>> from the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. It's the Cube covering Cooper inspired 2019. Brought to you by Cooper. >> Hey, welcome to the Cube. Lisa Martin on the ground in Las Vegas at Cooper Inspired 19. Excited to welcome to the program. And gentlemen from Staples, a place I go to all the time we have Christy Oreo, VP of strategic sourcing. Hey, Chris, welcome to the Cube. >> Thank you. Glad to be here, >> So I was just a staples the other day getting office supplies. It's a go to Penn's files Folders, Inc et cetera. You name it. That is a place I think everybody on the planet knows. But I >> want to >> talk to you about the Staples business and how you guys now have control over 8000 suppliers. You've got this visibility in control, which I think every human wants and every element of life you know of 100% of your indirect spend under management. So given those big business outcomes, let's dissect that. Obviously, you're a cool customer. That's why you're here. Talk to us about a little bit about Staples. All the different suppliers you guys have, and some of the challenges that you came to Cooper to help erase >> Well, we had a lot of issues with Roque spend. Everybody was doing what they wanted in every location. We had no verification. We weren't consolidating our spend to get the best deals and get the best outcomes, lack of consistency, all the stuff you hear about. And since we've ruled out Cooper, we've got a lot of structure in place now, and we've got much better uniformity, much better consistency. We've dramatically lowered our costs through the use of the tool and some of the some of the rules that we've put in place as a result of of launching Cooper a couple years ago now. So we're really pleased with how it's helped us organize our business and really bring visibility to where we're spending money and showing us the opportunities and where we could go after her and save even more money. >> You know, you talk about rogue spending. >> One of >> the interesting disrupters of procurement and finance is consumer ization we all have. Whether we're going on staples dot com or something else, we're on Amazon. I need to buy this. We have this expectation as consumers in our private lives that we can get anything we want. We have to check with anybody. I one click. So then when we go in as business buyers, we sort of have the same mentality. But obviously the challenge there is, a lot of organizations don't have visibility into. Where has every single dollar going? How many different suppliers are we working with? Do we have duplicates triple kits everywhere to talk to me >> a little >> bit about the with a kind of cultural strategic shift that you guys are making now that you have this visibility? Well, >> everybody's happy with the results. That's >> always good right >> when he had his. When you have some success and you start to tell the story, then all of a sudden people's eyes get opened, and what's interesting is I don't think anyone does anything with malice. But if you have a general manager of a warehouse who believes that ex widget is what he needs to really Pel perform and do better, he's doing that with the right intentions. What he doesn't understand is everything else that's going on behind the scenes, and we have deals in place with suppliers and there's a level of consistency that we expect that our suppliers expecting that our customers expect and we can't have that experience be different. So once we can't explain that story and the tool helps us see where that spend is coming from, we go back. We have a conversation, and all of a sudden it's enlightening like, Oh, I didn't know. Now that I know Okay, I get it. Let me do what you want me to do or what you need me to do. So that's been the biggest shift I think is just sharing information and putting a spotlight on things when they come up and it happens even still. You know, we've rolled out now a little over two and 1/2 years ago, and we still have these things come up because you get new people and people change roles and, you know, as a business person there's folks I've done business with in the past that have earned my trust, and I want to do business with them again because I know what. When people get new roles, they do the same thing, and sometimes that's not what we need them to do. So once you explain the story and you tell them about it and you show him the results, they come onboard. It's phenomenal. >> Everything goes back to the user experience with customer, whether your customer is an individual buyer or a business of 20 people to a Fortune 500. Everybody in an organization is ultimately, in some form or fashion touching the customer. The customer experience is critical to delight the customer to drive higher customer lifetime value from that customer. Um, so having the employees onboard understanding we still want you to be able to manage your Ware house even more efficiently. But we need you to understand how we're gonna give you the tools to do it better. Ultimately, the end of the day, it's goes back to that customer and making sure you can keep extracting value from them. >> One of our core values is put the customer first, always, and that's at the heart of everything we do. It's not about buying things cheap. It's about buying things at the right value and giving the customer the best possible experience they can, so there may be less expensive ways to do it, but it may not deliver the outcomes we want, so it's not always about buying cheap. It's about buying and getting the best value for us so that we can deliver the right experience to our customers. >> Was that a >> mentality that staples had prior to bringing on Cooper? Or now? Because suddenly you're starting to You have visibility into everything you're going? Oh, cheaper isn't necessarily better in some of these areas. I think it's >> a It's a corporate philosophy that we've had. I think we we realize that people can shop anywhere for anything they wanted. Anytime. Cooper has helped highlight some some discrepancies that we've been able to kind of take out. I would say that Cooper's help with that, but it's also been just a core philosophy of the company for a long time. Cooper's helping us execute against >> that now, but you're right. Consumers can buy >> whatever it >> is. If it's a product like something you want to buy on Amazon or service. Maybe it's your Internet service provider. We have so much choice. Think vendors of any product testers that recognize that and sounds like Staples does. From a core cultural perspective. You're already in a better position to understand. I really need to find Tune everything under the hood here because they could go somewhere else like that. They can't. It's good to >> understand that. But Cooper gives us the data and the facts and the analytics to help prove out where we can make a change and where we can help the company and help our customers. So it's a combination of both. >> Let's Dig into that data was in one of the things that Robert seemed shared this morning was about. Since Cooper's been public, which was 2016 they have a five x increase in the amount of spend that is being managed in the Cooper platform. I think the number was is now 1.2 trillion dollars, a tremendous amount of data in this group of community that everybody can leverage and share. We often hear data is gold. It's the new oil it is and you're smiling if you can actually see it, right extracted value, Yes, talk to us about the amount of value that Staples is getting by this group of community with a ton of valuable data. >> I would say we're at the infancy of going into the Cooper community in terms of sharing information and gaining information. I'm excited about the little bit that I've seen, and I'm one of things I want to learn. Here is more about how it will work and how it can help us. What Rob shared this morning was very interesting to me, and I'm very excited to learn more about >> it. Sounds and you're right And even Cooper says, they're at the infancy of it. I think they have. A couple of 100 customers are starting to use the community to share intelligence. Eso It is early days, but it's also something that I think of when I go to events and we talk about, you know, devil's Community. It's a very collaborative that not only is it customer centric, also, supplier centric Staples is a supplier of a lot of other businesses. So imagine there's kind of double and did benefit. It's that could be gleaned by you guys from them. We hope so. >> I think we're you know, we're probably a more unique customer than many that Cooper has and that we are. We are a customer. We use the tools, we love the tool, but we're also a cellar to you guys and two other Cooper uses in the community. So we see both sides of the equation with Cooper, and it is interesting. T gain those insights and see how we can help both sides of the company. Help group is customers and our customers more >> if you look at >> the platform for procurement invoices, expenses. Heymans, where did you start a few years ago with Cooper and where are you now? In terms of all the different elements that are running through it? >> We started with a simple PIO management secure to pay. Then we instituted a no P o no pay policy, and everyone started using the tools. It really helped us change things We don't use it for. Expenses wear starting like, as I said, to start to use some of the analytics. I'm very interested in learning more about Cooper pay or out here virtual card usage. That's very interesting to me, so I'm curious to learn about that on. We'll see where we go from there. >> Cooper Pay was, I think I know it's just a few months ago in London, and we are excited to hear some more news about that tomorrow, how they're expanding that. But there's this visibility and control idea is so critical because of any type of organization. Whether it's a retailer manufacturer, it's a hospital. There's so much shatter, weighty going. But I t is really big challenge of reining in the cats, if you will in all these cats. Because we all know now that Robert likes cats. But it's one of the things that they're announced with Amazon is wow. I t can have access to buy all of this software, control it, deploy it, manage it through the Amazon marketplace. And you suddenly think, Wow, how procurement and t are gonna be aligning, joining forces and really affecting top line of of any industry. >> Yeah, I think in Staples are our relationship between procurement and our i t S t s department has been strong from day one. They were the biggest advocates of us getting the tool to help them gain control and kind of eliminates a lot of the shadow I t organizations issue. Does you mentioned so in our environment, we are excited about that. We embrace that we're trying. Thio forced that out. So we've always had that sort of very strong partnership with our I T team, and that's really what's helped progress the tool through the company with great success with them in the beginning. And then you start to tell the story, and more and more people are interested in. Wait a minute. You can help them save how much into the budget and where we can reallocate that money and what can I do with it? So it's been really exciting and sort of fun to be part of the transformation. >> And you guys have, what north of 17,000 users on the platform, >> today's wave? A lot, A lot. >> That's pretty quick >> adoption in a few years, a lot of people to train, to educate and and to have it become part of their normal everyday activities. >> Well, we're going through a relaunch now, and the Cooper team has been phenomenal in terms of training and helping my team with all the work that goes on behind the scenes that nobody sees and helping us develop training for all of our associates as we relaunch it, because we're really gonna change the tool. We were a couple of revisions behind Ah, now we're getting caught up. So there's a lot of change coming in September to my company and to Cooper and thrilled with the help that the Cooper team has given us the launch. This >> last question for you. Chris Staples, a 34 year young business. I was just talking with a gentleman from procurement and Lulu Lemon and much younger business. And you >> kind of think, Well, a younger business Have more nimble mind sets. Give your advice your best lessons learned to your peers >> at older, more established organizations, going through a change of really looking at getting complete visibility and all your spent advice to them. >> It's a bit of a cliche, but don't do what you did yesterday. You know, you've got to be open to change. You've got to let the you know, I always say, the month the numbers tell the story, and where is where you're spending too much and how do you fix that? And just because you love a supplier today doesn't mean you can't love somebody else just as much tomorrow. If they can deliver a better value, and a lot of times you can find out that your current supplier can give you a better value than you. Then you had before if you just start poking around a little bit. So my advice would be not to stick with the status quo. Just cause it's easy. Challenge yourself. Challenger team. Challenge the people you work with. Change is good. >> Change is good. Chorus. What a pleasure to have you on the Cube. Big. Thanks. So much for joining me. >> Thank you. Very nice. I appreciate it. >> All right. For Christie. Oreo. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube from Kucha. Inspire 19. Thanks for watching.