Coupa’s cloud-native Business Spend Management
(BSM) platform provides end-to-end processes
that helps drive collaboration
across for every business leader from supply chain, procurement,
finance, treasury, compliance, and IT and supply chain
leaders to help their companies to get the visibility and control they need to
spend smarter, mitigate risk, and improve
resilience. A
unified platform approach frees up IT from complex integrations to help
leaders deliver on these goals.
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Upside Business Travel
Score 9.3 out of 10
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Upside Business Travel is a technology based travel management application from the company of the same name headquartered in Washington, D.C.
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.
I've used other big name solutions before, but Upside's customer service is really what puts them head and shoulders above the rest. I don't worry about getting someone who has no idea what they're doing when I call Upside - whoever I get is going to be able to answer my questions and get my issues sorted out. That's a huge help
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.
Customer Support. Our business travel changes in real-time. Sometimes we have to make multiple changes to our travel in one day. The Upside Support team is always there to change the travel, especially when my travelers do not have the time to step away from work to get on the phone with airlines, hotels, and rental car agencies.
Travel Tools. From the web site to the phone app, the Upside tools are very easy to use and are very extensive with functionality.
Prepay for travel. Prepaying for travel simplifies the booking process and eliminates the need for corporate cards.
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.
The support from Upside Business Travel is absolutely amazing. Immediately after you book a flight, you get an email from your representative. You can contact them at any time and get them to help you with anything you need or answer any questions. I have used the support before to get an earlier check-in, change flights, and add a night to my stay.
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.
I was not a part of the change process, but I am quite happy using Upside over Concur. We were charged just to speak with an agent, and there wasn't an option to communicate online. I love having the chat option with Upside. I do miss the ability to put travel plans on hold to allow colleagues the opportunity to review it before I book, but the pros of Upside far outweigh the cons.
