening to Whom on Procurement Software?
Software Advice has coverage of purchasing software. However, they mix in ERP systems like SAP S/4HANA and Microsoft Dynamics, which should not be in that category, most likely because of the influence of these vendors over Software Advice. Remember, most of these online advisory websites like G2Crowd serve as marketing front ends for vendors and are compensated by generating leads.
And it’s not just the advisory firms. We reviewed all of the top articles according to Google on purchasing software, and they all fit into the pattern of repeating mindless assertions. There were no independent articles in the top results. These are the articles potential buyers are reading to determining if they should buy purchasing software for their company?
Complication #3: A New More Sophisticated Procurement Process
Most companies that buy purchasing software currently use a combination of an ERP system and spreadsheets to accomplish the task. This means that when looking for purchasing software, the options open up to expand the functionality footprint. This means that unless a company does not already have an ERP system and is migrating from a customized system, the company will need to review its purchasing requirements again. This is because they may have been unnecessarily oversimplified just to make them fit into what the ERP system had to offer.
Conclusion
The procurement software industry is designed to get customers “on the ramp” to implement purchasing systems and extract the most out of them. And this is true of consulting companies that are partners with Coupa procurement.
In nearly all cases, the purchasing software analysis is just a fake process where the advisor states that the company is ready to move to a purchasing system. This is then followed by an exposition of the benefits of purchasing software. This does not have to be the case, and there are many ways of changing this.
How We Do Things Differently
Our purchasing software analysis focuses on what the company is ready for and is not designed to simply onramp people to this software. And unlike all the purchasing software advisors, we are a true research entity, and we have no connection to any purchasing software vendor. Being dedicated to research means focusing on what is true and using evidence to draw conclusions.