Coupa vs. Emburse SpringAhead

Suitable: Simple indirect procurement. Low cost; short cycle implementation. Less Suitable: Complex procurement scenario requiring serious vendor collaboration. End-to-end integration. Direct Material Procurement, especially when planning, quality inspection, and other miscellaneous activities are involved, requires handling various special statuses and updates to meet industry- or country-specific requirements.

Incentivized

It's definitely well suited for all organizations with knowledge workers who use computers to do their work and are able to log in and enter their time on a regular basis. I've always had access to it as part of my job and love using SpringAhead. It may be less appropriate in a role where the worker does not have regular access to a computer to enter their hours digitally.

Incentivized

• Coupa is easy to use, however, we had to teach our end users about procurement. They are not used to conducting an RFP, onboarding a supplier, or preparing a PO. This is the change management that our employees had to be prepared to understand. The Shelby Group helped us with the implementation.
• The hardest part was the integration between NetSuite and Coupa. We wanted to have a dynamic tight integration between the two solutions. If we adjusted the chart of accounts or added a new supplier we wanted it to be able to done in both systems and be available immediately in both systems. We used a partner called SuiteSkies to accomplish this dynamic integration.
• We’ve been able to manage the implementation and maintenance with a very lean IT group.

Incentivized

• Allows for tracking of time very easily. Users can add all their project's time in one place instead of drilling into each project.
• Managers can approve their team's time all in one place. We do not need to drill down to find the info and approve. Users who don't report to the manager but are part of the project can still be approved by the project manager.
• Reports are easy to read when looking at historical information. Reports can be run with multiple parameters that the user needs.

Incentivized

• Support Team - A little slow in responding. I think the tool is so configurable that they struggle with figuring out what is causing certain issues that are being submitted on the portal.
• I'd love for the Sourcing Module to be able to support larger events. There seems to be a limit on the number of lines each event can support and as a growing retailer, our store count dictates we have room to grow and that each store is represented in the bid process.
• Would like to see the ability to issue multiple POs for a single item to multiple locations. The tool may do this but I know I can't and it may be due to how we interface with our ERP.

Incentivized

• Automated reminders to employees would be great
• A more modern and up-to-date user interface
• The approvals system for projects vs. users could use some work

Incentivized

I love using coupa but i'm not the decision maker in this regard.

Incentivized

-Could be easy or hard to use depending on corporate policies and compliance. At times, errors and cryptical message associated with them could drive users mad.

Incentivized

-Support is generally speaking OK (not great). The user community is quite active, and the response time is acceptable. I would certainly hope there's more user-generated content (like in SAP, Oracle, and Linux, etc.), but I suppose Coupa is still not large enough, and the incentives are not yet there.

Incentivized

The employee that trained me was not particularly interesting in teaching me but they were not a Coupa employee.

Incentivized

Concur was a lot easier and more user friendly for employees doing expense reports on their phone. That is not the case with Coupa. You must use your laptop to do expenses and our managers don't always have enough time to do that while out in the field working. This has caused some issues.

Incentivized

We selected SpringAhead because of price and usability. This tool is easy to set up and configure. It is a cloud application allowing access from anywhere. There were no training requirements. When you have a small use case this tool is the way to go. We moved off SpringAhead to get more functionality and it has required a lot more training and effort to maintain and utilize

Incentivized

• It has allowed for proper processing of expenses tied directly to the proper LOB and GL Codes
• Has taken the guesswork away and allowed for the proper budgets to be hit and reconciled
• Ease of use has led to mass adoption and more prompt processing of expenses

Incentivized

• Positive - tracking return on project investments
• Positive - being able to plan on future projects
• Positive - being able to manage costs and attendance

Incentivized