Coupa vs. Outlaw

I am new to customer-supplier portals in my career. I use several different ones in my current role, including Ariba and Tipalti. To be honest, I don't really enjoy the user experience of any of them. I can see how larger companies may benefit from their services but for my current role submitting invoices on them and filling out vendor information requests seems somewhat clunky to me. When I'm in Coupa, the easiest, most non-clunky process for me is when I'm successfully connected with a customer who has successfully created their purchase order and I can easily upload my invoice to said PO. To me, emailing customer invoices directly to the customer from our invoicing system seems like the easier route of delivering an invoice. I suppose it is helpful and reassuring to know that an invoice has been successfully uploaded into a company's system rather than waiting to find out if your emailed invoice made it to the correct department for payment processing.

Outlaw is great for companies that use contracts on a regular basis. Outlaw keeps all of your contracts in one place and is fairly user-friendly. If you do not use the contract on a regular basis I would not see a use for the software. Overall it is a great program once you learn how to use it internally. End-to-end I have not seen much better.

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

• Templates. This allows us to create one document and just edit the contact details.
• Simplicity. It's easy to use.
• Tracking. We can see who did what when and who has viewed it.

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

• Export function to be more easily used.
• Ability to access fully executed documents more easily (the different version histories results in the wrong version being downloaded a lot).
• Notifications for when a contract is fully executed if you aren't the signee but do need to be notified.

Incentivized

Outlaw is a great system to use and I think a few small improvements (creating a consultant/vendor list, allowing more people to have accounts without a significant jump in price, etc.) could get it to a 10.

Incentivized

We had a dedicated rep assigned to our account. She was fantastic. She helped with the setup/implementation of the software to start. Gave our sales team training and if there was ever a unique scenario where something wasn't going as expected, she was very quick to respond and help resolve the issue

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

Outlaw was selected based on simplicity and price, but we had to move away from Outlaw due to lack of integration.

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

• Increased employee efficiency.
• Quicker execution of contracts.
• Digital signatures are the best.
• Dashboard is confusing for those that do not use Outlaw on a regular basis.
• Time saver.

Incentivized