Coupa vs. Treasury Intelligence Solutions (TIS)

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.

TIS [Treasury Intelligence Solutions] is well suited for a company with multiple banking relationships in multiple countries. This can allow a treasury function to have better visibility and control over its daily cash management operations. It has very good report writing capabilities and dashboard functionality to customize a report for the end user.

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

• BTM MONITOR & Payment Monitor: we have a good view of the companies' bank statements & payments current status. Error tracking and issue logs can be found easily. In case of an error the error message describes it well so that we can act alone and solve the issues in most cases without further help. Speed is particularly important at month-end closes, you cannot be without a solution.
• Payment files PAIN mapping. The Know-How of TIS and its expertise to PAIN file integration and possible options. We have not seen a case where our TIS Project Manager did not know the answer to an issue. Often it comes instantly. Sometimes they would of course investigate, but the root cause review of a technical issue is key to success here. These guys really know what they are doing.
• Support Team of TIS. They have a very fast response time. I would point it out as being the key strength of the TIS package. You will never have critical items not addressed in due time. The speed and quality of their responses to issues is how it should be. From a financial operational point of view: It's important to ensure business continuity, which they do.

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

• Improved VaR risk module to apply to cash balances exposure
• Currency risk controls - volatility forecast
• Trading platforms connectivity - hedging capabilities for SWAPtions
• Probable ripple integration to make settlemets faster versus t+2
• Compliance: not only track sanctions, payment details but get Credit Score of counterparty
• Chinease counterparties details (state banks do not share) - fraud risk depreciation
• Loans offering page
• Direct banks chats - push to send message to operator

Depends on stage of the project if it will be postponed in 2023. Se la vie. Will be happy to go on.

The main feature of usability is the outcome you get upon actions done. TIS is not complecated solution - it is rational and has most needed capabilites for cash management via multiple accounts in different jurisdictions. It works well for this task and evolutioning to the field of risk management to get all treasury job done well.

Offered support information in the portal (knowledge base articles) as well members of the support provides a very good service level.

Incentivized

The training addressed our needs.

Incentivized

The cloud connection meant less work for IT. The setup of the first 1000 accounts was very quick, so we went live after only 4 months.

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 have used bank applications and another large TMS provider based in the US. Our prior TMS was a full-scale system which was very robust and extremely complex. We were not using 3/4 of the functionality and we decided it made more sense to select a simpler system that met our core requirements which are connectivity and transaction & information support. TIS does this very well at a lower price point. In the end, TIS better suited our needs and was much simpler and more affordable.

• 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

In terms of risk mitigation of course we can reduce the number of people having access to banking if not needed. With dedicated teams and less people with access to individual Bank portals. Before access to bank portals were necessary for all sorts of manual payments and exceptions if we really implement the 100% of functions and dont leave exceptions that risk mitigation can be achieved and efficiency at automated payment runs.

• At a large corporation with more than 60 entities and 400+ bank accounts, the savings and improvements are massive considering how time-consuming the manual work would be. I don't have any numbers to quote, unfortunately.
• We are now massively expanding our TIS with the full integration of automated payment runs. This has larger operational impacts, like the possible consolidation of banking and dedicated payment teams.

Incentivized