Coupa vs. SAP Ariba Procurement

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.

SAP Ariba is well suited for complicated procurement processes requiring lot of inter department interfacinng and comments and reviews at every stage. It is possible to maintain complete history of the procurement cycle and records inputs from all stakeholders- internal and external. It automatically creates a to do function on the system of the person at whose desk any issue remains unresolved.

• 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

• Customer Service. We have an incredible team that look after us.
• Listening. The team are receptive to ideas of how to improve the network and these ideas are often implemented.
• Standards. Providing a uniform set of rules enables us to onboard and engage quickly.

• 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

• Integration with other tools is not very good. The APIs provided are not scheduled within the Ariba process and must use a middleware to send information back and forth between tools
• Customer support for configuration questions. The response time can be weeks or months waiting time and the response back is often unhelpful.
• Flexibility with company entities. With a large company with so many entities it is hard to structure and customize your suppliers into many entities. You often have to duplicate.

Incentivized

Established product and we are now using it as a mean for our procurement transformation

As an end user I tend to prefer modern interfaces. It may be good for the backend users in accounting, but for me it is obvious that all the email notifications and built in interface is lacking on the overall state of UI/UX in the industry. It is not the worst of course if compared to those of the biggest competitors though (company starting with "O").

Incentivized

Customer support has always been top notch. From small configuration changes to overall process changes, support has the teammates in place with excellent knowledge and is able to provide solutions based on business challenges quickly. Their customer support through their Account teams continues to be hands on and very responsive to needs in a timely fashion.

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

I have and still use Coupa. Coupa is much less robust in comparison to Ariba. SAP Ariba Procurement has the ability to see what transactions have been sent, the ability to resend cXML Purchase Orders, see a history of what has happened with transactions, much more robust reporting capabilities, etc. SAP Ariba Procurement is 5-10 times better than Coupa in my opinion.

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

• Improving Broadspectrum's PIFOT for suppliers who have migrated to invoicing through Ariba.
• Provided a simple end-user interface to support PO creation, which has improved internal business process. This has led to good quality PO's being created upfront, which has reduced unnecessary re-work to ensure invoices are paid on time, and improved the businesses capability to report on real time commitment.