(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to Vegas. Lisa Martin and Dave Vellante here with theCUBE live on the Venetian Expo Hall Floor, talking all things AWS re:Invent 2022. This is the first full day of coverage. It is jam-packed here. People are back. They are ready to hear all the new innovations from AWS. Dave, how does it feel to be back yet again in Vegas? >> Yeah, Vegas. I think it's my 10th time in Vegas this year. So, whatever. >> This year alone. You must have a favorite steak restaurant then. >> There are several. The restaurants in Vegas are actually really good. >> You know? >> They are good. >> They used to be terrible. But I'll tell you. My favorite? The place that closed. >> Oh! >> Yeah, closed. In between where we are in the Wynn and the Venetian. Anyway. >> Was it CUT? >> No, I forget what the name was. >> Something else, okay. >> It was like a Greek sort of steak place. Anyway. >> Now, I'm hungry. >> We were at Pure Accelerate a couple years ago. >> Yes, we were. >> When they announced Cloud Block Store. >> That's right. >> Pure was the first- >> In Austin. >> To do that. >> Yup. >> And then they made the acquisition of Portworx which was pretty prescient given that containers have been going through the roof. >> Yeah. >> So I'm sort of excited to have these guys on and talk about that. >> We're going to unpack all of this. We've got one of our alumni back with us, Venkat Ramakrishna, VP of Product, Portworx by Pure Storage. And Dan Kogan joins us for the first time, VP of Product Management and Product Marketing, FlashArray at Pure Storage. Guys, welcome to the program. >> Thank you. >> Hey, guys. >> Dan: Thanks for having us. >> Do you have a favorite steak restaurant in Vegas? Dave said there's a lot of good choices. >> There's a lot of good steak restaurants here. >> I like SDK. >> Yeah, that's a good one. >> That's the good one. >> That's a good one. >> Which one? >> SDK. >> SDK. >> Where's that? >> It's, I think, in Cosmopolitan. >> Ooh. >> Yeah. >> Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. >> It's pretty good, yeah. >> There's one of the Western too that's pretty. >> I'm an Herbs and Rye guy. Have you ever been there? >> No. >> No. >> Herbs and Rye is off strip, but it's fantastic. It's kind of like a locals joint. >> I have to dig through all of this great stuff today and then check that out. Talk to me. This is our first day, obviously. First main day. I want to get both of your perspectives. Dan, we'll start with you since you're closest to me. How are you finding this year's event so far? Obviously, tons of people. >> Busy. >> Busy, yeah. >> Yeah, it is. It is old times. Bigger, right? Last re:Invent I was at was 2019 right before everything shut down and it's probably half the size of this which is a different trend than I feel like most other tech conferences have gone where they've come back, but a little bit smaller. re:Invent seems to be the IT show. >> It really does. Venkat, are you finding the same? In terms of what you're experiencing so far on day one of the events? >> Yeah, I mean... There's tremendous excitement. Overall, I think it's good to be back. Very good crowd, great turnout, lot of excitement around some of the new offerings we've announced. The booth traffic has been pretty good. And just the quality of the conversations, the customer meetings, have been really good. There's very interesting use cases shaping up and customers really looking to solve real large scale problems. Yeah, it's been a phenomenal first day. >> Venkat, talk a little bit about, and then we'll get to you Dan as well, the relationship that Portworx by Pure Storage has with AWS. Maybe some joint customers. >> Yeah, so we... Definitely, we have been a partner of AWS for quite some time, right? Earlier this year, we signed what is called a strategic investment letter with AWS where we kind of put some joint effort together like to better integrate our products. Plus, kind of get in front of our customers more together and educate them on how going to how they can deploy and build vision critical apps on EKS and EKS anywhere and Outpost. So that partnership has grown a lot over the last year. We have a lot of significant mutual customer wins together both on the public cloud on EKS as well as on EKS anywhere, right? And there are some exciting use cases around Edge and Edge deployments and different levels of Edge as well with EKS anywhere. And there are pretty good wins on the Outpost as well. So that partnership I think is kind of like growing across not just... We started off with the one product line. Now our Portworx backup as a service is also available on EKS and along with the Portworx Data Services. So, it is also expanded across the product lanes as well. >> And then Dan, you want to elaborate a bit on AWS Plus Pure? >> Yeah, it's for kind of what we'll call the core Pure business or the traditional Pure business. As Dave mentioned, Cloud Block Store is kind of where things started and we're seeing that move and evolve from predominantly being a DR site and kind of story into now more and more production applications being lifted and shifted and running now natively in AWS honor storage software. And then we have a new product called Pure Fusion which is our storage as code automation product essentially. It takes you from moving and managing of individual arrays, now obfuscates a fleet level allows you to build a very cloud-like backend and consume storage as code. Very, very similar to how you do with AWS, with an EBS. That product is built in AWS. So it's a SaaS product built in AWS, really allowing you to turn your traditional Pure storage into an AWS-like experience. >> Lisa: Got it. >> What changed with Cloud Block Store? 'Cause if I recall, am I right that you basically did it on S3 originally? >> S3 is a big... It's a number of components. >> And you had a high performance EC2 instances. >> Dan: Yup, that's right. >> On top of lower cost object store. Is that still the case? >> That's still the architecture. Yeah, at least for AWS. It's a different architecture in Azure where we leverage their disc storage more. But in AWS were just based on essentially that backend. >> And then what's the experience when you go from, say, on-prem to AWS to sort of a cross cloud? >> Yeah, very, very simple. It's our replication technology built in. So our sync rep, our async rep, our active cluster technology is essentially allowing you to move the data really, really seamlessly there and then again back to Fusion, now being that kind of master control plan. You can have availability zones, running Cloud Block Store instances in AWS. You can be running your own availability zones in your data centers wherever those may happen to be, and that's kind of a unification layer across it all. >> It looks the same to the customer. >> To the customer, at the end of the day, it's... What the customer sees is the purity operating system. We have FlashArray proprietary hardware on premises. We have AWS's hardware that we run it on here. But to the customer, it's just the FlashArray. >> That's a data super cloud actually. Yeah, it's a data super cloud. >> I'd agree. >> It spans multiple clouds- >> Multiple clouds on premises. >> It extracts all the complexity of the underlying muck and the primitives and presents a common experience. >> Yeah, and it's the same APIs, same management console. >> Dave: Yeah, awesome. >> Everything's the same. >> See? It's real. It's a thing, On containers, I have a question. So we're in this environment, everybody wants to be more efficient, what's happening with containers? Is there... The intersection of containers and serverless, right? You think about all the things you have to do to run containers in VMs, configure everything, configure the memory, et cetera, and then serverless simplifies all that. I guess Knative in between or I guess Fargate. What are you seeing with customers between stateless apps, stateful apps, and how it all relates to containers? >> That's a great question, right? I think that one of the things that what we are seeing is that as people run more and more workloads in the cloud, right? There's this huge movement towards being the ability to bring these applications to run anywhere, right? Not just in one public cloud, but in the data centers and sometimes the Edge clouds. So there's a lot of portability requirements for the applications, right? I mean, yesterday morning I was having breakfast with a customer who is a big AWS customer but has to go into an on-prem air gap deployment for one of their large customers and is kind of re-platforming some other apps into containers in Kubernetes because it makes it so much easier for them to deploy. So there is no longer the debate of, is it stateless versus it stateful, it's pretty much all applications are moving to containers, right? And in that, you see people are building on Kubernetes and containers is because they wanted multicloud portability for their applications. Now the other big aspect is cost, right? You can significantly run... You know, like lower cost by running with Kubernetes and Portworx and by on the public cloud or on a private cloud, right? Because it lets you get more out of your infrastructure. You're not all provisioning your infrastructure. You are like just deploying the just-enough infrastructure for your application to run with Kubernetes and scale it dynamically as your application load scales. So, customers are better able to manage costs. >> Does serverless play in here though? Right? Because if I'm running serverless, I'm not paying for the compute the whole time. >> Yeah. >> Right? But then stateless and stateful come into play. >> Serverless has a place, but it is more for like quick event-driven decision. >> Dave: The stateless apps. >> You know, stuff that needs to happen. The serverless has a place, but majority of the applications have need compute and more compute to run because there's like a ton of processing you have to do, you're serving a whole bunch of users, you're serving up media, right? Those are not typically good serverless apps, right? The several less apps do definitely have a place. There's a whole bunch of minor code snippets or events you need to process every now and then to make some decisions. In that, yeah, you see serverless. But majority of the apps are still requiring a lot of compute and scaling the compute and scaling storage requirements at a time. >> So what Venkat was talking about is cost. That is probably our biggest tailwind from a cloud adoption standpoint. I think initially for on-premises vendors like Pure Storage or historically on-premises vendors, the move to the cloud was a concern, right? In that we're getting out the data center business, we're going all in on the cloud, what are you going to do? That's kind of why we got ahead of that with Cloud Block Store. But as customers have matured in their adoption of cloud and actually moved more applications, they're becoming much more aware of the costs. And so anywhere you can help them save money seems to drive adoption. So they see that on the Kubernetes side, on our side, just by adding in things that we do really well: Data reduction, thin provisioning, low cost snaps. Those kind of things, massive cost savings. And so it's actually brought a lot of customers who thought they weren't going to be using our storage moving forward back into the fold. >> Dave: Got it. >> So cost saving is great, huge business outcomes potentially for customers. But what are some of the barriers that you're helping customers to overcome on the storage side and also in terms of moving applications to Kubernetes? What are some of those barriers that you could help us? >> Yeah, I mean, I can answer it simply from a core FlashArray side, it's enabling migration of applications without having to refactor them entirely, right? That's Kubernetes side is when they think about changing their applications and building them, we'll call quote unquote more cloud native, but there are a lot of customers that can't or won't or just aren't doing that, but they want to run those applications in the cloud. So the movement is easier back to your data super cloud kind of comment, and then also eliminating this high cost associated with it. >> I'm kind of not a huge fan of the whole repatriation narrative. You know, you look at the numbers and it's like, "Yeah, there's something going on." But the one use case that looks like it's actually valid is, "I'm going to test in the cloud and I'm going to deploy on-prem." Now, I dunno if that's even called repatriation, but I'm looking to help the repatriation narrative because- >> Venkat: I think it's- >> But that's a real thing, right? >> Yeah, it's more than repatriation, right? It's more about the ability to run your app, right? It's not just even test, right? I mean, you're going to have different kinds of governance and compliance and regulatory requirements have to run your apps in different kinds of cloud environments, right? There are certain... Certain regions may not have all of the compliance and regulatory requirements implemented in that cloud provider, right? So when you run with Kubernetes and containers, I mean, you kind of do the transformation. So now you can take that app and run an infrastructure that allows you to deliver under those requirements as well, right? So that portability is the major driver than repatriation. >> And you would do that for latency reasons? >> For latency, yeah. >> Or data sovereign? >> Data sovereignty. >> Data sovereignty. >> Control. >> I mean, yeah. Availability of your application and data just in that region, right? >> Okay, so if the capability is not there in the cloud region, you come in and say, "Hey, we can do that on-prem or in a colo and get you what you need to comply to your EDX." >> Yeah, or potentially moves to a different cloud provider. It's just a lot more control that you're providing on customer at the end of the day. >> What's that move like? I mean, now you're moving data and everybody's going to complain about egress fees. >> Well, you shouldn't be... I think it's more of a one-time move. You're probably not going to be moving data between cloud providers regularly. But if for whatever reasons you decide that I'm going to stop running in X Cloud and I'm going to move to this cloud, what's the most seamless way to do? >> So a customer might say, "Okay, that's certification's not going to be available in this region or gov cloud or whatever for a year, I need this now." >> Yeah, or various commercial. Whatever it might be. >> "And I'm going to make the call now, one-way door, and I'm going to keep it on-prem." And then worry about it down the road. Okay, makes sense. >> Dan, I got to talk to you about the sustainability element there because it's increasingly becoming a priority for organizations in every industry where they need to work with companies that really have established sustainability programs. What are some of the factors that you talk with customers about as they have choice in all FlashArray between Pure and competitors where sustainability- >> Yeah, I mean we've leaned very heavily into that from a marketing standpoint recently because it has become so top of mind for so many customers. But at the end of the day, sustainability was built into the core of the Purity operating system in FlashArray back before it was FlashArray, right? In our early generation of products. The things that drive that sustainability of high density, high data reduction, small footprint, we needed to build that for Pure to exist as a company. And we are maybe kind of the last all-flash vendor standing that came ground up all-flash, not just the disc vendor that's refactored, right? And so that's sort of engineering from the ground up that's deeply, deeply into our software as a huge sustainability payout now. And we see that and that message is really, really resonating with customers. >> I haven't thought about that in a while. You actually are. I don't think there's any other... Nobody else made it through the knothole. And you guys hit escape velocity and then some. >> So we hit escape velocity and it hasn't slowed down, right? Earnings will be tomorrow, but the last many quarters have been pretty good. >> Yeah, we follow you pretty closely. I mean, there was one little thing in the pandemic and then boom! It's just kept cranking since, so. >> So at the end of the day though, right? We needed that level to be economically viable as a flash bender going against disc. And now that's really paying off in a sustainability equation as well because we consume so much less footprint, power cooling, all those factors. >> And there's been some headwinds with none pricing up until recently too that you've kind of blown right through. You know, you dealt with the supply issues and- >> Yeah, 'cause the overall... One, we've been, again, one of the few vendors that's been able to navigate supply really well. We've had no major delays in disruptions, but the TCO argument's real. Like at the end of the day, when you look at the cost of running on Pure, it's very, very compelling. >> Adam Selipsky made the statement, "If you're looking to tighten your belt, the cloud is the place to do it." Yeah, okay. It might be that, but... Maybe. >> Maybe, but you can... So again, we are seeing cloud customers that are traditional Pure data center customers that a few years ago said, "We're moving these applications into the cloud. You know, it's been great working with you. We love Pure. We'll have some on-prem footprint, but most of everything we're going to do is in the cloud." Those customers are coming back to us to keep running in the cloud. Because again, when you start to factor in things like thin provisioning, data reduction, those don't exist in the cloud. >> So, it's not repatriation. >> It's not repatriation. >> It's we want Pure in the cloud. >> Correct. We want your software. So that's why we built CBS, and we're seeing that come all the way through. >> There's another cost savings is on the... You know, with what we are doing with Kubernetes and containers and Portworx Data Services, right? So when we run Portworx Data Services, typically customers spend a lot of money in running the cloud managed services, right? Where there is obviously a sprawl of those, right? And then they end up spending a lot of item costs. So when we move that, like when they run their data, like when they move their databases to Portworx Data Services on Kubernetes, because of all of the other cost savings we deliver plus the licensing costs are a lot lower, we deliver 5X to 10X savings to our customers. >> Lisa: Significant. >> You know, significant savings on cloud as well. >> The operational things he's talking about, too. My Fusion engineering team is one of his largest customers from Portworx Data Services. Because we don't have DBAs on that team, it's just developers. But they need databases. They need to run those databases. We turn to PDS. >> This is why he pays my bills. >> And that's why you guys have to come back 'cause we're out of time, but I do have one final question for each of you. Same question. We'll start with you Dan, the Venkat we'll go to you. Billboard. Billboard or a bumper sticker. We'll say they're going to put a billboard on Castor Street in Mountain View near the headquarters about Pure, what does it say? >> The best container for containers. (Dave and Lisa laugh) >> Venkat, Portworx, what's your bumper sticker? >> Well, I would just have one big billboard that goes and says, "Got PX?" With the question mark, right? And let people start thinking about, "What is PX?" >> I love that. >> Dave: Got Portworx, beautiful. >> You've got a side career in marketing, I can tell. >> I think they moved him out of the engineering. >> Ah, I see. We really appreciate you joining us on the program this afternoon talking about Pure, Portworx, AWS. Really compelling stories about how you're helping customers just really make big decisions and save considerable costs. We appreciate your insights. >> Awesome. Great. Thanks for having us. >> Thanks, guys. >> Thank you. >> For our guests and for Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live enterprise and emerging tech coverage. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Hey guys and girls. Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Coupa Inspire 2022, from the Cosmopolitan, in bustling Las Vegas. Lisa Martin here, and as I mentioned, day two of our coverage and fresh from the main stage, Raja Hammoud joins me, the Executive Vice President of products at Coupa. Raja, welcome back to theCUBE and happy 10th anniversary at Coupa. >> Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, and welcome back to Inspire. >> Thank you. It's so great- >> We're so happy you're here. >> It's great to be here. So you're just about coming up on your 10 anniversary with Coupa. You showed some great photos of your time there but you've seen, you've lived the evolution that is this rocket ship that's Coupa. >> Raja: It's been incredible journey. I really couldn't believe at first it's been 10. This is the longest I've ever been anywhere. And I honestly feel more refreshed and excited than even when I joined back in the day 10 years ago. And so much has changed, but also so much has not. >> Lisa: Yeah. >> The size of course. We were like 60 people when I joined, the product development team was one person in, in a product, roughly 12 engineers, and fast forward to the scale that's today, it's phenomenal difference. But what has not changed is the, the core values, how, the hustle, how people love working with each other, how we support customers, how we keep stepping up our game how we believe none of us is as smart as all of us, and the community keeps getting stronger and stronger. It's been, it's been really exciting journey. >> The theme of none of us is as smarter as all of us, I'm not sure if I got that right, but the idea is you feel that when you're talking to Coupa partners, I've had the opportunity to talk with Coupa partners and customers and Coupa folks that, that is not just a value statement, people are living that. >> Raja: Yeah. It's, it's everywhere. In the, in the company walls, outside the company walls, you often see product people in different organizations where, they start living in an ivory tower, they think they know everything, I mean, back to what we were discussing earlier about Barbara, when she talked about, get out of your doors, right? A lot of people can tend to do that. We always, from the beginning, believed in the best ideas are out there and you collaborate with each other. And I truly, truly believe that the success that we have achieved today to our community is in a large, large part, because we believed in that. So like on Monday, we hosted, I can't keep track of the number now, so, so many in-parallel Community Advisory Board meetings, and just talking to the products managers and everybody is buzzing with new ideas. And when we go back, there's so much new innovation that has just been co-created here in this conference, and this keeps going on and on and on. >> Lisa: Yeah. I like how you call it, the Community Advisory Board. I'm still used to hearing CAB as Customer Advisory Board, but what Coupa has built, especially with the launch of the Moonshot, the, the community AI, is, is just that. >> Yes. >> It's a very collaborative community. One of the things that's around here, hashtags everywhere, but #United by the Power of Spend. >> Yes. >> What does that mean to you as the EVP of products, and what do you think that means to the community? >> When I think... What we are doing, we're building this platform that is powering all these businesses out there. And the reality of it is you can only, only do so much when you try to do things alone. When we are doing things together, we are way more successful, we are more profitable, we are more sustainable, we are more efficient. And community.ai from a technology standpoint, is making that happen, because what we are doing is taking AI, applying it to all this 3.3 trillion in data, and then bringing back prescriptions that we give back to each and every customer so that everybody can see where they are, how they up their games, and we connect them with other people like them. Now, people love coming to conferences like this, but even in conferences like this, if you think about it, the people you're going to meet, it's, some people are going to do matchmaking but you are also losing an opportunities of meeting the maximum number of people who've done exactly the thing that you did. But when you have the ability to look at all of that data and you can match make people. So we did that already with, for sourcing professionals. So if you are somebody who source a certain category, we can tell somebody else has done something like this in this geography and we offer you to connect to each other. >> Lisa: Wow. >> So this is incredibly powerful way where we are really uniting the whole community by spend, making everybody truly stronger together. >> Lisa: Matchmaker in, in a sense. >> It is matchmaking. >> But it's, but it's- >> It's Spend matchmaking. >> Spend matchmaking, but it's also the opportunity to unite professionals across sourcing, procurement- >> Raja: Yes. >> ... finance, treasury. >> Raja: Yes. >> To your point, and, and Rob said this in his keynote, and he said it here on theCUBE, you know, we've got to break down these silos. >> Raja: Yes. >> People and companies functioning in silos are not going to be successful. >> Raja: Yes. This has been one of the, probably one of the things that we were talking earlier, what has changed, what hasn't. This is one of the fundamental things that has never changed since I've joined. The vision has been very clear. The execution on it, of how we drive successful business spend management program is by breaking down the silos and this idea of sweet synergy, where in product, you start building these capabilities that helps these professionals in the different organizations to actually connect on the touch points, where, where things really matter. >> Lisa: Sweet synergy, was that thing from a concept perspective, did that come from the community, in terms of Coupa going, this is actually what's happening, this synergy across the BSM suite? >> Yes. So in the very beginning, it was early idea. I would say in the first two Inspires that we did, we hadn't given it actually the name itself, and we used to call it unified capabilities, and it started with the first silos we broke down. The first silos we broke down were procurement and AP. And they didn't even used to talk in the same room or even want to care about each other. So we started building so many capabilities that brought these teams together and little by little the community started to feel that and see the value of that. And then the community started to ask us to go break down more silos. So in the beginning, I would say the, the vision before I even joined, the company was on that trajectory. And the early customers saw that and they championed it and then they drove us to do more. So they came to us and said could you please do what you did here in contract? Could you please do what you did here in sourcing? And I was in a meeting last week, a leadership meeting, and one question was asked to leaders in the services team about what are they hearing about, from the customers, about a particular area. And it was music to our ears when we heard the customers are asking for more synergy, right? So, they even have the name for it and they're asking for more and more, and we have built hundreds of these already, but the reality is there is so much opportunity. >> Lisa: Right. >> The world is siloed, no technology has attempted to do that. And I think that's what's a exciting is to go and forge new grounds and do something very special to unite everyone together. >> You guys talked about the waves. Rob talked about the waves yesterday. You talked about it again this morning. And when I think of Inspired community, as that third wave, I see it on both sides. I see the Inspired community that is the Coupa community, but also what you just talked about, that flywheel of that sort of symbiotic relationship that you guys have with your customers as Coupa in and of itself being in a community inspired by the community that it has built. >> Raja: Yes, it's, it's very, very, it's a circular effect. Like it, we inspire one another, and we strengthen one another, and it's, it's just a beautiful, beautiful thing. One of the special things that we are starting to do is we want to take the whole product experience itself, to be a complete community experience. So anywhere you are going to Coupa, when it makes sense, of course, you are not only looking at your data, you are getting connected with people for that particular thing. So we've done that already for 15 different product areas and we're constantly doing more and more and more and more. You can imagine one day we can, where we can start within the product pages themselves, where we host community experts to talk via video and connect with others. So you bring that whole community experience alive in a product in enterprise software, which has not been done. >> Kind of like creating your own influencer network. >> Yes, yes, yes. And give people their voice and, and, and it becomes exciting. It is very different when you're just working on your own and driving goals, and you have no idea how good that can pass on the world. And then when right then and there, you get to learn that some people have hit that, some people have achieved these goals, you just get excited, "I want to hit that goal too. Who are these people? Connect me with these leaders. Let's have a conversation. How did they do it?" And they start creating best practices together. We even have started places where they collaborate on actual documents and templates, and they put them in the community exchange as a way for people to share with others, even taking templates from the product putting them back into a community exchange. So it is sharing, being enabled on the platform, platform itself. >> Lisa: How did you guys function during the pandemic, the last two years when we couldn't get together? >> Raja: Yeah. >> I know that your customers are really the lifeblood of Coupa and vice versa. >> Raja: Yes. >> But talk to me about some of the things that Coupa did with its customers, you know, by video conferencing, for example, that really helped the evolution and some of the innovations that you announced this morning. >> When we first... when the pandemic first hit I think like we all didn't believe what, what is going on. And there was this, I would call it a beautiful period in a way, despite how horrific that was, and that period was where everyone rose to the occasion, everybody wanted to help one another. Across Coupa everywhere, we started having documents of how can step up and help our customers, help our communities. We started to look at how we get PPE, and get it in the hands of our customers. We have access to suppliers. We started looking at helping suppliers with digital payments to speed things up. So, so many things we started doing as a community to just help each other. And then as we got to the next level, then we started, of course, starting to do things over, over zoom. And the big surprise, was we were incredibly productive. If anything, we were worried about people feeling burnt out. >> Yeah. >> Because they were just in it, completely in it. And it created a lot of new avenues for us because often you go and do these meetings in person. Now you could have a user experience session with a customer very easily, they're available more often than they used to. >> Lisa: Right. >> So we did not miss a beat with the community. We moved into virtual caps. We had the advantage of having them recorded as well, where we could have the global development teams learn and see exactly what the, what the customers are are co-creating together. And our goal lives accelerated, because a lot of these implementations, they used to happen in person, so schedules, they actually got accelerated- >> Lisa: Right. >> ...through that. Now of course, there is nothing that matches to this. You can do it, you can do a lot, but a ton of the collaboration comes from real life dialogue and kind of conversation. So it's that balance between the two that I think will be great. >> Lisa: What are some of the things that you've heard the last few days? You mentioned the Partners Summit and, and the Community Advisory Boards on Monday, yesterday, everything kicked off today. What are some of the things that you've heard in your meetings that really inspire you on say the next 10 years at Coupa? >> Raja: By far, by far, by far, it's a validation of, that what we are doing is, we're absolutely on target with it, and that, we just can do so much more. The silos are massive and there are so so many opportunities that you hear in every different areas that we could be doing this, we could be doing this together. So we can break down more and more silos. And using community.ai is just the tip of the iceberg of what we are, what we are doing. Yes, we created tens and tens of capabilities, helping, helping the community with all of that, but data drives everything. And when you look at that, every single process in every single silo can be informed by the power of data within your own company, and then even better, data across. And, and to the point where we're talking about concepts that customers are really excited about, even thinking about this community, they're customers of each other. And when you are a customer of each other what are the different ways as a community, you can help one another more. So we're talking about community netting as new types of concepts. >> Lisa: Talk to me a little about that. You mentioned the community netting this morning but I didn't quite... Help me understand. >> Raja: It is very simple terms is if, if we are buying from each other and we have to do money movements every time I have to pay you, I have to incur fees and likewise, but since we are part of this community we can manage that relationship. So we just pay the Delta, we net it out. So it, it saves reconciliation times it saves money movement. And these are tip of the icebergs of these very cool things that we're doing together. >> Wow. That's fantastic. Last question for you, as you talk with prospects who are in the early stages, or, or still determining, do we go through like a supply chain digital transformation? I mean, I think of companies that probably haven't now or need to get on the bandwagon. >> Raja: Yeah. >> What are some of the things that you advise to those customers to be able to do what Mick Ebeling talked about this morning and that is, commit and then figure it out? >> Raja: Yes. The number one thing is just make sure you don't do the analysis paralysis. There are just so many opportunities so many opportunities start with a project, get going, and it creates incredible momentum, and then you can move on from one to another, to another, to another, instead of trying to just go for a year or two, trying to look at how the world has changed in that process. And so often you could see that projects pay for themselves within the first month of go life. You do that, you'll create another one. And it's not like you are coming in to do something so new nobody has done. Hundreds and hundreds and thousands as a matter of fact, of other community members have done that. It is proven. So get started with those and then continue. Other things I will be talking to them about is to make sure that they understand the way we work is all about partnerships spread. Often people who haven't worked with us in the enterprise software, they're used to working with vendors. We are not that. We never were that. Like the number one, if we're not going to be real partners, honest, transparent and work with each other, we don't waste each other's time. >> Lisa: Well, Raja, it's been great having you on the program. I've really enjoyed your keynote this morning. Congratulations on your 10 years at Coupa. >> Raja: Thank you. >> I'm excited to see what the next 10 years brings for you. We appreciate your insites and everything that Coupa is doing in partnership with its customers is very evident in an event like this. >> Raja: Thank you. And thank you for coming and covering us as well. We really appreciate it. >> Lisa: It's our pleasure to be here. >> Thank you. >> For Raja Hammoud, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage, day two of Coupa Inspire 2022, from Las Vegas. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to the CUBE's Coverage of Coupa Inspire 2022 at the Cosmopolitan in bustling Las Vegas. I'm Lisa Martin, and very pleased to be welcoming back. One of our CUBE alumni, the chairman and CEO of Coupa, the man himself Rob Bernshteyn, Rob great to have you back on the program. >> Great to be with you again. >> It's great to be in person. >> Sure. >> I applaud Coupa for taking the risk and getting all the people here. People are absolutely ready for this. And if there's a company that brings the energy it's Coupa. >> Well, thank you for saying that, we're definitely feeling it. You're right, we took a bit of a risk when we opened up registration that was before COVID, omicron hit. We didn't know what would happen, but we just had such an overwhelming onslaught of registrations and people wanted to be here. And in the last two days of interaction with folks it's just been like a huge reunion after three years of kind of being in home and away. >> Absolutely a huge reunion. One that was, I just felt so normal walking into your keynote yesterday. And of course, I always look for numbers because I know you're going to have numbers. 3.3 trillion, spend under management. You're almost at a trillion, a year run rate, that's huge. The growth of Cuopa, just up into the right. >> It is and it's really in thanks to our customer community. I mean, there are just incredible champions here. Courageous folks that are pushing for change inside their of companies. And we're honored to be the technology platform that drives a lot of that change. A more and more spend driven through the system that spend being optimized going to the right channels. Companies are saving money and it's given them more fuel to pursue their own missions and visions and everything that their companies seek to do. >> I just had a conversation with a customer about an hour ago and he was talking about everything was paper-based, manual, no visibility, and I've talked to other customers and I think I've got Jabil on this afternoon who had like 6 billion in indirect spend. They couldn't see. And with Cuopa, the blinders are off. And there's that visibility, the BSM community is really helping organization glean value, drive profitability. Talk to me about from your perspective how the BSM community has grown to be able to deliver, as you say, value as a service. >> Look what's happening is that the customers we have, we have over 2,500 customers around the world. Every one of these customers, they have their own missions. They have their own visions, they're pursuing their goals, but in order to do that, they need energy. They need gas in their tank, right? And with every dollar we save them, with every method we allow them to become more efficient in the way that they work, the way that they have visibility, the way that they collaborate one another, the way that they think about fulfillment of demand through supply chain design, or sourcing activities, contract negotiations, procurement, sourcing, treasury the way they manage that cash. It's unlocking that firepower. It's given them more gas in the tank and that's incredibly rewarding for me and my colleagues and everyone here because our mission is the amplification of all of their missions on a daily basis, really. >> Right, that amplification that acceleration the AI and Coupa. I got to see you about, about a year and a half ago. We were a few months into the pandemic but I'm just curious what some of the customer conversations are that you've had given the challenges with the supply chain that's on the lips of every politician and pretty much everybody. What are some of the things that Coopa has really helped customers to mitigate? >> Well, first of all, the simplest things were when everyone went home they couldn't do those paper based processes anymore. So they leverage our platform much more, right? I mean, they couldn't write paper checks for example and go in the office and do that. And that's just a simple example, order things or or get goods and services to their folks that are now working from home, for example. But then they're also faced with the acute issue of supply chain needs and the agility of their supply chain. So we help them figure out different ways to transport the goods and services they need, different freighting routes in real time through our AI capabilities. So, I mean, those are just some of the examples but we really think of our value proposition as almost like a Swiss army knife. And what happened during COVID is, you know we went out into the jungle and you didn't know which of those tools you would've needed but we tried to be right there with our customer to give them, you know, the knife, the match, the scissors, the, you know the fishing line, whatever was needed at that point in time to help them survive and thrive. And that's really how we see ourselves is you know, a true partner to our customers. >> Yeah, a true enabler. Well, I was looking at your FY22 numbers growth in new business in excess of 60% percent record annual revenue, 725, be up for up 34% subscription revenue up. Coupa up into the right. >> Well, it is, and what we're trying to be very thoughtful with this business. We're trying not to grow so fast that suddenly we leave our customers behind. We really try to take it one customer at a time, but the beauty of this growth, this measured and thoughtful growth is that this, we have an incredible renewal rate. I mean, our customers stay with us and they add more and more capabilities. And that drives an incredible cash flow situation for our business. And that makes us as Coupa very resilient. That's why we love being so transparent with our customers. Here's our growth, here's our margins, here's our cash flow. Here's how we're investing into R&D and innovation. Here's the M&A that we're doing to bring you a greater set of value propositions. And I love that transparency. It's one of the beauties of being a public company everything's out there and everyone can see and decide whether they want to be a customer, be an investor, be a colleague. It's a wonderful thing. >> Talk about the power of the community. Community AI launched in FY22. You showed some numbers and just the power of all of that anonymized, aggregated data to be analyzed. What is that? How has that really driven the evolution of Coupa in the last 13 years you've been at the helm? >> Well, we set our sites on doing this as far back as 13 years ago. I know you interviewed Donna recently and she was sharing with you that we set up our contracts with the customers in a way where we could take their anonymized sanitized data, aggregate it, and see if we can glean insights from it that could be used to the benefit of each individual customer. Really break the silos of traditional enterprise software. You know, where you do one deployment at a time and you live in your own little silo in your own little world. Now we're pushing, you know, a myriad of prescriptions out to each of our customers. They can see the best ways in real time to avoid supplier risk for example, make sure that the goods and services they buy they get on time at the right price points, make sure that the suppliers that they're working with support their diverse needs, their minority own supplier needs. All of the transparency that comes with seeing trillions of dollars in data in real time and gleaning insights from it. And we're just scratching the surface in this area. We're absolutely just scratch and service. We've pushed out this platform to our customers and now they're coming back to us and saying, wow, could I glean this sign insight from the community? What if we can get access to that information? And we're encoding that for them and pushing that information and those applications out to them. So this is going to be an exciting couple of months and quarters and years to take this concept of community AI to a completely different level. And I think it's not only new for Coupa, but I really see it as something completely new for the enterprise software industry where the opportunity to break silos is really upon us. >> It's critical, but a lot of communities are very transactional episodic, Coupa isn't like that. >> Well, you know that there's no shortcut to that. That has taken 13 years. And I think that begins with the O in Coupa which is the openness, the openness, the transparency the authenticity in which we, with which we engage with our customers. They understand how we work. They have access to all of our other customers. They can interface with them and interact with them within their own industry, within their own company size, whether they're the largest companies in the world, or you know, upper mid-market or mid-market customers whether they're subscribing to our treasury applications or our supply chain or procurement applications. And by having access to this community in real time and a community that's grounded in that trust and authenticity, you know, only great things happen. Only great things happen. >> The trust in a authenticity is critical. It's easy to say, you can trust us. We're authentic. It's a whole other thing to actually feel it and believe it and see it. And you get that sense here from your keynote. Barbara Corcoran was fantastic. Inspiring, I loved how she said she'd probably never had an original good idea herself that always gets them from others. And I thought that's Coupa to me, that's the spirit of community, the spirit of collaboration. All of those Cs to me embody what Coupa is. >> Exactly, exactly. None of us is as smart as all of us. That's what it is. No doubt. >> It's true that power of that community is. And I think I read in Fast Company just really recently that you described the community AI as a moonshot. And I thought, where is he going to go from here? (laughing) >> Well, it's continuing to build on this concept. It's really continuing to build on this concept of breaking these siloed data stores, aggregating them and distilling insights from them in ways that we ourselves as Coupa, as our R&D team or Raj and our product team we don't know all the different ways the customers will want to use this power of community. But we know we have a very scalable underlying platform that operates in virtually every language and virtually every currency that will be there to support their evolving needs. As we continue our, you know, what we hope to be lifelong relationship with our customers. >> I was talking to one of your customers. I think it was Jabil recently, and we're having them on the program today. And they actually said they were an SAP ERP shop. They could have gone the SAP route and chose Coupa. And one of the main reasons was because Coupa was going to be able to evolve with them, but allow them to help Coupa evolve. And I get that sense from a lot of your customers that we have the opportunity to influence the direction that the technology goes. Because we are here in the back office now moving to the front. >> Rob: That's right. >> In a day to day, really figuring out what if it did this? What if it did that? Now it does all of these things because the community gets to be that influential >> That's right. And we also, the beauty is we're able to help them. Our customers unlock the value of their investments into core ERP platforms, whether it be SAP or Oracle a host of other ERPs, we help them get strategic leverage from those applications. And we're building this company very much on the shoulders of early, you know, enterprise software companies like themselves. So it's really a beautiful, you know relationship with our customers, but also a way to, to give them more and more leverage >> That's critical. Especially as every company these days it has to be a data company, but they have to be able to see the data, glean insights act on it, make pivots. It's one of the words that we probably use so often in the last two years is pivot, but I think without these companies having a data strategy from a competitive perspective, their toast. >> I think so I think it's really tough. You know, I frame it very simply. We spent many, many years in the industrial revolution. We're worried about, you know, physical labor, moving parts. We entered into the information revolution with the advent you know, the internet and now I think we're really in what I would call the knowledge revolution it's, as you said, it's not only the data, but gleaning valuable insights from that massive growing data store and delivering them at the point of need so that people can take advantage of that insight and that knowledge. And, you know, we're proud to be on the forefront of that as a growing, you know, technology company, a cloud based what we call values as a service company. >> Value as service, right. You mentioned in your keynote, you were talking about the the struggles of being a parent during the pandemic and trying to get your kids to watch some of the classics. I know it was right there with you, Superman, Rocky, was it Planes, Trains & Automobiles, that's another one, and I thought you mentioned, you know my kids had about three minutes of attention span. I thought in the business world, people have three seconds. The real time, get me what I need in the point of time when they need it. Is critical for every business in every industry because the consumer is so, our demands are just higher and higher. >> That's right. That's right. And you know, the U in Coupa stands for user centricity and the logic there was simply, if the machine could do the majority of the work there should be less and less stress upon the end user the user themselves, as I say, deliver exactly what they need at the point of need to them on the screen or on their phone or wherever it is so that they could keep business moving forward as efficiently thoughtfully and optimally as possible. And you know we take the responsibility as a value of service company, you know very seriously try to make sure that we optimize the time spent of the sort of the man machine, woman machine interaction then less and less is on the, on the man or woman, and much much more is on the, you know the platform that we continue to develop. >> One of the things I read that you said in the press release I think it was yesterday's, chief financial officers, chief information officers, CEOs, they need to be chief transformation officers. That's a hard thing to do, especially for, I can imagine organizations like I had Casey's General Store on, this is a company that was founded in the fifties. How are you seeing that manifest into reality when you're talking with those CFOs and CEOs, are they really becoming those chief transformation officers? >> Well, they're all aspiring to it and we're, in my view proudly helping them move as quickly as possible toward that end, to have companies that are highly agile, that can respond to shift and consumer demands, consumer needs, shifting supply chain, you know, challenges, shifting financial scenarios out in the marketplace given the volatility of the stock market. So if we could offer that agility and resiliency and that additional stool of digital transformation for CEOs, CFOs and CIOs, and, you know we're doing something special out there. >> So Rob, last question for you. What does tomorrow look like for Coupa? What are we going to see and feel next year? Any crystal ball insight you can share with me? >> You know, I don't know. One of the things about us is we're not we're a little bit of a boring company. It's one quarter after the next week. >> I saw the dancing video that is not boring. (Rob laughing) >> But you know, it's been what, 52 quarters of going at it, one quarter at a time, one customer at a time one interaction at a time, one line of code at a time, you know, one QA assurance at a time, one support ticket at a time just moving forward moving forward, moving forward. And before, you know, it, you turn around, you look around and we began as you know, know a couple of handfuls of people with a desire to inspire an industry is starting to take shape. And we feel like, you know, we're not just getting started, but we're certainly in the early innings of I think creating a very special company and more importantly, a very special community around the company that we're forming. I would say a very special community. Rob, great to have you on the program, congrats on doing the event in person, getting all of these people that are so ready to see you guys and to be able to interact with Coupa and its partner ecosystem, getting us all together. One of my favorite events, we appreciate you stopping by on the CUBE. >> Thank You. Thanks for having me again. >> All right. For Rob Bernshteyn, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the CUBE's coverage of day two Coupa Inspire 2022 from Las Vegas. Stick around. My next guest will join me shortly. (lighthearted music)

(upbeat music) >> Good afternoon from Las Vegas. Lisa Martin, at The Cosmopolitan, here on day two of theCUBE's coverage of Coupa Inspire 2022. I'm excited to be joined by one of Coupa's many successful customers, Jaime Robles joins me, the chief procurement officer at Casey's General Stores. You're going to be talking about building a technology hub with source-to-pay and interconnecting ecosystem platforms. Welcome, Jaime. >> Thank you, Lisa. It's a pleasure to be here today in this week, hearing about Coupa and all the fabulous things that we can do around technology. >> Coupa is amazing, and in terms of their innovation, I don't know if you had a chance to see the Keynote this morning, but the slides that Raja showed with just the arrow going up and to the right. Talk to us a little bit about Casey's General Stores. This is the U.S's fourth largest convenience store retailer. But just for the audience who may not know, give us a background. >> So, just a little bit about Casey's. So, Casey's is, as you said, one of the largest convenience store chains out there. We got more than 2,500 locations in 16 states in the Midwest in the U.S. And just out of curiosity, we are the fifth largest pizza company as well. >> Lisa: Is that right? >> We make a great pizza and our guests love it. So, we are in three businesses. We are in convenience store, we are in fuel, and also we are in the food business, because we got a kitchen inside every single store that we got out there. So, for us it's been a fabulous journey with procurement, because we came to the company, joined the company two years ago in the middle of pandemic, and the whole idea was to build the procurement function from the ground up. Casey's didn't have a formal procurement function. So, pretty much, all the spend was done by the functions, by themselves, but no formal process, no technology, no platforms, nothing; very old school. And we came here to build a foundation and build, as I call it, a procurement tech house. >> A procurement tech house. So, talk to me, so I know that Casey's dates back to 1959, and what you described sounds like a lot of paper-based, manual processes; technology really wasn't in the mix. Is that what attracted you to take the role going, "I want to bring technology and build this powerhouse"? >> Yes, that was amazing. So, over my career, I've been doing this for several companies, such as in the past, in Phillips, G, and recently, with Walmart. And then, what attracted me for this opportunity was, well, everything is paper. Everything is manual. There's nothing digital in this company. There's no team, there's no sourcing, no process, no policies. It's like building everything from the ground up. So, it was very attractive. It's huge opportunities for the company, and we were going through this massive transformation to digitize the company all across the operations. So, procurement wasn't the core of those strategies for the CEO of the company, and that's what the opportunity lies. He was like, "How do we move from manual transactions to all this digital world?" and where, now everything is frictionless, that we move from 80%, 85%, that it was all manual. Now we are plus 65%, everything is digital now in the company, and just within one year of moving all over. So, the savings, the cost, the, the leakage, all the waste on the processes that we have, is just amazing, after one year. >> Sounds like the company had a cloud, a digitization strategy, brought you on board to help make that a reality for procurement. So, the appetite was there at Casey's from a cultural perspective, it wasn't battling uphill to get folks to go, "Let go of the paper. Let's go to Coupa." >> Yeah, that's the truth. So, it was the whole digital transformation for the company, not only on the procurement, spend side, but all the process in the company. So, as COVID hit our stores and the whole world, right? So, we had to move into more digital ordering, into more digital transaction, into more how my guests can interact with my stores without going to the stores, how they can order from the app, how they can get their food directly to their house, and all this stuff. And procurement was right there, hand to hand, as part of those strategies from the very beginning. And we were, I will say, very lucky to be on time to make all those digital transformations for the company, so when the COVID really hit, we were ready and prepared to take over. >> That's good, being ready and prepared. Oh my gosh. But some of the few people I've talked to. Talk to me about the core technology requirements that you had for the right BSM solution, and why Coupa ticked all those boxes. >> Yeah. So for us, it was one of the most important ones is as I said, bring the digital across the whole source to pay. Another big element for us, it was, how do we bring transparency into the process? How do we bring transparency on how much we pay, how do we spend our money, Which areas, which categories? We built a model in cases that are called, it's a self-service model. And this self service model is, I put the technology in its core, which is Coupa, and I give my users and my internal stakeholders all the power to take those decisions. So, now they can see how much they spend in different categories, with different suppliers, for the preferred vendors, what type of contracts do we have? And how do we manage that spend, versus the budget, as well? They have all that ability to take those decisions, and they don't need a procurement team. As I like to call, in my couple of speaker notes during this week, we like to make procurement invisible. We are in the back, they don't see us. And they got all the power to use the technology out there to do the job for us. >> Transparent, but empowered at the same time. >> Exactly, exactly. That's what we want, moving forward for this company. And I believe that is the vision that we got in the procurement 2.0. >> Procurement 2.0. Talk to me about some of the solutions that you implemented. You talked about source-to-pay, but give us kind of an idea if you double click on that, and then we'll kind of unpack ` what you talked about on your sessions. >> Yeah, pretty much, for Coupa, we implemented the whole source to pay. So, from sourcing, procurement, invoicing and payment. So, we implement all that at the core of the Coupa. I believe in an ecosystem of procurement technologies that are interconnected with Coupa, to interact for other needs, like contract lifecycle management, tail spend management, TNE, and some others that we're going after. Like, now for us, is going after supplier data hub, which for us is very important also to get it right. And that procurement ecosystem of different technologies connected is going to give us the ability to move faster, to be more lean and to have better data and technology accessible for the team that is in charge of procurement, to operate under that environment. >> You mentioned a few minutes ago that, when the pandemic hit, Casey's was ready, from a digital perspective. I imagine that was a huge advantage, going into such unknown times that we're still kind of in. >> Well, when I say ready, it's like, we were ready to go, and we were on the fly, implementing everything, and what the pandemic did is to accelerate all this. So, as many companies did, we were already in the process of going this direction, and when the pandemic start hitting, we accelerate everything, and we made it happen. So, we went live in three, four months, and a year later, we were completely live since we joined the company, and we were start seeing all this paying coming to ours. So, 18 months later, we are pretty much hitting best in class levels in terms of transactional, operational, tactical, savings, visibility, spend, transparency, risk management. Now we're going to take it to the next level of the maturity. It's like, how do we go for ESG? How do we go for supplier diversity? How do we manage risk management? Right? And all those things. >> You had a couple of presentations here at Inspire, talk to me about those, and some of the top takeaways that the audience gleaned from you. >> Yeah, one of the most important ones yesterday was about how to build a procurement organization from the ground up, or how to go through a digital transformation in procurement. That is something that has been on the topic on the procurement community for years now. Everybody talks about procurement transformation, et cetera. And I just showed to them, my journey in the companies that I've been doing this for the last two decades, across the world, in many different countries, and the things that work and the and the things that doesn't work, really. And how they need to build, for the future of procurement, a technology procurement house on the core. And that's how you operate day to day. And for us, organization was Coupa. And then on top of that, you need to build a procurement ops model, right? How you want to operate your procurement operating model. So, it's centralized, decentralized, a hybrid model. And it all depends about the type of company, the type of industry you are, how material is your organization, et cetera. And another big, big element in all your strategy is, how you're going to serve your customers, right? What type of service model do you have in place? If you're going to be like a full service mode, or you going to be in a strategic direction, or you going to be a self-service mode. And pretty much, what we have chosen as the best way to move forward in the future is, let's put the technology in the middle. Let's give the support our users need, but let them be self-service, and let's make our job invisible in the back, where we have all these sourcing events, all these beautiful negotiations, all these great deals, contracts, et cetera. So, by the time they use the technology, they know where to buy, how to buy, what's the right level, how to make it happen, and they don't need us. They can do it by their own. >> And they've got that visibility, that before, it sounds like they didn't have it at all. >> Exactly, so now we know how much we spend, where do we spend, and where are the opportunities? Where are some gaps that we can go after, as well? And I think one of the most important aspects in these transformations that many of my colleagues are going through is, then you have a model that you can repeat year over year and evolve with the company, so it's agile and it's flexible. Because companies keep evolving. You buy business, you sell business, you acquire, you expand, you grow, and how that model is going to shape around. So, by the time you're done, it's not obsolete again. So, technology is going to keep evolving with your model, and that for me, is the key part in all this. >> Do you feel like, this is a marketing term; future-proof, and it always is one of those things that, well what does that actually really mean? Do you feel though that, what you've put in place is future-proof? That it's going to be able to grow and scale as the company changes? >> Jaime: Totally, totally. Because as I said before, we put the technology on the core. And for us, having that technology on the core, and plugging different technologies around that and sourcing around that with our amazing sourcing team, is going to evolve whatever the company needs. If we expand into different regions, we're ready. If we expand into different business types, we're ready. I believe what we need to keep evolving, as well, is, there will be new emerging technologies. There's going to be way more AI. There's going to be way more machine learning. There's going to be more predictive analytic sourcing stuff. How do we keep pulling those technologies into our platforms to keep giving us that advantage and that edge to the market? I think we have the model, and I think it's one of the most advanced procurement functions that I've seen in the industries around. >> And it sounds like you designed and deployed it really quickly, >> We did. >> especially during a global crisis. >> Yeah, we are disruptors by nature. We love change. We love speed. And that is, I will say my procurement brand. We make it happen and we make it fast. That's how we do it. We keep momentum. >> That's incredibly important. I mean, one of the things that we've learned, many things the last two years, a couple things. Access to realtime data is no longer a "nice to have." It's absolutely business critical. The patience of many people, including myself, was quite thin, the last two years. But also, every company has to be a data company. Casey's has to be a data company. If I have the ability to order from my app, or order things, I want them to know when I'm here for, what I ordered before; make my visit personalized, efficient, easy. So, that data strategy, having that data at the core, is nowadays, you have to have it. >> It is essential. We're building a data hub for the company, completely showing us all that information. As you can imagine, being in those three business, on the food industry, on the retail convenience store, and in the fuel, so data for us is our living breath every single day. And not only having the data now, it's like, what type of decisions we're taking with all this data? And how fast we are adapting to all that, in pricing, in cost, in margin and availability and inventory and logistics and transportation, and in your whole supply chain. So, that is extremely important for us. Not only having the data, but what kind of decisions we're taking with the data, and everything starts with the transparency right? Whenever you see it, you act. >> You should be able to act, but to your point, you have to have that visibility. You have to be able to see it and act on it. Talk to me about what it's like being a Coupa customer. I know how I've been to many Inspires, and I always love seeing all the customer success stories everywhere across industries. What's it like being a Coupa customer, in terms of having the ability to influence, say, the roadmap? Is that something that you're able to work on in partnership with Raj's team? >> Yeah, that's great. So, Coupa has been a great company to work with, and I know them for some years now, and not only they been able to support our vision of what we're trying to build, but at the same time they're taking many of our feedback to make Coupa better, in many of the different models. Listen, Coupa's not perfect, right? And I don't think any tool out there is going to be perfect. But being in so many different industries and with so many opportunities in different areas, they've been able to take our feedback and make those improvements for ourselves. We have so many conversations with the Coupa product development team when we were going through a transformation, asking them for things that we thought it was very valuable to have on the tool, that was in our, in our eyes, no brainer, and they were very, very fast to react and make the change. And we are, I think, one of the most lousy customers, guilty as charged about that, but we just wanted to make it better because it's a benefit of the whole community. Everything that we've been talking this week about community AI, it's amazing. All the things that we're sharing during this week, all the ideas that we are getting about things that we can do. That's amazing. That's the value. >> It's huge value. And that's that sort of flywheel of the community and the power and the insights. Last question for you. If you talk to peers, or when you talk to peers who are maybe starting their procurement digitization journey, what advice do you give them? >> Don't take a no as an answer. Make it happen. Own it. Own it. I think you need to have a vision. You need to put in strategy in place. You need to build a business case. You need to earn your seat at the table at the C-suite. But you need to own it. You cannot let the IT, function, finance community too long, and decide how you want to operate and how you want to move your function as procurement, or build how you operate. You need to own it, and you need to build a business case and you need to make it happen. You need to, yeah. To struggle with that. But if you are a hustler, as we are in cases, we are disruptors. And if you don't disrupt, it's not going to happen. >> I completely agree. Own it, make it happen. Jaime, great to have you on the program. >> Jaime: Thanks so much. >> Thanks for hearing what Casey's is doing, how you're really leading the charge, and how you owned it and made it happen. That's awesome. >> Thank you, Lisa. Thank you for being here. >> Thanks. For Jaime Robles, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE's coverage day two, Coupa Inspire 22, from Las Vegas. Join me with my next guest, coming up shortly. (lighthearted upbeat music)

>> Narrator: From the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, it's theCUBE, covering Coupa Inspire 2019, brought to you by Coupa. >> Welcome to theCUBE, Lisa Martin on the ground at Coupa Inspire'19 from the Cosmopolitan in Vegas. And I'm pleased to be joined by one of Coupa's spend setters from Highmark Health, Gary Foster, VP of Procurement. Gary, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, it's pleasure to be here. >> So we're here with about 2,300 folks or so I think this is the eighth Coupa Inspire. Lots of energy and excitement this morning in the general session as Rob kicked that off. There is some of the interesting things that I've learned about Coupa in the last short while including this morning was that there's now $1.2 trillion of spend going through being managed by the Coupa platform. Tremendous community of data. And so imperative as the role of Chief Procurement Officer is changing, the CFO is changing. You are a veteran in the procurement industry. Before we talk about Highmark Health, give me a little bit of an overview of some of the things that you've seen change in procurement and where you think we are today in terms of that role being not only very strategic, but very influential to the top line of a business. >> Okay, it's a great question. I have spent a little over three decades in procurement. We've come a long way from back then. There was a lot of carryover from the industrialization era, and post-World War II and Korean War era, et cetera. Where really wasn't even called procurement it was purchasing. And there was a bit of the darling in the manufacturing industry, because that had such a high impact on the cost of goods sold. And as you got into other organizations, it was kind of relegated to a back office function, very transactional, very administrative, very clerical. So it really took someone with a lot of guts and a lot of vision to say we can be more than that. We can provide insights, we can deliver efficient transaction work and free up people to do more advisory type of roles. So I'm pleased to say I experimented with that early on in my procurement career. And that has been the shift that I think is continuing on. The whole buzz around digitization is another enabler to free up the talent that we have, that we can put into providing insights and predictions and becoming true strategy advisors to the business. So when the most recent, I've had for teams that I've taken over to either completely transform or build from the ground up. And this most recent one, I've sort of mashed up a lot of things that I've learned over the past three decades, to try to prepare them for where I believe that the profession is going, where I believe the function is going. Back to your original question. It's really evolved a lot from that back office transactional, just focus on price, a little bit on supply reliability, if it was in manufacturing, to slowly but surely started evolving to, what can you do to help us with some business objectives? And do we trust you with some important strategic initiatives that we need to accomplish as a company or in my business? >> Right, so it sounds like early on that you had this awareness of, there's pockets, there's silos of spend and purchasing happening there that we don't have the visibility into, 'cause we're talking a lot about that today with, that's what today's CPO and CFO really need is that visibility and control. >> Gary: Right. >> Especially as all of these forcing functions or disruptors happen, the more regulatory requirements or companies growing organically or inorganically. And suddenly, there's many, many areas within a business that are buying and spending. >> Right. >> And if they don't have that awareness and visibility into it, not only is it obviously, it's a cost issue, but one of your points to the resource utilization perspective. There's a lot of opportunities miss. So it sounds like you kind of saw that early on in your career, that there are things going on, we need to get visibility into all of this. >> Yes, yes. And it's, that's probably the, that's one of the foundational building blocks is to get a good handle on where's the money going. So the financial side of the house understands it from their journal entries and from their cost centers. But procurement, really great world class procurement, brings a different lens that the business doesn't think of. And that the financial industry, financial segment of the business doesn't think of. So that's, but you're really kind of a chicken and egg thing, you can't really provide the insights, if you don't have your hands on the information. And the information is got to be usable, right? Data versus information-- >> Absolutely. >> Quandary. That's very much the case with procurement. But you can't get bogged down and going for perfection, because then you'll just, analysis paralysis. You won't get out of that cycle and you'll never be able to provide. So you have to know, you have to have a gut feel that this is enough, this is directionally correct. Let's take this to the next level. Let's start moving with, here are the patterns that we see, here's what we think is happening, here's where we think there are issues, right? So those are, I think, are some of the foundational pieces to the spend analysis question. >> So talk to us a little bit about Highmark Health. What you're doing there and how you guys are really focused on changing America's approach to healthcare? Which I think would be welcomed by a lot of people, by the way. >> (chuckles) Yes, we have a very, very ambitious goal. We believe we can be a catalyst to change healthcare in America. >> Lisa: How so? >> Well, first of all, we think that the model was wrong. If you think about the way that the healthcare industry has grown up in the US, you went to a hospital because you were either sick or injured. You had to go to those locations. You had to follow those procedures. You had to fill out those forms. You had to, you went to where the care was, and you had to bend to your schedule to whatever was available, right? We've all experienced trying to get an appointment with a doctor, and it's four months out, right? So we're doing, this was a year and a half ago, we introduced same-day appointments. So we have both a hospital system and an insurance company. So we can see the whole value chain-- >> Lisa: Okay. >> Through the healthcare experience. And one of the fundamentals that we're doing is, we're trying to bring a retail mindset to healthcare. >> Where the wellness comes to- >> You, as opposed to you having to go somewhere to access your health or to get connected with experts that can advise you or for checkups, et cetera. You're wearing an Apple Watch, that's only one of those Fitbits, et cetera. There's a multitude of wearables that are coming. The combination of IoT, and healthcare and big data is intersecting at a rapid rate where we will be, we are already able to look at millions of records, of chart information about patterns of diagnoses. And we know that the data tells us that if we can get people to engage in their health and make small changes, and just learn more, be educated and learn more about how, we know that the long-term costs of their healthcare will go down. So we are looking to partner, obviously, can't do this all on our own. >> Right. >> So this is not a David and Goliath kind of a thing. So we're looking actively to partner with breaking company, lead companies and breaking technology companies to be partners with us on this journey of how do we bring health to people and help improve their health, lower their disease rates, provide a better quality of life, lower their cost of health care, lower all the complications, you can see the graphs, right? It all runs, as you get as you get older, if you don't take care of yourself. >> Lisa: Right. >> The complications of healthcare issues just go exponentially up. And we know we can bend that curve down if we can transform the way that health is thought of and delivered to people in the country. >> Well, I'm already signed, you got me. So talk to me, though, about from a technology perspective. If we think about all the emerging technologies, you mentioned IoT, millions and millions of devices, we are sometimes overly connected. >> Gary: Yes. >> What is the opportunity that Highmark is working on with Coupa to be able to start changing that mindset and bringing that retail model to healthcare? How are they hoping to ignite that? >> Well, it's not on a direct connection with Coupa. Coupa is our procuring platform. So it enables us to provide efficient transactions and we get data insights. Coupa is very much an enabler for us in this process. What I would say is, and this goes back to the evolution of procurement as a profession, by having Coupa and other technologies at the fingertips of my team, it frees them to immerse themselves into their clients' business as well as their categories. So if they're, if I have someone who's a category manager of digital marketing, they can immerse themselves into that, and they can work that, my folks go, they attend senior level staff meetings, they have one on ones with executive VPs, they co-locate with the client on a regular basis. We really immerse ourselves into it. What Coupa is doing is it's allowing us to spend less time on transactions and process, and more time learning the business, more time understanding the industries that they operate in, looking for innovation, and bringing those innovative partners to the business that wouldn't necessarily have happened on its own. We have this incredible network, particularly if we have people that really, really have a passion for procurement, and really have a passion for being intimate with the customer. I know it's an overused phrase, but the trusted advisor status is definitely where we should be. That's an, the Coupa org, the Coupa platform, and tools enable my team to have, to bring those insights and those opportunities to the business. And we've gotten tremendous accolades from the CEO through the entire C-suite, about the level of business partnership that the procurement organization has, with all of the various areas of the Highmark organization. >> So you have this visibility now that you didn't have before with Coupa? >> Yeah. >> This control. Sounds like your resources and different parts of the organization are much better able to use their time to be strategic on other projects and to really start bringing that retail experience out there. Coupa kind of as, you mentioned, as an enabler is really foundational to that. I know you've actually won some awards. I think, Rob Bernstein actually mentioned this on stage this morning that you took top honors at the Procurement Leaders, Inaugural America's Procurement Awards. >> Gary: Yes. >> You've also been recognized as a Procurement Leader of the Year for transforming Highmark Health. What I love about the story is that showing how procurement, not only has it transitioned tremendously to be very strategic, but you're helping to transform an industry by getting this visibility on everywhere, where there's spend there, that operationally, Highmark Health seems to have a big leg up. >> Yes, yeah. No one could be everywhere at once. And if we can earn that trust, then the people in the business who are hired to play certain roles, strategy, development, or whatever, if they're, if they will, let us help them with our expertise, they can spend, they're more effective in their role. >> Right. >> Because they're not doing procurement work. They're not talking to suppliers. They're not negotiating deals. They're not looking, then let us provide that service, that professional service to them, really, as a consultant, as an advisor, and bring companies that, the more we get in depth into understanding the industries that we're buying in, the more we're learning about emerging companies. Who are the innovators? Who are the disruptors? Bringing those organizations because we're studying that in our markets, to our business partner, and making that introduction, which sparks an idea, which sparks an opportunity for the two to work together collaboratively on something new, or to resolve an issue that has not been addressed and no one found an answer to in the past. >> Well, you've put this really strong foundation in place that not only gives you the visibility and control, but it's going to allow Highmark Health on this ambitious goal, as you mentioned, about bringing wellness to us. And of course, there's the whole, there's the human in the way. So maybe tomorrow, Deepak Chopra, who's keynoting, will be able to give you guys some insight into how to help these people. And it's all of us people, right? Really embrace mindfulness, to be able to focus more on our passions. But what you guys are doing to transform healthcare is really inspirational so Gary, thank you-- >> Thank you very much. >> For joining me on theCUBE today. >> It was a pleasure. >> Likewise. For Gary Foster, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE from Coupa Inspire'19. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> from the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. It's the Cube covering Cooper inspired 2019. >> Brought to you by Cooper. >> Welcome to the Cube. Lisa Martin on the ground at Cooper inspired 19 up a Cosmopolitan and Las Vegas. Cooper is a company that has a lot of energy. If you go to their website cooper dot com and check out some of their videos, the energy is awesome. And I'm happy to have some of that energy with me. Next, we have Russia Mood s V P of product from Cuba, Russia. Welcome to the Q You for having me. It's so good to be here. Thank you for coming. We're excited to be here at I was enjoyed your keynote this morning, Chanda. I had him on a little bit ago and I thought this company has naturally this culture of energy. Very inspirational. No pun intended with theme inspire. But one of the things that really struck me about your keynote this morning is that the way that you as the spp of products, the way that you announced you know, some of the great things that you guys are doing with a W s with Cooper pay with more partners was explained so clearly and articulated so beautifully that people get it. So give us a little bit of an overview of this. Suspend management the platform that you guys have been building this category and how Cooper works to help companies really transform procurement. >> Well, thank you. Thank you for your kind notes and thank you for coming in and being part of this wonderful community, let >> me >> start with with the spend. Management were incredibly excited to be co creating this whole category with with the entire customers and analysts and partners. And essentially, we have moved to a stage in time where we're looking at spend across the entire company. Not some kind of spend that expenses, not procurement, just like cos. Look at c E r M for managing everything around their sales facing activities. Business spend Management is about doing exactly the same thing on the spending management side, and there's a lot of similar things between them because on the C. R. M and the customer facing areas, there's a ton off focus on consumerism ation. How do you attract customers? Well, those concepts also are the key to success and visit spent management because ultimately the goal is all about how do I get to a point where everybody is doing what they're supposed to do to lower costs? Thinks, reduce risk, et cetera, et cetera. But when you look at large companies and you're talking about 10,000 people, 20,000 people, it comes down to every single person wanting to be a part of it, which means you gotta reach them. You gotta consume, arise the experience. So that comes a place that you can connect with. So that's a big focus for us. >> Consumer ization is so important we talk about it at a lot of events. But, you know, as consumers of I've been saying a number of times, say whether it's a vehicle, that you're in the market for home mortgage, whatever it happens to be something for your dog on Amazon, maybe that's just me. You can get access to it very quickly. You can see all the different suppliers, different prices. You're so informed as a consumer. But then that consumer on a Sunday on the Monday might be, you know, in procurement or even in the line of business that it has to be managing and contingent workforce. So there's an expectation. Deliver me the same experience when I'm a consumer at home when I'm in my day to day job, and that's something that you you really can get a sense for. What? How Cooper is enabling that potential. They're not just transform procurement, but what transforming procurement can do for top line of this >> absolutely, absolutely, and something very interesting here as well, which is, when you think about me to be experiences, it's almost will be to be. Professionals have gotten to a point where their expectations from their consumer lives just die because they're not getting that type of experience at this time. It is time to bring everyone into it and give them the same level experience. Now what we're doing something very, very unique and incredibly special in this industry, which I believe is going to light up this industry on fire is the idea of a community intelligence. It's the ideas of you talk a lot about big data and the importance of a I and dictator. What we've done here is, after over a decade in this industry, helping each and every company and say in a sass platform, Get there. Spend under management now with trillions and trillions of dollars that are going through that platform. What is happening now is we have incredible intelligence that we're able to offer to each and every business and each and every user something very approachable and very simple from one of the goals of businessmen. Management is that everybody to be able to do their process is very fast, right? So we gave me fight it. We simply allow every user to see how well they're doing compared to the rest of the community at large. >> I saw that the tortoise thing is incredible. >> It's a simple idea, however, what it is doing it. It's moving people in the right direction in terms of doing things faster, not sitting on these expense reports that because, as you heard today, when you look at the stories when you're late on invoices, etcetera, yes, it's a back office functions, but you're not delivering the actual service. Whether it is for the American Red Cross was >> great casket. If that could be right, the magnitude of that could be huge. Exactly, exactly. So community >> intelligence continues to be a very incredible, exciting opportunity for us overall. And you will hear a lot of conversations happening with customers trying to think of what else they want to compare to others. Ah, lot of the buzz was created around spent guard. >> You tell me a little bit more not about today, because we think about it from fraud, detection and security perspective. Those air >> are >> essential elements to embed in any technology in any industry. What are you guys doing here? That you really kind of dialed it up? >> It is it is incredibly exciting. So of course, whatever, there's money there's going to be from that happens everywhere in the world. When we looked at that problem, we looked at it told mystically, which is and in the market you went flying technology that thinks about let's do expenses, fraud and somebody who's going in detecting if people are doing that. But when we deflected on it, Friday is a human behavior. It's every person who's doing this, and if that person is doing, they're gonna do with expenses and contracts and sourcing everywhere they get their hands on and Amos. So we said what we need to do is to look at it holistically. Let's look at the user patterns And what are they, suspicious activities that we're seeing So platform? Why? User patterns. By looking at everything where the entire span and then what? And what we did is okay, Great. Let's how do how do you do with we use a I to do it. And this is where we do deep learning that we can look at clusters and see Oh, this is what is normal for this group. These are the out liar. So start surfacing these kinds of things up for the auditors themselves. But then we said, it's not enough to just, um, detect the fraud, because by the time you detective mind, right, yeah, yes. So you have to recover it. And now you have to go into recovery. Who wants to do that? So that's where we added the principle of in flight and flight. Catch it, catch it routed right when it is. And this is just the beginning. This a >> reactive to proactive >> it is yes, instead of after the fact I'm going to tell you and stop it right now so you don't pay it don't even pay it instead of the past. Used to be about the recovery approaches because you detected the frog two months later and you go back to whoever did the fraud and you're trying to recover your money. Got it. This is don't pay the money. Find it that moment in time And that's the beginning. And now we're looking at not only within companies but also across the baby to be with suppliers, right? Right, Because there's a lot of schemes where supplier might have a relationship with multiple people at the companies, and they have all sorts of schemes might be going on. So as we start doing that, back to community intelligence will be looking at how to surface that the entire community at large for the benefit of everybody. >> That was something that really struck me Russia yesterday when Rob kicked everything off and I just thought, you know, it's not just a community that has access to all the transactions 1.2 trillion dollars $1,000,000,000 in transactions going through the Cupid platform, which is five x increase in just the last few years alone, which is huge, but it's this collaborative community where customers from company and company be that are using are gonna be able to benefit from each other. It's It's this vision, though, that you guys have had for a long time a Cooper to build it around this community, this tribe and as we look at how many patterns in everyday lives B to B B to C are changing, being community driven, whether it's 80 plus percent when I was talking to China are a little bit ago, 80 plus percent of buying decisions are done are driven by the buyer. Is there so much access to information? Don't you want it? You wanna learn from others who have experienced good or bad with a particular supplier or particular thunder and share that information? And so really, the collaborative spirit of Cooper's community is really it's just seems quite unique to me. >> It has been quite incredible, and when it started, it started in face to face. It wasn't in the technology itself. When we started, it was in community advisory board meetings were sitting up and thinking about areas we want to go to. You came into inspire. Today I'd say, for example, a couple inspires ago I came and I talked about a new concept that we're getting into. I left the stage and several customers came to me, and they're like, We want to help shape this And I said, Absolutely, and guess what they did. They took it upon themselves to organize the meetings and to lose. They unlock getting, they brought customers themselves. And we went in there and we co developed and co created the product by working with everyone, and that was always the spirit. And then what we did after that is his layer the technology on top, which is to start looking at the entire big data and start to anonymous eyes. All of that data aggregated and start surfacing these least insights about risk, about fraud, about opportunities for companies. One of the exciting things, for example, now we have in the community is if you want to go look to buy anything, you can go and search for what will come back to you is a bunch of suppliers with a lot of data about them. But what's special here, This is not win. Go look at the directory and give you did about a directory of what the supplier said about themselves. We want after the entire transactions across the whole ecosystem. Okay, that has been anonymous ized. And we're telling you, based on that data, these suppliers are my are supplying this item. You're getting real world information about who are supplying them with scores on how good they are. It's really, really exciting chef that we're taking as we go into the world of of community intelligence and apply and get a >> large. Yeah, well, it's another thing that you guys to really well, that I've served in the last couple of days is we're talking about customer advisory boards before, and I know a number of customers that were on the program with me the last couple of days. Talked about that. These customers are what this example that you just gave this very cool where they're driving, they're bringing you to Maur customers. But that sense of customers feeling Cooper isn't only listening to us. There were co carrying with them. They're part of this community. That's also something that was refreshing to hear. Thank you, because at the end of the day, that's why any business is in businesses. You're selling a product or service. You're not creating something that's hopefully going to meet some esoteric right problem are concerned. It's that co creation there, that that vibe is very, very evident. I've seen it. I heard it from customers that were on stage, those that were here with us today, and that's something that I just think it's really kind of sets people apart. >> Thank you, thank you. It's been a true joy. I mean, when I think of can't remember where this but it really resonated with me is a real bonding happens when you co create something together. And that is the essence of why we have this fight that you are feeling with customers. Because do you take examples like Nike? When they started on their journey with us, Nike wanted to go into a pigment factory and how to factor payments. When we first started, we were very upfront about our capabilities. We cannot support these things, but we started to discover, talk about it, rolled up our sleeves, and we started to dig in in their use cases were different. Their use cases, where, where they're looking at all of the invoices for that are thousands of lines long because of all the different parameters on the shoes that they are getting for orders. When we looked at these, we didn't have these give abilities. We partnered with them, and as we did that we did it in nothing. Isolation. We did it because we know there are other customers like this. Have this needs. We just haven't tipped them. Yes, yes. So we started to talk to all these customers, validate ideas. And we went on a journey that went on for a good two and 1/2 years and now has made the product so strong and so many customers are using these kind of capabilities. But the school created all of that together, which is incredibly special. >> Another thing as we're getting close to wrapping up here that you talked about your keynote today that was also mentioned yesterday. A number of times is speaking of co creation overthe 300 new developments and advancements in the platform since just last year's inspired 12 months. That's a tremendous amount of of R and D, but that's done in conjunction with this community. This co creation there is really allowing you guys to move. Probably faster. Imagine. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. And the pace is just incredible on. Of course, that's part of the growth where we now have separate teams dedicated for each of these functional areas so we can drive more and more of those kinds of ideas. But yes, I would only accelerating. We're growing. So we >> should be seeing even. Well, that's good cause of the A M. Cooper. It's for accelerated. Exactly. What are you doing here? I wish we had more time. I think you and I were just scratching the surface that you're gonna have to come back. >> I would love it. Such a pleasure to >> thank you. Thank you. I hold a cz. Well, thanks for having us here. It's awesome. And I can't wait to see where the next year goes. Thank you. All right. So Russia, huh? Mood? I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube from Cooper A inspire 19. Thanks for watching

>> from the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. It's the Cube covering Cooper inspired 2019. Brought to You by Cooper. >> Welcome to the Cube. Lisa Martin on the ground at Koopa Inspired 19 from Las Vegas. Very excited to welcome one of Cooper's spend centers from the USO acquaintance, senior director of procurement and contract management. Hey, welcome. >> Thank you. I'm glad to be here. >> Yeah, so this is one of the things that I really appreciate it with. All of the tech conference is that we go to on the Q, which is many, Many a year is when vendors like Cooper really share their success is through the voices and the stories of their successful customers. You got called out yesterday during general session today. There's a big cardboard cutout of you behind us there. But one of the things also that I find intriguing is looking at older organizations, and USO is 77 years young. We think of older organizations challenging Thio maneuver that in this digital era and really be able to transform the business so that you could d'oh, what the mission of the U. S. It was, which is to help men and women in our U. S. Armed forces from the time that they enter to the time that they transition back to civilian life. Talked a little bit about us. So what your role is in for cumin and then we'll talk about how you're achieving these great things. >> Well, I've been with us for four years, almost four years. When I first interviewed for this position with my boss, the VP controller, I asked her if they had a secure to pay solution. She said No again when I was hired for this position, My, you know, my goal was to get the organization automated. They were processing everything by paper. All the requisitioning was being processed by paper. It would take for seven seven 10 days. It's for a requisition to be approved because it would literally be something printed out and move from desk to desk, desk on approvals and on the back end for invoicing would occur the same filling out a cover sheet. Everything was printed out, processed manually, so that was kind of my first project when I started and my position was new, procurement had been under the director of canning operation. So, um came. It was just a small piece of it. So they made a decision After he left to create my position on DSO I. Again. That was my goal initially when I started. So So it was going through an R P process, looking, looking our requirements and then selecting vendor gets the best value to the USO, which was Coop up. And Cooper is what I think we all love about. It is it's so customizable, and the USO has a lot of, ah, a lot of different requirements in our barbecue elements. From, you know, we've entertainment tours to our programs, care packages we send out to the military. Our operations are USO Center's construction projects, our development campaigns for on line and direct mail. So there are a lot of different requirements. I really work with each department and kind of setting up those requirements, and Cooper was able to do that for us. We were able to customize a lot of it, But for us, the innovation part is really thinking outside the box because >> tough to do 77 year old organization, right, especially one that has paper everywhere. You guys air now 90.4% paper. Yes, with Cooper, that's a massive Yes, it's cultural change. It's a >> huge and it took again. Another thing. When I interviewed Waas, I interviewed with the CFO as well and I said If you don't support me, I will not be successful. So they have been very supportive. My supervisor, the CFO, the entire organization CEO. It's been extreme. He loves Cooper, so loves the app in improving a breathing invoices requisitions. So it was really that that communication, the socialization training because it was a huge cultural shift and some were embraced it. It was a little tougher for others moving. But eventually you move in line because that is, you know, that's the new process for us as an organization. So it's it's become very successful. We're moving towards new modules contracts, Clm expends sourcing. So we're really expanding the group A picture at us. Oh, >> so what would you say before you came on board when there was so much paper floating around everywhere? You can imagine the security risk of all these, you know, personal information or what have you lying around on someone's desk? What waas The percent, if you could guess visibility into where the U. S. I was spending money prior to bringing on Cooper versus what is it today? >> Uh, extremely small percentage would have been a very small. I mean, we just had a you know, we operate on our European system. Is Great Plains pretty clunky? Not, You know, it's It's hard to see the visibility. Now. It's 100% visibility. We see all of all of the requisitioning occurring overseas. You know, we have centers all over the world, and they all have access to Cooper now because they have to submit requisitions through Cooper. And so we now have 100% visibility. And for our reporting, you know, able to pull all that information and we've got controls in place gave us the ability to put some controls in place and our approval work flows and making sure that contracts were reviewed before budgets air approved, etcetera. A lot of those things were able to set those controls in place in >> that control. Word that you bring up is spot on. We've been talking about that for the last couple of days, and it's the same when we were talking with Suzie Orman earlier, who was one of the key nodes. And when she talks about personal finance, it's sort of the same thing. We all as individuals, whether we're consumers, you know, in our personal lives, buying whenever we want from anything dot com to being buyers or managers of even lines of business. Within whatever company we work for. We need to have that picture that control and control is really that kind of accountability and that awareness. Are we managing everything appropriately? Are there other parts of the business that are doing the same thing that there may be getting the same service is at a better price, and we're we should know that right, but without having that visibility will be able to control of this process is it's an inhibitor to any business being able to transform digitally and be competitive and right to really get back to your core >> mission. Exactly. And that's what's helping you know us with the control way are a 501 c three. So we need tohave that visibility on dhe. Make sure that our donor dollars are being spent wisely, and this enabled enables us to do that enables toe have that that total visibility and making sure those controls are in place. >> Actually, speaking of donor dollars, has this actually been a facilitator of actually being able to increase donations? Because the donors now have this much easier transaction process that can imagine that would be a positive impact there. >> Well, I mean that this is more for our procurements. Mean, Coop is kind of more for our actual procurement. What it does do is it does create process savings and avoidance savings, which we can reinvest in, you know, in our program. Right. So that's where we're seeing it. That's where Steve always seeing it. We've communicated that to him, and then we're also able to provide arse CFO with reporting tools. So we create. We pull all this information from Cooper through reports, and there were able to create a spreadsheet, and he can see how we spend is an organization. You know how we spend in commodities, How where are unbudgeted, you know, kind of get a total of much I budgeted we have for for a specific period of time. So we're able to see all this kind of information. He conceal this in kind of information on one spreadsheet that we created through all the reports that way >> in Crete. >> So I want to get your perspectives on the changing role of the chief procurement officer and the chief financial officer. You know, now they have the opportunity to leverage technology, emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning to be able to get that visibility and that control, but also be former strategic and really drive top line bought online for their business. Your perspective on this the last few years alone and how were you able to help a 77 year old organization like us so embraced the opportunities that these emerging technologies can deliver? >> Well, I think one key is as because our our organization is all over the world. And then there are centers that could be, you know, roll. And they, you know, they it's the whole vendor presence and the amount of vendors that we as an organization, do bring on. And some of them it's totally understandable where some of them they do need to bring on based on, you know, their availability. But what I'm trying to do, what Cooper has helped me try to do with Cooper advantages to try to leverage our volume organizational volume that was not occurring previously. I think people were just, you know, when the new defender they brought it on because we have a lot of events, you know, supplies for the centers, et cetera. So really trying to, strategically, as an organization to be able to work with the region's on where can we find synergies to kind of consolidating leverage our values for Henderson with Cooper work, we've been able to do that. We can see the span where it's occurring, kind of all the duplications that are occurring. So that's where I'm seeing a bit opportunity and trying to work. >> One of the coolest things about what you guys are doing in procurement with Cooper is this is affecting human lives. Give us a little bit of an overview of what you guys were able to facilitate with Hurricane hearty. Wish struck Houston just about two years ago. I loved that story that >> those kind of those spur of the moment emergency type requisitions that we get and were able to those get processed a lot quicker when when we have group as opposed to previously the way they had processed. It was very labor intensive manually, verbally instead of being able to see it in. You know what's great about the requisitioning piece of it is the comments kind of audit that people can see in all the conversations. So those types of requests that are considered emergencies, they can go a lot sooner on so we can get those service's or the goods out to to that particular project. So that's what we're able to do with that. That particular one is well, being able to support the National Guard and during the Hurricane Harvey >> and accelerate things that really based on the data that you can see, I really need to have acceleration on all the action. >> I mean distant just to our programs team. They support the care packages that we send to the military. Now that we have coop in place, we use 1/3 party fulfillment center. When they receive the product, the receipts are automatically fed into Cooper and applied against the purchase orders, and then they're approved a lot quicker, So then they can receive kicked, tip the product and ship it out overseas because we get. These are based on requests. The military bases have requested to have this particular product being sent over. So this turns the process is cut in half to get the care packages out to the millet. >> That's awesome. Getting care packages to the troops 50% Bastard is outstanding. Last question for you, Rick. Some of the things that Cooper has announced in the last day and 1/2 what excites you about the direction that this company is going in >> for me? The constant changing, I mean, and I was not in the military, so I'm way moved around a lot. I was when I was growing up. I adopt to change a very quickly, but understands some people don't write quickly, but it's bettering themselves, finding the operative, listening to the customer and really making those enhancements based on customer feedback. And I think it helps with the community intelligence that we talk with, you know, with the communities and find out. What are you doing? How how are you doing this? Because a lot of companies will say, Well, I have specific requirements and a lot of them are pretty similar. If people talk, you know, community talks. So that's kind of that's I like getting together and again meeting other, you know, people, customers. And so it's Yeah, it's pretty exciting. >> I like what? How tender this morning, you know, showed the word community and said, Really, it's communication and unity, and you just articulated that beautifully. Listen to the customers. Get the synergies from them. That's why we should. Any software business should be developing right soccer. So thank you so much for joining me on the Cube today, sharing the big impact that you guys are making at the USO charity. Near and dear to my heart. We appreciate your time. >> Thank you very much >> for your acquaintance. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube from Cooper inspired 19. Thanks for watching.

>> Announcer: From the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, it's theCUBE. Covering Coupa Inspire 2019. Brought to you by Coupa. >> Welcome to theCUBE. Lisa Martin on the ground at Coupa Inspire '19 from the Vegas. I'm very pleased to welcome not Bono, not Sting, it's Chandar, the CMO of Coupa. Chandar, welcome to theCUBE. >> Lisa, thank you, it's great to be here today. >> This is a really cool event. Procurement is sexy. >> It is sexy. >> It can be so incredibly transformative to any organization. I loved how the last two days, what you guys have done is a great job of articulating Coupa's value in procurement, invoicing, payments, expense, through the voices of your customers and I think there's no better brand value that you can get. >> Sure, absolutely. >> Tell us a little bit about your role as the CMO of Coupa and marketing in a fast-growing company with a product that people might go, "I haven't heard of that, what is that again?" >> Yeah, it's a good question. I think if I look at it, my role is at Coupa, especially, for Coupa, what's interesting about it, as you said, is that every company makes money, every company spends money. So, invariably, Coupa can be used across a set of different companies. One from the Golden State Warriors to Procter & Gamble to the Lukemia & Lymphoma Society. Across the board. And then, from our perspective, holistically, we're looking at business, but managed from different aspects of spend. You said procurement was in expenses. So, my role is to build a marketing engine to get the flywheel effect of first you drive awareness. All marketing starts with awareness and you said people haven't heard of it. And so, to first to drive awareness in a very thoughtful way to the right contextual community we want to go after. And, two, drive acquisition, we'll drive close synergies between sales and marketing to ultimately drive pipeline and win rates and ultimately deals. And then, very importantly in today's world, is to drive the advocacy and get your most passionate customers to evangelize about the brand, so that you create the flywheel effect of awareness, acquisition, and advocacy. And, that's really what my role today is. >> And, I love how I read an article where you call that the stairway to marketing heaven. So, I thought, I wonder if you're a guitar guy, but you're right. It's how to drive awareness, but in a meaningful, thoughtful way. Especially today, with all all the technology, we wake up with it, right? Our phone is our alarm clock. We are bombarded by ads. If we're on Instagram, following our favorite celebrities or whatnot and it's scary when they have the right context, but it has to be thoughtful. We need to know our audience. So, you describe this stairway to marketing heaven, as you just mentioned, it's awareness, it's acquisition, which is key. But, I feel like a lot of companies don't forget the advocacy part, but they don't invest enough in it because that's the best salesperson for your technology, is the people that are using it successfully, right? >> Totally. Yeah, so, in fact, there was a study about a couple of years which looked at how balanced the boat is in terms of spending in presale versus post-sale. And, it's interesting that 87% of B2B marketing spend was presale. In other words, only 13% of people were investing in retention marketing, adoption mastery, customer marketing, and this is what advocacy marketing. And, in today's world, that doesn't work because you got to balance the boat because, to your point, you're getting in a peer-bond world where your existing customers are your best sellers. And, prospects who have all the buying power today are looking to your existing customers to guide them in their purchasing decisions. So, as an organization, if you balance the boat, then you're going to get the flywheel effect going for you in terms of driving the right advocacy across all channels. Just not your own channel if you earn channels to ultimately drive that acquisition going. >> Do you think that's actually more valuable? 'Cause it's one thing to have on your .com site, your social media sites, all these great things about your technologies, etc., coming from customers or from product experts, from influencers. Talk about the value. As technology advances so much and we are influenced by so many other channels, the value of the earned channel and that peer-to-peer relationship. >> Yeah, I think, as I say, that every mom says her baby is good-looking. But, in software, not every baby is really good-looking. Which means, if you take that analogy and extend it, if you're coming to your own channel, invariably, you're going to see some great customer videos about your product, you're going to see some great endorsements and testimonials, you're going to see some great quotes about your product. The reality, there's no bad news about your product on your own website, on your own channel. But, the reality is there are some, some people who might have different opinions. If you go to Glassdoor, no company gets a five on Glassdoor. And, if you take the same thing and extend it to earned channels for advocacy, folks like G2 Crowd, TrustRadius, and B2B, for example, are becoming more relevant today than before because two things. One is 85% of our customers' journey is self-directed. >> Lisa: That much? >> That much and Forrester has anywhere from 60 to 80, but reality is whether you're buying a car or you're buying Coupa. Today, a customer is discovering more journeys. And, in that process, they are looking to more of these earned channels as validation of which ones to go after than just your own channels. So, that's why we got to balance the boat and distribute our advocacy spend dollars across both your own channels and your earned channels. And, that's really important for you and the flywheel will pay off for you over time from that perspective. >> It will and that seems like a lot of the things that Suzy Irwin was talking about to the audience earlier. That's common sense. Why is it that you see these marketing budgets that are so heavily weighted towards just getting awareness, getting customers acquired, and then not thinking about retention marketing account based marketing. >> I'll tell you why. I think any smart CMO will conceptually agree with you. Nobody's going to say, of course, this is not important for me to get advocacy. The challenge comes in in terms of how that marketing department is measured. What gets measured gets funding at the end of the day. >> Lisa: That's a good point. >> And, reality is a lot of these B2B companies are still measuring marketing based on, what's the pipeline you're driving and what's at the top of the funnel metrics that you're driving? In reality, that's a little bit of a skewed thing because then if that's what you're being measured at the board level, at the executive level, then guess what? All your funding is going to go towards that. But, really, the true measurement of marketing, one, is about, yes, you have to get pipeline. You have to influence win rates at the bottom of the funnel and that's where product marketing comes in. But, as importantly, you have to look at the number of brand advocates you create and lifetime value of a customer. >> Yes, CLV, yes. >> And, that's really, really, customer lifetime value is so important because in a SaaS business, ultimately, the Mufasa metric, I'm a Lion King fan. The Mufasa metric is really lifetime value because if a customer stays longer with you, pays you more, and is shouting from the rooftop, then, invariably, that SaaS business is doing well. And, that's why you have to balance the boat in terms of post-advocacies, post-acquisition spend into advocacy, as much as you've done in pre-acquisition. >> When you came into Coupa a couple of years ago, have you been able to shift those budgets because you're able to demonstrate the value that that advocacy piece generates with the flywheel? >> Absolutely and I have a very progressive-thinking CEO who's partners with me on this too. So, we've been absolutely able to do that. In fact, what we're trying to do at the end of the day and most software companies, the real goal should be creating a tribe. In technology, you have to create a tribe to be a titan. And, it's just not about the capability, it's about the community. And, that's really what we're trying to do at Coupa is to create the tribal community feeling. So, if the community is bigger than the brand, it is about the community itself and learning, sharing, and growing with each other and being successful. And, we're just fostering that. So, from that perspective, if you look at this conference and the investment we're making here, some of the programs we're doing in terms of advocacy, what we call spend sellers, etc., is all about that community tribal feeling and go establish that. To use some inspiration from our consumer brands, if you really think about it, people don't buy what they want. People buy what they want to be. So, let me give you what I mean by that. What I want could be a bike. It could be any motorbike, but what I want to be could be part of a very special community and that's why Harley Davidson is successful. What I want could be any stationary bike today, but what I want to be is part of some cool community like Peloton. That's why Peloton is successful. So, similarly for us, what I want could be some spend management software, but what I want to be is part of this community, this cool club, and that's the feeling we're trying to create in the post-acquisition cycle. >> I love that you said that because you talked about that this morning and I loved how you had the word community on the slide and then broke that out into communication unity. And, one of the senses that I got yesterday when-- >> Chandar: Rob was talking about it. >> Yeah, when Rob kicked off everything is this is a very collaborative community. We think about that in terms in terms even like a developer community or something like that. But, Coupa is now managing $1.2 trillion of spend through the platform that every other business that's using Coupa gets to benefit from. It's customer-centric, it's supplier-centric, but it's about applying the right technologies, AI, machine learning, to all this data, so everybody benefits. >> That's right and one of the interesting aspects of community building is one aspect of community building is that Marc Benioff had a great, evangelistic marketing was a way of community building. He would come in and really evangelize and this is where we're going and you all need to come with us. When I was at Marketo, it was interesting. Community building was through more educational marketing and doing it through this, I'm going to educate you through though leadership. Another good way of community building is through product intelligence, which is community intelligence. So, collectively, the sum of all parts are smarter than the parts themselves. And, Rob has a great line, which says, "None of us is as smart as all of us." And, the fundamental community intelligence offering is based on this first principle. So, example, if I'm the community of Coupa customers, the next customer is smarter than the previous customer because the collective intelligence grew, which means I can then go benchmark it myself. I gave an example this morning of USO, the company that provides services to the United States troops. And, when Rick Quaintance at USO benchmarked himself using community intelligence, versus the rest of the community, he realizes that his invoice cycle times are seven times lower. So, that kind of intelligence is extremely beneficial and invaluable to companies. So, that's the value of the community, is providing the collective intelligence. Waze is a great consumer example. Those of us who use Waze for traffic know that it's all community driven and each one of us is smarter because we're collectively using it. It's the same concept in applying that to B2B software. >> So, as we see, you mentioned the over 80% of the buying decision is self-directed whether we're buying a car or Coupa software. Did Coupa foresee that in the last decade to see we're going to have to go to a more community-driven collaboration because the consumer of any thing, any product or service, is going to be so empowered 'cause that's a part of the Coupa foundation. >> It is. >> Lisa: Which, we don't see a lot in companies that are 10 plus years old. >> Yeah, and credit to Rob for his vision for this. It's because I think early part of the company, he wrote into the contracts that the company can benefit. Collectively, every company can benefit by being part of this community. And, the fact is data's aggregated, abstracted, there's no information that is sensitive, etc. But, the fact is we all can collectively benefit through it. That was a great vision of Rob and early people and that's benefited us because the benefit is really over scale and time. Now, your $1.2 trillion, it is really statistically significant in each different industry to get that intelligence. And, that is one of the other reasons we launched our business spend index. It's called spendindex.com. Where we can use the billions of dollars spent in the community to provide a leading indicator of economic growth based on current business spend sentiment. You think of ADP as this payroll, it's called ADP payroll thing that comes out and the gross domestic product report comes out. Those tend to be rear-view mirror lagging indicators. But, as we're using community-based intelligence to provide a windshield, a leading indicator of where the economy is going. So, there's so many different use cases. Benefiting based on spend you're doing as well as where the economy is going and all this is based on the intelligence. >> It's so powerful because, to your point, you're not looking behind. >> Chandar: It's the windshield. >> Exactly, able to be looking forward. So, with all the announcements and the great things that have come out with the AWS expansion, what you guys are doing with Coupa Pay. I was shocked to learn the percentages of businesses that are still writing paper checks. Or, the fact that a lot of companies have 10 plus banks that they're working with. There's still so much manual processes. You must just be, the future is so bright, you got to wear shades with Coupa. But, what excites you about what you guys have announced the last coupe of days and the feedback that you're hearing from your tribe? >> I think there's two kinds of things. One is continue to set the innovation agenda for the industry. And, really, you have to look at every customer on their unique journey of maturity and maturation, so we have a very thoughtful, what we call, maturity index, The business spend management index. Whereas, you are seeing some of these customers, for example, you mentioned, may be in the first stage of this maturity, where, for them, it's just getting automation and going from paper to paperless could be the first step. But, some other customers might say, "I've gotten there, "but I want to get the next level of sophistication "to orchestrate these business spend processes." So, what's exciting for us in the feedback is we're creating product capability across this maturation journey for our customers to make them successful at each of those places. And, Coupa Pay is one example of that. Whereas, some of the other pieces we talked about, we announced about some of the community offerings that we did also is on that. So, that's one exciting piece. The other exciting piece that customers tell us at this conference is, "Foster platforms for us "to engage with each other, learn from each other, "share from each other, and grow with each other." So, even stuff that Rob talked about, which is sourced together. This concept of customers coming together to drive a sourcing process and, again, the collective intelligence in the community, that, we're getting very, very positive feedback from that perspective. And, ultimately, Rob has a really good saying that, "It is not about customer satisfaction. "It is about customer success." That's a delineation there. A customer could be very satisfied with you, but they may not be necessarily successful. And, we say, it's not about satisfaction. It's about success. And, by creating this innovation cycle and then having a post-implementation process that's getting true value, that's truly how we drive customer success. >> And, something that I've heard over and over as I've talked to a number of your customers yesterday and today is how much they're feeling Coupa is listening. Their feedback is being incorporated. They're actually influencing the development of the technology and that was loud and clear the last two days. >> Yeah, I think there is, Rob talked about the number of features that are being influenced by the community and we have these-- >> 300 plus in the last 12 months. >> Yes, 300 plus in the last 12 months. And, there's this concept of two ears, one mouth. And, listen, learn, and innovate and that's the philosophy here. But, it's a right mix of listening to customers, learning from them, and getting the right input from them for driving innovation, as well as having strategic vision on where this market is going and having the right mix of those to provide the capability to customers. >> Wow, you're on a rocket ship. Chandar, it was great to have you on theCUBE. You'll have to come back. >> Yes, Lisa, absolutely, I'll come back and it was a pleasure being here. Awesome. >> Awesome, thank you so much. For Chandar, I'm Lisa Martin and you're watching theCUBE from Coupa Inspire '19. Thanks for watching. (techno music)

>> Narrator: From the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas Nevada, it's the CUBE. Covering Coupa Inspire 2019. Brought to you by Coupa. >> Welcome to the CUBE from Coupa Inspire'19 at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas. It's a pretty swanky place here. Very excited to welcome to the CUBE for the first time from Accenture, Jesse Hanger, Director of Capability Network Sourcing and Procurement. Jesse, welcome. >> Thank you, glad to be here. >> Oh, our pleasure to have you. So here we are day two of the main stuff going on here. All talking about Business Spend Management, BSM, this new category that Coupa is defining. We had the chance yesterday to speak with Rob Bernshteyn their CEO. Ravi Thakur was there. And it's one of the cool things that Coupa is doing is it's now, it's procurement, it's invoicing, it's expenses, it's payments, but it's also helping to redefine procurement and finance. >> And it is. I mean it's a huge shift when we think about, in industry, the same shift that Salesforce had years ago when it comes to CRM. When Coupa started talking about this, maybe two years ago, I had a little bit of a head-scratcher, I saw some of their slides and I thought to myself, that's a bit much to say you're going to change this, but the funny thing was, no one else had come up with a real definition of this. We finally had procurement technology that was at a level that you could capture this type of data and information, and it could go broader than just my MRP system and bills of materials, and to everything. Into your traveling expenses, into how you're sourcing things, into your basic inventory, and so it took me awhile to come around, but it was a slow journey for me, but clearly Business Spend Management is the future, what we look at with procurement. Because for a CPO, it can't just be about saving money or reducing costs, you have to start driving business and you can't drive business if all you do is save money. >> Exactly, and that's been something that I've learned a lot from in the last a week or so, alone, is how influential a CPO can be. This person can be, not just the money saver, it's shareholder value. >> Jesse: Right, bottom line growth of the business. >> Yes, and one of the things that I really appreciate is Coupa's done a great job the last two days of sharing the voice of the customer. Because I said to you, before we went live, I said, I don't as a marketer, I'm a little bias, but I don't think there's anything that's more brand validating than the voice of a successful customer that actually shows measurable business outcomes and they showed that this morning. That transcends any industry whether you're manufacturing or a retailer. >> Yep, and so when you do think about it from their customer's perspective, from our client's perspective at Accenture, this is not easy. Changing the way you do things and changing your overall procurement operating model it's not a easy stuff. There's a reason why there're so many big companies like Accenture that do this kind of work. Because it's hard and it's needed. We come in with a different perspective. Having a platform like Coupa to really initiate that transformation, to be the to be the lever that moves the company from where they were to where they want to be and where they need to be to be competitive in the market, it makes our job so much easier across the broader supply chain practice to really, not just make the change, but you know we use a big consulting word, to instantiate it, so that it stays. We don't make it better this year, we make it better moving forward. >> It's an evolution. >> Jesse: It is. >> But that requires the right mindsets to go from a tactical role, of managing budgets and things, to being strategic, being able to identify fraud detection, for example. >> Well and again, when they talk about their suite synergy and the fact that all of these components of the platform, they're not separate modules, they hate when we say modules, so it's the T&E module. All of these components because they are all natively integrated and the data structure is the same on the back end, things like the fraud detection become easy. for Coupa, not in other platforms. Again, the more things you are doing with Coupa, the more data you have and the more you can get the benefit from the broader ecosystem, from the over 1 trillion dollars in spend that's gone through, that's fully classified, coded, detailed, now all of that spend helps that fraud engine do a better job. >> The community that you mentioned they were saying, I think Rob Bernshteyn CEO Coupa said yesterday that since 2016, around the time they went public, it's been a 5X increase in the amount of spend being managed through the Coupa platform. Accenture has over 50 deployments of Coupa in 72 countries, you guys are also managing over 100 billion of that, but this community that they described yesterday, so eloquently, is very collaborative, allowing not just customers to leverage from peer's best practices, but suppliers, as well. Talk to us about some of the things, like the wave that they're riding now, in terms of this community intelligence, and how is it going to help Accenture really be able to help more companies get that visibility and that control of all their spend? >> So as an example, at Accenture when you look at the analyst reports, we do very well when it comes to our procurement practice and the spend that we're helping companies manage outside of a platform. So we've got I think the latest number I saw was like 1.8 trillion dollars that we have helped companies source in the last handful of years. >> Wow. So that is something that gives us a huge competitive advantage. The same thing is true of Coupa and you said, how they're riding this wave, honestly, I don't think they're riding the wave yet, I think the wave is still building and they're about to start riding it, I think that what we're going to see over the next one to four years is going to be a fairly significant shift in how that data is going to drive very discrete and concrete value to all the members of the community. >> Wow, that is exciting. One of the things that we talk about in terms of changes to the CPO's role and CFO are these ways of disruption. One of them is consumerization. And you know I think Raja talked about that this morning, it was talked about a number of times yesterday, we spoke about it on the program, we're consumers all the time. Whether we're getting up in the morning at a conference and going to buy a coffee at Starbucks, or something that we want to order from a vendor like an Amazon, we have this expectation that we can get it, or if you want to buy a car, we have all of this data that we've never had before, so empowered, but then we go to our work lives, and if we're in whatever role we're in, maybe I'm in marketing and I need to do a trip, so I've got to go and do it, travel expense, we want the same ease of consumerization. Your thoughts on Coupa Pay, the expansion of Coupa with open buying the AWS Marketplace, on bringing that consumerization in, do you think like, (hand clapping) yes, that's exactly what we need? >> The first place of bringing in the consumerization was really how Coupa was engineered, years ago. When we go back to before they had released numbers and it was fall of 2007, they had numbers like that, Coupa really did give you an experience that was like Amazon. It was, we used to say, we're going to bring your shopping experience from Sunday afternoon to your desk Monday morning. And as that happened, now you start to see a different piece and that is a greater uptake in terms of the usage of procurement platforms. So instead of people, it's easier to pick up the phone and call Bill over at my supplier and say I need a case of whatever, it's actually easier to do it in the platform, and I can still give Bill a call and go have a beer with him if I want to maintain the relationship, but I don't have to make every one of my transactions start with a phone call that necessitates three additional phone calls later on to check on the status. Instead, I can do it in the platform very quickly. When you expand that out to what now Coupa Pay is going to offer, especially when we look at our clients that have challenges with multiple financial systems, multiple banks that are processing their payments, as you shift it away from that multiple outlet situation and you can move it large, if not all of that, into Coupa Pay, you're streamlining things for dozens if not scores of people in your company and making it better for them. >> Some of the stats I saw on the press release about the amount of payment processes that are still manual, and still 40% of it by paper check? >> I've got one client that writes 40,000 paper checks a year. >> How receptive are they to digital transformation? >> They almost think it's too good to be true. When you when you talk to clients like that, Fortune 500 companies, and when we talk to clients like that and you tell them, what you heard from Coupa is true, they're not just selling you, or trying to sell you something, they're telling you how it really works for clients and we've seen it. I look at the last dozen or so clients I've worked with, last year and a half I was doing some analysis, 51 billion dollars, 50.8 billion dollars in revenues is the average for those clients. So big companies. >> Big, yes. Really big companies. And as we look at those, you'd be surprised at how many of them have challenges with a lot of manual processes, still. They're the top of their field but they still have those challenges. So bringing this to them as they are deploying Coupa and seeing what they can realize in terms of efficiencies, it actually makes my job really fun because everybody's going to be happy. >> That is a win-win. One of the things Rob said yesterday, I know a little bit about Rob, and some of his proudest moments are hearing clients articulate success and he goes, one of my favorite things that's going into, whether it's a 50 billion dollar a year company or not, where there's someone maybe in the C-suite that just is skeptical, and he goes, and that just takes one champion who sees this vision, to convert that person to, oh my gosh, we can have this crystal ball of visibility of everything, and really leverage that to drive digital transformation so that the business is faster to identify new products, new revenues, convert customers faster, increase customer lifetime value and, and, and, the impact there is exponential. >> Well and that's one of the reasons why I think our partnership with Coupa is so rich, is because Accenture is more a technology company. We're not just focused on accounting, we're not just focused on finance, we have a lot of technology resources. We usually have a lot of connection into the CIO and the IT suite of leadership. They're the ones that are typically the most skeptical. They've been through dozens of roll outs of different things and they've seen them go anywhere from 0% to 50% effective. So because we've got the relationships there and we can have these conversations with the CIO, and say, this is different. This is going to be a very different kind of program for you and we're coming in and telling you that we can work this together as your partner and be successful, and again, you get six months into it and the lights fully on at that point and they're on board. In fact next year we're looking forward to bringing one or two CIOs on stage with us at Inspire'20 to talk about it from an IT perspective. >> Awesome, well I look forward to hearing that. Jesse, thank you so much for joining me on the Cube this afternoon. Exciting stuff. Control, visibility, who doesn't want that? >> Exactly, it's good times. >> Excellent, thanks Jesse, appreciate it. >> Thank you, appreciate being here. >> For Jesse Hanger, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube from Coupa Inspire'19. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> from the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. It's the Cube covering Cooper inspired. 2019. Brought to you by Cooper. >> Welcome to the Cube. Lisa Martin on the ground at Cooper Inspire 19 at the Cosmopolitan, the chic Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas. Very pleased to be joined by my friend David Chang, the VP of business from Hello. Sign a drop box company. David, Welcome to the Cube. >> Thank you for having me on. >> Great to have you here. It is a lot of fun. You could really geek out talking technology all day >> too much. So, >> yeah, there's that >> play that you gotta gamble. It'll keep it real. >> You know, I have no skills in that whatsoever, but maybe I'll try it. I'll take your advice. Give her audience an overview of Hello. Sign. Sure. Drop box Company. What? You guys are what you do. All that good stuff. >> Great. Great. So hello. Sign is today one of the fastest growing, if not the fastest growing electronic signature company in market place today and today we host, I think, over 100,000 paying businesses that use one of our products and over 150 different countries. today we actually were acquired by Dropbox. Sure, everybody's familiar Dropbox or one of the biggest brands in the Internet industry today by the leader in consumer and business files Thinking chair. So John Box actually purchased this, you know, for a number of reasons. First of all, even amazing product and cultural fit with them. But also, Electronic Signature Day is an enormous market. It is one piece of the overall digital transformation, but Elektronik, six year alone, analysts view, is probably a $25,000,000,000 industry, which we've only barely scratched the surface. So it's a huge opportunity, absolutely, and it's that big. That's exactly the you know. That's actually what's shocking about how big it is, because if you think about almost in every business, there are not just one, but probably dozens of different use cases where you need to sign documents. So electronic signature honestly is relevant for everything from all your sales agreements to all of your HR and offer letter and on boarding agreement. It's relevant specifically for all of your procurement and buying agreements, all your vendors contracts that need to be signed, your supply agreements that needs to be signed and D A s o purchase orders. All these documents need to be signed. And today you know, only a few of these use cases have been brought into the digital arena. So there's a whole huge area to grow. And with Dropbox being a leader and content management, where you normally store your documents, >> right, it's >> a natural workflow extension two haven't signed by. Hello, son. >> Excellent. Well, one of the things that we've been talking a lot about we talk about this in every show is the effects of consumer is Asian. And we talked about this yesterday with Rob Bernstein, Cooper's CEO in a number of gas yesterday and today is that we're consumers every day, even when we're at work. Oh, I forgot. I gotta buy this when we go on Amazon, we know we could get it in a day, but now we have the same expectations whether we're buying business, you know, software or what not? And we also want to be able to do things from our mobile phone, including sign. Hey, I got this new job offer or whatever happens to be without having out. Oh my God, there's a pdf. I have to go home, get to my desktop, talk to me about PDS because I can imagine when people either fill them out manually, then they scanning back in and somebody's gotta print it out or fax it. That date is stuck in Pdf. How does hello sign work to free dot data in a Pierre? >> Sure, our design philosophy really is about, you know, make making a superior user experience both for the person who needs to get a document, a document side, but also somebody who's actually gonna be signing it. So when we designed our products, you might as easy as possible for user's to sign that and recognizing some of the difficulties with P D EFS and signing on your mobile phone. We've made our products specifically Mobley responsive, so they don't have to pension, screen, pension, pension scan and all that kind of stuff and typing data. We make it very easy walking through the data entry process to streamline the whole process. We just want to make user customer satisfaction first and foremost >> moving the friction, probably getting documents signed much faster. >> Absolutely. I mean the base, you know, benefits associated the signature. Overall you know, our honestly getting your documents signed significantly faster and more efficiently. We have customers that used to take up to two weeks to get a contract signed. And, you know, as a salesperson, that gets your real nervous, right? So we've seen those contracts now get signed in less than a day. Also, Elektronik senator provides a tonic transparency. So throughout the process, we can actually provide notifications that let the sales people know that somebody's opened up the the >> end. Lt >> looked at the document, reviewed it, signed it, completed it. And even if the document has been signed, the consent of reminders to make sure to sign it. And the third thing is, you know you can't can't emphasize this enough. The value associate with productivity increases. Come on. Everyone's gone out. Printed out the document, walked it over to the scanning machine, you know, then uploading it back in your computer, you know that that whole step, you know, should be completely digital and automated as >> much as >> possible. So we see productivity increases to some of our customers between two x three x for X right in the number in reducing the number of man hours people have to spend to get >> documents only. Is that a cost savings? But all of the you can think of all the other benefits like we're talking about, even for the procurement officers were talking about it at Kuba inspires. It's not just saving money. It's all of the other ripple effects that cost savings, resource, reallocations, speed. All enable this digital transformation, which then enables the business Thio capture new customers. Increased customer, lifetime value, shareholder value. There's a lot of upside to this, >> especially for a company like Cooper. First of all, it's an incredible fit for what we do. Procurement documents. That whole host, um, they need to be signed but by, you know, utilizing Hello, son. We really facilitate that whole experience, and we're very excited to expand our partnership today. We're Cooper Advantage partner. >> Tell me about the Cooper Advantage program benefits. Who wins your >> coop? Advantage is this very unique marketplace that Cooper's brought together. They're pulling together both their customers, some of their lead customers and their matching them with some of the suppliers selected suppliers that provide their customers. Ah, whole host of service is that they need so it could be everything from goods and office supplies. All the way to service is like travel service is, and staffing service is all the way to software key software that their customers would utilize in conjunction with their procurement business. Spend management So companies like close on. So by matchmaking it for the suppliers, they get some pre negotiated discounts that offer them immediate savings off of buying direct from retail and then from ah, supplier side. We get huge benefits because we get to meet some of the most targeted companies that we want. So Cooper effectively is one of our favorite matchmakers. >> Nice. So, yeah, there's a tremendous amount of suppliers in their program. I forget the number and I don't want to misquote it. But I can imagine Cooper customer that's using them for procurement and expenses and invoices and payments. I talked a lot about Cooper pains of new things today. Well, then have the opportunity through the Cooper Advantage program to do prick human contract Scorpios with Hello sign as the e signature. >> Exactly, really, exactly. And that that is, like I said, a great match for what their customers need and by being virtue of a coupe advantage part. Sorry. Keep advantage Supplier. We've been pre vetted by Cooper have also worked out some special pre negotiated discounts with Cooper to make sure we passed that value on to their customers. >> So some of the things that came out today regarding yesterday as well with the Amazon extension you and I talked about the consumer ization affect a few minutes ago. What opportunities is that? Open up to Hello, sign for Cooper paid to be able to enable I t folks to have this visibility for the entire software from search to management. With this consume arised approach, open up doors for Hello Sign. >> Well, I think you know, if you look at the total life cycle of any purchase right from from beginning to end from everything from identifying the products that you want to being able to, you know, negotiate and secure a price that is good for you, you know that whole process. There's always tradition, but a lot of friction there. So the same way that there's friction on the e commerce side, we'll check out and purchase right and getting lining up your payment and Internet payment information Cooper. Streamlining that whole thing for the customer so long without sod is if there's documents they're associated with that with that workflow than by using companies like Hello Sign and our products were able to continue that process of digital izing the end and purchase cycle. >> And I imagine, from an information security perspective, everything >> Come on the old >> days usedto signed >> a contract and I thought, Oh, my boss's desk, Anybody could come by and pick that up So nowadays we you know nowadays we keep it stored securely in the cloud. We have some of the highest security requirements of any signature company out there, and that really matches Cupid's philosophy as well. They go overboard on security, which we really appreciate. That mission is completely lard with each other. >> Awesome. So last few seconds here. I know that you guys are early in the acquisition with Dropbox. What's exciting You for the rest of the calendar. 19. Since all these fiscal years are different. And what's next with you guys in Cuba? Yeah, >> So first of all, with Dropbox, we're just excited to be part of an enormous community of over 500,000,000 users globally So it's It's It's the reach is insane. >> I know >> my mom. Yeah, I think everybody has a DROPBOX account on >> eso getting introduced to their segments, whether it's a consumer segment, SMB and increasingly, the business segment offers huge brand recognition and the potential for new customers with Dropbox. So there's a great synergy from a go to market perspective, and with Cooper, we're very excited about the next stage of our partnership is entering the Cooper Link program. So, uh, you know said Now Cooper customers will be able to sign and send for signature from within the Cooper clr module. Eso any of their contracts vendor agreements that are stored within Cooper without ever having to leave Cooper. You consent for signature and seek the document back. And for a company like Cooper, this is a great strategic value. A because of the benefit it brings its customers, but also with all the great features that Cooper's coming out with leading edge. They want to keep a cz much of that procurement experience from within Cooper. They want Cooper to be that system of record per se and system of transaction for all your business. Ben Management So now you don't have to leave Cooper to perform to get your contract signed. You can do it from all within one place within Cooper, and we enable that. >> That's awesome. That's that's what we want. Keep him. In the experience of that, they actually adopted. They get it done. They're more efficient and and and well, David, it's been such a pleasure to >> have you on >> the Cube. Thank you for joining me today. >> Thanks, Lisa. >> All right, we'll see you next. Time for David Chang. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube from Cooper Inspired 19. Thanks for watching.

>> Narrator: From the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, it's theCUBE, covering Coupa Inspire 2019. Brought to you by Coupa. >> Welcome to theCUBE! Lisa Martin at Coupa Inspire on the ground in Las Vegas, and I'm super super super excited to welcome Suze Orman to theCUBE! Suze, host of the Women and Money podcast. >> Suze: How much money have you lost? >> Lisa: Oprah's friends. Oh, I don't gamble. >> Oh yeah, girlfriend! >> Lisa: No way! >> Suze: I know. >> I do spend too much money on Starbucks every day and I felt I needed to confess that to you. >> Oh God! >> But I know-- >> Really? >> A million dollars in forty years, I'm going to curb my habits, Suze. >> All right, there we go, all right! >> Confessing it to you on camera. >> You have been forgiven (laughs). >> Oh thank you! So love listening to your podcast, watched your show on CNBC for a long time, Women and Money, is something that, obviously as a woman in technology, is really imperative to me and something that really captures my attention, because the pay gap is so obvious, has been for so long, but one of the things that always think when I hear you give advice, whether you're at a tech conference like we are now, or anywhere else, is so much of it is common sense that as humans, we just don't want to hear because it's easy to ignore it. >> It's, here's the thing, is that women in particular have so much on their plate, most of them have their parents they're taking care of, their husband or their spouse, their children, and they're bringing in an income. So they don't have a second to breathe. They can't, like (imitating garbled chaotic noise) all the way around. And the truth is, their husbands don't know anything more about money than they do. Men are financial fakers, I've always said that. So women are really, they want to know more, but they're really overloaded right now. So you got to give it to them in a way that they can digest it when they can. >> One of the things, being in software and tech now for 14 years, you know, when you're in a room, whatever meeting you're in, you think, "I didn't understand that." But you think, "I don't want to be the one to ask a stupid question," so you don't ask, and it's sort of the same thing in the financial situation. Somebody might be explaining something to you, and it's happened to me recently, and I'm like, "I don't understand it." But then I default, "Well, they're the expert." >> Suze: No. >> Lisa: And you're saying, >> "No, trust your guts." >> No, you have got to trust yourself more than you trust others. You know when I was seeing clients, you know what I used to do? First of all, it was mandatory that if you were married, you came in with your spouse. Now it was normally, back then, a male and a female, okay? Now, I'm like, greatest thing is it's a woman and a woman or a man and a man, but that's another thing. And the woman would go to the bathroom, because our meetings were long, and while she was at the bathroom, I would say the most complicated strategy to her husband that made no sense on any level. And I would say, "Do you understand this?" "I do." I go, "So you know, if you do this and then this, this will be the result?" "Got it." "Okay." His wife would come back and sit down, and I would then say to him, "All right, explain to your wife what I just explained to you." And he couldn't do it. So then the conversation was, "Why did you pretend to understand something that there was nothing to understand about?" What is that? So you really have to say, "I don't get it." And here's the thing: money is so easy. Money is not complicated. It really is not. Wall Street wants you to think it's complicated, so that you go ahead and hire a financial advisor, a bank-- You can do this. You can do this. But everybody is so afraid of it, they're they just, you know, and they don't want to deal with it because they're so afraid. >> Or even if we do take that step and start working with a financial planner, there's that, I call it 'conscious incompetence'. "They know what they're doing." >> Suze: They don't. >> "I'm going to let them handle it." >> Suze: They don't, they don't, they don't. I would not work with a financial advisor that wasn't at least 15 years into it. >> Lisa: Fifteen? Okay! >> Fifteen, because the past ten years the market's gone straight up. You could have been a monkey and made money in the stock market the past ten years. You want somebody who went through the recession, who's been through it all. And they've seen the ups, they've the downs, and now they can keep their calm. Don't give me a ten year track record. Give me a twenty year track record. Give me a 15 year. Start with the year that the markets crashed, and how did you do? So if you don't have an advisor that has been through all of that, danger! Number two, if they talk to you about an insurance product, universal life, whole life, variable life insurance, I'm here to tell you, that is-- don't ever ever mix insurance and investments. You want to buy life insurance policy, fine. Buy a term life insurance policy. Do not buy an insurance policy that's also an investment. Crazy out there! Crazy! >> I just heard your podcast on Women and Money, just the other day about mistakes to avoid, so of course I listened to it. I was shocked. You were saying nurses and teachers are too-- >> Suze: Are targeted. >> Lisa: Yes. >> Suze: Nurses. >> And there was this one woman who invested, I think it was like, seventy-five bucks a month, for-- >> Twenty years. >> And only made $4000! >> Yeah, and it's, I had one yesterday that wrote in, that has been doing $200 a month for twenty years, and they have no money. They have like, it's-- Anyway, just, here's the thing. If you don't know what to do, let me tell you what not to do. Do not buy a whole life, universal, or variable life insurance policy. Do not buy a variable annuity within a retirement account. Do not buy loaded mutual funds that have a letter A or B on it. Just those few things alone, great. >> So, getting back to women and money, women and technology, you know, like I mentioned a minute ago, the pay gap. We all know it. How do we, how do women, how do you advise us to to find that inner voice, to find that power to ask for the better job, the promotion, the better opportunities. How do we find that? >> You have to make those that you are dependent on a paycheck for dependent upon you. When I started the Suze Orman Show at CNBC, all right, so 2001, they offered me, it was like, "I'm not doing this show and signing for five years for whatever this little amount of money is." And since I didn't need money, it was like, "I'll do it for free." I did that show the very first year, and I did not make one penny. >> Lisa: Really? >> In one year, it became the number one show on CNBC of all CNBC-produced shows. Now, CNBC needed me. Now, CNBC paid me what I wanted. Not what I needed, what I wanted. And I got what I wanted because I came from a place of power. So women, we have to put ourselves in a position where you're powerful with your own money. And when you're powerful, and you don't need that pay raise, you don't need that job promotion, you want it, but you don't need it, you'll get it because they need you. So when you make somebody dependent upon you, you become valuable to them. And if they don't value you, then get out of there. >> That's great advice, because oftentimes people will think, "Well they can just replace me." Or we think, >> Suze: So then let them. >> "I'm not replaceable." So then, okay >> Suze: Then let them. >> What if that happens? What do I do? >> You have to be always prepared that that can happen. Because that can happen if there's a downsizing, if there's a downturn in the economy. That's why I always say, an eight month emergency fund, don't have any debt, put yourself in a situation that if anything were to happen, you get sick, you're in a car accident, and you can't work, that it's okay. It's okay! When you come from that place, then magic starts to happen. When you come from a place of, "Oh please, when was my paycheck? Is it in another two days? I need it. It's another two days!" So that-- Keep a car forever. You know, I have a car that's now going on eight years old. I keep my cars 10 to 13 years. I don't get a new car just because I can! I don't, what is that about? It's so, live below your means but within your needs. Only purchase needs, not wants, and get as much save pleasure out of saving as you do spending. Those three things alone will absolutely change your life. >> So, we're at a tech conference. Let's talk about tech and how do we, we're bombarded with ads all the time, we're on Instagram, and there's, "Oh, there's that cute dress I wanted." Click! And I don't have any accountability for it because all I did was tap something. I didn't see that transaction going to my bank account. How do you see technology, how do we utilize it for actually getting better control over our own financial freedom and not letting it-- >> I never ever, because I'm on the internet all the time. If an ad comes in, I immediately turn it off. I never click on an ad that has come to me. I only purchase things, and I can purchase anything I want, but I only purchase things that I go after and I look at it. Then I put it in the cart. And I don't buy it. >> Lisa: You think about it. >> And I think about, did I really want it, was it an impulse? Whatever. But you know what I found out, when I put it in the cart, a day later, I get something from them with a discount code. So if I just waited, I'm going to get it for cheaper. And so, I always thought because it's so easy, put it in your cart, and just wait a day or two before you push, yet you won't even remember it's there. >> Right, well it's a little bit of self-control. I think that's just that opening up to, and Oprah's other friend, I know you're friends with Oprah, Brene Brown taught me vulnerability is awesome! It's not weakness! It's the courage to say to your financial planner, "I don't get this." Or, to your point, if this person doesn't have fifteen years experience, and they haven't been through the tumults of the economy, "I'm sorry, I'm sure you're a great person. I need to go somewhere else because this is my money for the rest of my life!" >> You know there's a law that I live by, which is, "It's better to do nothing than something you do not understand." Now I apply it to other things in life, like I'm really into being a boat captain and fishing, but I don't go places in my boat that I don't understand how the waters work, where the ledges are. I don't venture out because I don't want to get in trouble. So it's better to do nothing than something you do not understand, and just do something else that you understand. >> And again, one of the things I love about your advice, Suze, is it's so simple. But I think as a society, we're so governed by technology. It's our alarm clock in the morning, the first thing we do is check email or Instagram, or something on .com, we're listening to podcasts. It's so easy to have a shoppable moment anywhere. Yes, it's probably just as easy-- >> And it's going to be a whole lot easier as time and artificial intelligence and everything takes over, it's going to be really easy. So the question is, "Do you want to have things, or do you want to have money? What do you want?" >> Yeah, because you say, what is it? >> People first-- >> Both: People first, then money, then things. >> Lisa: Tell me about that. >> The reason that I did that, it's a long story as to how that came about, but when I said, "People first," I always meant women. Meant you. Do not put everybody else in front of you. Don't go buying gifts for all your friends and everybody when you have absolutely no money. Put yourself first for once. Next is money. You want more money in your bank account than things that you have in your closet. So make your priorities. Those are your priorities. Put yourself first, then your money, and then if you have those things together, then if you want to buy things, okay. >> I love it. "People first, then money, then things." So you've been doing this for so long, and before we went live I was asking you, "How do you not clunk people's heads together because sometimes it's like, 'What!'" But you're saying these are the same problems that persist over and over because people don't know. >> Well, two things. It shows you that money's not that complicated. That people still ask the same questions over and over again. There aren't all these little gadgets and these little widgets and these things. It's usually Roth 401(k), traditional 401(k)? Roth IRA, 401(k)? Credit card debt first or student loans? Saving, they're the same over and over again. And but each question, to that person, is the most important question in the world to that person. And that one person is important to me. Because if I can save or help one person change their life, that one person can go on and change this whole world. Never know who that one person's going to turn out and be. And so, I mean, if I think back on it, Fred Hasbrook, who is the man who gave me money when I worked at the >> Both: Buttercup Bakery! >> Lisa: Which isn't there anymore. >> And that one man who gave me $2000 with all these other people that took-- He, those actions, to me, created me. And I've changed millions of lives with people, with the information that I've given people. They actually changed their own life. But, so one action can change a whole world >> I love that. >> You never know who that person will be. >> Lisa: You don't. You never know. Well Suze, when are we going to do our next show together? This has been so much fun! >> I don't know, we have to come back here! It seems I'm, have you, where are you out of? >> Palo Alto, California. >> Palo Alto, well we come back there. >> Lisa: All right! All right! >> Suze: We come back there. >> Well good, I'll say I'll look forward to our next show together, Suze. >> You got it, Lise. Thank you, sweetheart, bye bye. >> Been a pleasure, thank you. For Suze Orman, I am Lisa Martin. Thank you for watching theCUBE at Coupa Inspire 19! (upbeat techno music)

>> from the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. It's the Cube covering Cooper inspired 2019. Brought to You by Cooper. >> Welcome to the cue from Cooper inspired 19 at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas. I'm Lisa Martin, and I'm very pleased and honored to be joined by Dr Deepak Chopra, world renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation. Doctor Chopper. What a pleasure to have you on a huge It's wonderful to be with. So here we are Ready Technology conference. I know you talk a lot of different types of guns, and if we look at technology these days, we can't get up without it, right? It's our alarm clock in the morning. We're listening to podcasts or radio dot Thomas. We're getting ready for work. It's an essential component of our allies, but also something that if you look on the other side, it's bombarding us constantly with opportunities to talk to this person or to buy this or that as an expert in the human brain and consciousness were some of the observations that you've seen where way can really tie together technology to help us be more mindful. >> My first world, you have to realize that technology is our creation in my opinion technologies, actually an aspect of human evolution it's now happening is part of a revolution. It's also an aspect of cultural evolution. So when you say we're constantly bombarded by it, that implies a certain element of victimization by our own creation. So we don't need to do that. You know, technologies neutral. You can hack with it. You can mess up in election with it, you can cause destruction with it. You can increase inflammation in the body with it by sending somebody an emoticon that is upsetting to them. Or you can use technology to heal yourself on. Ultimately heal the ecosystem and the world. So, personally, I am a big fan of technology. If you don't relate to technology, you will become irrelevant. That's a Darwinian principle. Either you adapt and use it or they're not. >> That's a really interesting way of putting it. You're right. If you're not using it and adopting it and being receptive to the positive changes that it can bring in our lives, you will be irrelevant. What are some of your recommendations for people everyday people to be able to use it for just getting more center rather than protect my email. I have attacks. I have to respond to my >> so my push the activity Every days I have technology time, morning and afternoon. Have relationship game. Have meditation time, healthy eating time have playtime, recreation time have slipped out. So whenever you're doing something, you do it with full awareness. Whether it's technology speaking to another person, the most important activity in your life is what you're doing. Right now. The most important person in your life is the one in front of you Right now. Most of one thing to do with technologies to be fully engaged only when you're doing not, otherwise, schedule it. >> I love that. I love that you have all of these great times. A scheduled part of mutes wondered how much of this is psychological about actually controlling yourself? That's sort of common sense, but it's also in this day and age one of the hardest things to do here we are at a conference about business Spend management, where Cooper is talking to their businesses and every industry about you need to have control over your budget over your spend. It's sort of the same thing with technology. How do we actually use it to establish those schedules established that control that allows to take advantage of it also allows us to sit back, relax and enjoy the Now, >> you know, I don't like the word control, obviously. Okay, My word for that is be aware. So be aware of yourself and be aware of the fact that everything that's happening to you in the world is reflection of yourself. So if you find the world insane that question your sanity if you find the world melodramatic, hysterical question, your aspect of melodrama and his Syria, if you find the world centre, it's because your center and so the Boston born thing is self awareness, period >> like that and you're right. That's a >> much more you for Mr Ward, then control awareness. It's It's a more peaceful, I think, More action taking word. So I listened. T you started a podcast series this year. Infinite potential. So I know that you're not only using technology to continue reaching the folks who've been following you for many years, but now a new audience getting to tell stories in a different way. And I heard a two part podcast years where you were talking about a I and so one of the things that I wanted to talk to you about is this deep. So how are you leveraging a I to share your daily reflections, reach a bigger audience and help us become more aware? >> So my personal interest all my life as you mentioned, is well being personal transformation. I'm using deep learning, artificial intelligence, augmented immersive experiences, virtual reality, biological feedback, neuro plasticity, epi, genetics, all as a means for well being and personal transformation. So the future well being is very precise. It's very personalized because no two people react to the same similares, whether it's a diet or a compliment or in a front in the same way artificial intelligence can. If you want, help me know everything about you. Everything, how your mind works, how your emotions work, how your body works and the relationship with that. So one of the things I'm examining right now is 2,000,000 jeans in our body which are not human, which microbial is called the microbe microbiome. It's actually as significant as human genes in determining your state of well being by analyzing the microbiome through artificial intelligence and deep learning. You can killer well being interventions very personally and very predictably and, of course, requiring your participation. You become your own healer of co healer in the sense artificial intelligence for deep leading off gene expression. Not just jeans. Because genes are not now owns their verbs. What are they doing? What are they up to right now? The genes that are responsible for healing active are the genes that are responsible for inflammation or disease Inactive. What most of your audience may not know is that only 5% of genetic mutations that give rise to disease fully penetrate, which means only 5%. Which means the guarantee. The disease. If you have ah Braca gene for breast cancer, you're going to get breast cancer for that. Also, new technologies like Christmas you'll be able to read the barcode of a gene, cut the hunt footed or deleting harmful Julin Jean insert the healthy, and so that will solve that problem. And it's happening very soon. It's in the works, but 95% of illness, even with the genetic mutations that predispose you to a less, are not predictable dependent on your lifestyle. Now it was in the past. You couldn't measure that. Today you can. You can measure sleep. You can measure dream, sleep deep sleep. You can measure exercise. You can measure heart rate variability. You can measure gene expression and you can digitize the whole thing. So with that, we have an amazing new frontier in medicine. The three dimensional model of pharmaceuticals has very limited application, only an acute illness. The future off treatment even will be through technology. So in five years you go to a doctor's office. They might give you a V R session instead of writing a prescription. >> Well, in a lot of advanced technologies are being utilized now in medicine, seeing a doctor virtually through computer, exactly telemedicine being able to treat more people faster. But it's like were in >> the first minute of on there if I >> were in the in the puberty. Yeah, you know, puberty is a time of challenge, and >> true and and >> so were the adolescence of our use of technology is getting richer. >> So when we look at all of the applications for the emerging technologies that you mentioned it so much good that can happen, we can become so much more aware of our own and take don't take control. I know you don't like that word, but take ownership, Influence, Influence Yes, >> if we look at some of the negative consequences of artificial intelligence machine learning. I was fascinated by your podcast with Christopher Whitely and how incredibly potent Cambridge Analytica waas in changing the course of American history. >> And it could ruin democracy. Yes, So we need to have surveillance. We need to have, you know, chords for keeping it secure. Yes. So even these problems, by the way, can be solved by technologies >> they can. It's sort of a catch >> 22 isn't it? >> Yes, but the same time here we are, freely as just consumers. And one of the things that Cooper is talking about is making a purchasing decision, making buying management in business. As easy as it is for us consumers, you know you need something, you go on amazon dot com and there is click to buy. It shows up so quickly you've forgotten what you ordered. It's like your birthday. So there are so many advantages. At the same time, it's creating a lot of challenges with >> this conversation is going to help solve those challenges because the more we have this conversation in social media, in education facilities, even an entertainment, we're writing a new story together. >> And that story is that narrative is so powerful. Yes, absolutely. You're right. It's everything but going back to your word awareness. That's what So money, whatever the causes, really needs to have us that consistent. It's not just saying it a few times here. They're on different media, right? It's not consistent, >> consistent messaging. And in my mind that messaging is one thing. It's been my mission statement for the last 35 years. Way have to accelerate collective consciousness in the direction of a more peaceful, just sustainable, healthier and joyful work. We have to eliminate war. We have to eliminate equal destruction. We have to eliminate to climate change way have the technology to do it. But now we need to harness the collective intelligence, the collective creativity and the collective impulse for love and compassion to technology, and we'll do it. >> I like that. You sound very definitive. We will do it first, though some of those naysayers who don't believe climate change Israel, for example, How do you advise whether it's a government organization for people to start looking at? Use the technology? Look at the data, start being receptive to the fact that changes happening. But we could harness the power of it for so many good application. >> It was in this year's. It's not without arguing with them on. Data helps, but scientific data never changed a broader revolution. You need data. You need science, which you need collective emotional connection. If you don't have that emotional and spiritual connection, if you don't see that the air is your breath. If you don't see that the rivers and waters in the ocean are your circulation. If you don't see that the earth is recycling is your body. If you don't see that what we call the environment is their extended body. You have a personal body and the university body, and if you're not emotionally tied to that, then scientific did does >> such an interesting concept. We just think, Well, the data's there, it shows this. Therefore, it is what you're saying. We have to have an emotional connection. >> Yes, data by itself, science were itself faxed by itself. Don't change the world. But when facts are tied to an emotional story, everything changes. >> So, wrapping things up here, I know that you are working to create a diversion of Dr Deepak Chopra that will live forever that will be able to continue to inspire. Many generations >> have been working on this. It's actually a stealth project, so I can't give details. But I've been working on this for more than a year now, and where we are is I will soon have a version of myself, my mind twin that will know everything that I've ever said. But we'll also through deep learning, continue to learn and we lived for generations are from gone or perhaps eternally and we'll communicate with the world even when I'm physically nor president and because it will be learning as we go along and incorporating everything into my take on what is reality. What is fundamental reality, what is consciousness? It will be much smarter than I am. >> So you think that a I and consciousness are really going to be able Thio merge together to continue to evolve rather than you think about a way I take stated from the past and the present to try to predict the future. But you see them as living some bio symbiotically, eh? I >> do. But we have to be careful here will never have subjective consciousness. Okay? Never. It may replicate insight and intuition and creativity and even vision, but it won't be able to fall in love. >> That's good. I was a little worried about that on >> it will not be able to address experientially what comes from, um, meditation and other reflective enquiries that transcend human thought. So, you know, science is a system of thought, just like mythology, religion, philosophy, theology, our systems of thought. No system of thought can actually access reality till you go to the source of thought, which is consciousness >> source thought. Dr. Deepak Chopra. What a pleasure to have you on the Cube. Thank you so much for joining me this morning. I know you've got to get off your keynote, but it was very much a pleasure. >> Thank you. My pleasure. >> Excellent for Dr Deepak Chopra. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube from Cooper inspired 19. Thanks for watching

>> Woman: From the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. It's the Cube. Covering Coupa Inspire 2019. Brought to you by Coupa. >> Hey you, welcome to the Cube. Lisa Martin coming to you from Las Vegas Coupa Inspire '19. I'm excited to be welcoming to the Cube for the first time, Ravi Thakur. The SVP of Business Acceleration from Coupa. Ravi welcome to the Cube. >> Thank you Lisa. Appreciate it. So day one, everybody had started the day off. The general session was lots of information from Rob. We heard from Malcolm Gladwell. One of my favorite storytellers. If I could master telling a story the way he does that would be awesome. We've also heard from some customers today. We had the Lululemon staples, KPMG, Deloitte. People are excited about the innovations and how Coupa is really helping to transform the CPO, the CFO and help these guys and girls become much more strategic. >> Ravi: Right >> Lots of change and lots of forcing functions too like consumerization and pricing pressures and and all these things. But something that you guys announced back in, I believe November 2018. Just about six months ago, was Coupa Pay. Talk to us a little bit about Coupa Pay in the spirit of this events theme of Spend Smarter. Together. What is Coupa Pay? What were some of the gaps in the market that you guys saw? And thought we can help B2B customers uncripple themselves. >> Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for those questions Lisa. I've been with Coupa for over 12 years now and throughout that time I've have had thousands of conversations with Spend management professionals across all different topics. But whenever payments would come up there's always a sense of it's kind of a nightmare, it's a mess for us let's not talk about that. (laughing) And what we've seen is that. A lot of large companies have multiple ERP systems and when you have multiple ERP systems trying to get a hold of the data and be able to control the funds going out can be a little bit of a challenge. Then when you start mixing in that there's so many different ways to pay suppliers. Weather it's a credit card or a digital cheque or cross-border payment. Whatever it may be. It becomes a big conglomeration of a big nightmare. And so when we started looking at payments. We wanted to figure out well, how can we simplify this experience for our customers? Because we already have best in class procurement best in class AP automation. Adding payments was kind of an easy decision. >> Lisa: Natural evolution. >> A natural evolution of how we were progressing or kind of move into business spend manager categorization of Business Spend Management. And so when we started the journey we made the decision maybe about 18 months ago to actually start getting into this a little bit. And we started off as you mentioned last November with announcing virtual cards on purchase orders. We've started adding other things like early pay discounts. Which are kind of a financing type of solution and just yesterday, actually just today Rob announced general availability for invoice payments. Which is really the workhorse of payments. It's taking all of your invoices that you have as a company and how do you pay your different suppliers. >> Lisa: I can imagine a company would have multiple banks that they're dealing with to pay different suppliers different suppliers, probably had different preferences and then what's the percentage of invoices that are being paid by cheque by paper cheque still. >> Ravi: Yeah, I mean in the U.S. I think I had a statistic from 2016. It's a couple of years dated but it said 51% of payments in the U.S. is still via cheque. It's crazy. And I had a meeting earlier today with a pretty large customer. And they're telling me about how their treasury the woman that runs treasury for them. She walks around with the key fob of 12 different key fobs, for two-factor authentication to log in to 12 different banks, all over the world. And a lot of that is very painful it opens themselves up to a lot of inefficiencies to risk, to potential fraud and with the payment solutions that we're offering that we're actually now generally available with. We're able to solve a lot of those challenges it's really exciting for us. >> Absolutely. And driving up the efficiency of accounts payable by having all of these options. Can imagine from a customer's perspective all of the elements in that business they're going to get tighter going to get more simple and where it's going to really be an enabler of an organization's overall digital business transformation >> Right, it's one of the last areas of transformation we see in Business Spend Management. We've already as mentioned the procurement process AP automation, where we handle expense reporting and now when you're starting to look at payments and doing it at the scale that we're looking at doing. There are a lot of payment solutions out there a lot of payment providers. But none of them have the backing of the procurement process None of them have the rich invoice data that we bring to the table. Let alone the ability for us to send payments due payments domestically, across the globe. Which is a very unique differentiator for us. Along with being able to pay out cross-border payments in hundreds of countries. Now the other thing that we've seen from organizations especially as the the way that the economy and organizations have evolved. You're not just paying a supplier that has ACH information They're not willing to provide you with their bank account information. Might be a five-person flower shop that you need to buy flowers from occasion. It may be temp labour that you have hired for certain projects. Or contingent workforce for certain projects. Or maybe even paying back your employees through expense reports. And so as we've architected our payment solutions we've looked at all of these together and figure it out what are the different optimal ways to do that. As a matter of fact we're announcing a partnership with PayPal. So in order to now send payments via PayPal from a business PayPal account from our customer to the PayPal accounts of their some of their smaller suppliers. So that's a unique way that we're thinking about what are the common use cases scenarios in the consumer world and bringing that into the business environment. >> Yeah, that consumerization effect is so interesting because we're all consumers every day. Weather we're shopping for some beach wear for a backyard barbecue or something on Amazon or whatever happens to be. We have this expectation, culturally we're trained we can find anything. We get anything, we can see all the suppliers and the different prices and select. Read all these reviews. Because we're so conditioned to that in our everyday lives those people that are doing that then have buying decisions and buying roles and their company's expect the same experience. >> Ravi: Right >> And you guys are listening to your customers and enabling that which is huge hugely impactful to every industry, right? Manufacturing, Retail, Health Care you name it. >> Any business that has employees which is every business in the world. It's a great point. I mean just a consumerization of all of these different aspects of business and that's where, when we started Coupa and as we've continued to grow throughout our expansion it's just really listening to our customers listening to the vibrant community that we've created. I met a lot of meetings today and I met with another customer a couple of hours ago and he was super excited about how he's been on our Coupa Community. We have a portal for our customers. They can put in their ideas and talk about and have conversations. He just loves the way that we've been able to react and be able to implement a number of his solutions that have made his life easier along with the broader community of buyers that we have. >> All the marketing material talks about this BSM community that is developing together and that was one of the themes I felt that I heard from Rob this morning during his general session is this. Not only is this community incredibly rich with data 1.2 trillion dollars of spend they are going through this which is a 5X multiplier from I think you should have said this at 2016. But it's also encouraging, suppliers that are in there customers that are in there are able to to learn and save from each other. The collaboration element was really, I thought quite potent and it sounded like quite a differentiator to me. >> Right, absolutely. I think Rob talked about what we're calling prescriptions. >> Yes, 18'000 so far? >> Exactly, and you know the ability to take a look at it's not just $1.2 trillion worth of spend. It's 5 million suppliers. It's not all of them have catalog items but a lot of them do have catalog items. It's looking across millions of purchase order millions of invoices across the system and being able to rationalize and look at data and look at all of these different trends that no one's able to do and really it's just the beginning of the power of what we're doing. We've introduced our business spend index. Which is a leading indicator of how the economy and businesses are operating. We're really just starting to scratch the surface in this area, I mean a thousand customers is great. But as we continue to grow and expand and multiply our customer base. We're going to be able to help things around broader supply chain initiatives. Help things around sustainability. Help organizations figure out are they working with suppliers that are not only suppliers that are risky which we do today. But what about tier two suppliers or tier three suppliers that have a potential risk in their supply chain. And as we start to accumulate lot more data we're able to do things that really no one's ever been able to do, ever. >> Lisa: Thinking back that the 12 years that you have at Coupa and the massive transformation that you've seen in every industry. All of these different disruptors. Like we talked about earlier, all of the changes that are really forcing CPO's and CFO's to become sort of those fraud detectors and those strategic thinkers. Because they can see there this isn't just about buying and sourcing. There is tremendous business potential by having that visibility where all your Spend is in one platform. That's absolutely transformational. >> What do businesses do? They spend money or they sell goods or services and we have half of that equation and we're doing it at a scale that hasn't been seen before. So yeah, the ability for us to over what we've seen over the past 12 years. Not just what's happening at a macro economic level that's a big part of it. But just in general. What's the thinking of the CPO's? What's the thinking of the CFO's? How are they starting to look at things? How are they starting to feel the empathy for their employees. The empathy for their suppliers and making business decisions. And we're now part of that conversation. We're part of that equation as these companies are looking at these things. >> And have you seen the roles of the CPO and the CFO start to change, to start embracing emerging technologies embracing AI and machine learning and understanding how that can really once they have the data and they can apply intelligence and train the machines, how much potential they have. Are they receptive now? >> Ravi: It's just a start. it's just a start. I mean, when I joined Coupa 12 years ago Salesforce is really just starting to get going with the whole SAS thing and it's been a phenomenal change. We had the opportunity of lunch with Malcolm Gladwell today as an executive team and one of the things that we talked about was Silicon Valley and what's happening in general with technology. And he put it very clear, he said we're in the first minute of the technology revolution. It's still super early and how things are moving and transforming in this world We're at the forefront today and we want to continue to be there as the world changes. >> Lisa: So lots of exciting news today you mentioned PayPal. What are some of the other things that are going to be coming out this week that are exciting to you and your customers? >> So a lot of things that are coming out for payments specifically, we're going to be announcing a number of partnerships in the morning. I'll be announcing a number of partnerships on the main stage. We're doing, as mentioned, something with PayPal. We're going to announce that Citibank has joined as a virtual card issuer on the Coupa Pay platform. They're one of the largest global issuers in the world. We're introducing TransferMate as a strategic partner for money movement. And kind of one of the more unique things is when you think about payments and when you think about our community of buyers and suppliers. It's buyers and it's suppliers. And so we want to start spending more time and more focus at least from a payment standpoint on how can we make it easier for suppliers to do business with our customers. We're also going to announce an integration with Stripe. So Stripe is one of the, the bigger Fintechs in the world One of the darling Fintech companies around. And what they're doing is because of their capabilities around the card processing standpoint. Not to get into too much the details but we can now enable a super or a higher level of efficiency for card acceptance for suppliers that hasn't been seen before through our Virtual Card capabilities. So we're really excited about these partnerships and there's a lot more to come over the next several months here. >> To borrow this from Malcolm Gladwell the fact that he thinks we're in the first minute of this technology revolution, is like oh! Shocking. But all I've heard all day today is customer centricity, supplier centricity. Ravi thank you so much, for stopping by the Cube and giving us some of your time on this very exciting day. I know day two will be, probably as action-packed. Tomorrow, but we appreciate your time. >> Thank you very much. >> My pleasure >> Appreciate it. For Ravi Thakur, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube from Coupa Inspire '19. Thanks for watching (upbeat music)

>> from the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. It's the Cube covering Cooper inspired 2019. Brought to You by Cooper. >> Welcome to the Q. But Lisa Martin on the ground in Las Vegas for Cooper Inspire. 19 Hot Vegas. Fresh Insight. I'm pleased to welcome Max Ground, the managing director from Deloitte to the program. Hey, Max. >> Good morning. Good afternoon. >> Good afternoon. Whatever time it is, Vegas Right here is this. It's a time warp. They don't like you see outside It's >> only place the world. The 25th hour. >> Right? So here we are. It inspired 19 kick Everything kicked off this morning with the general session. I was teasing Rob Bernstein a couple hours ago and I had him on that. I learned three things in the general session. He likes pizza, he likes kittens. And Cuba's platform now has 1.2 trillion dollars of spending data going through it. And I thought, man procurement is not what I thought. It wa ce and you have a really >> interesting story about procurement. I'd love for you to share with our audience >> because you said in your session earlier today you said people in this standing your morning session. How many of you wanted to be on procurement? Anybody that raises their hands of line tell me about the procurement of yesterday, the >> opportunities that it's given you and what it is now. >> So I think >> in the past, >> security has been something that had to happen. It was a must have not a place that people saw value. But was the rule enforcers right? So trying to do that and really adding value by discipline, where today, if you think about it, the value that they can add by driving savings authorization drops right to the bomb line. So all the savings that are out there, all >> the negotiations that are doing, it's really unique skill set >> and something that people really should move into finance folks when they're looking for a new opportunity. It's a great skill set to have. Lately I've come across a former attorneys are practicing law but now doing strategic sourcing, doing procurement, work, people from finance because the talent that you have to have is field work with people within their companies, understand their needs, negotiate with suppliers, do hard core analytics and, oh, by the way, we're talking about Cooper has helped in change and implemented technology like that. It's really fascinating. >> It's so much more than >> being a buyer or being somebody that's controlling a particular business unit's ability to buy and spend. >> One of the interesting things about Cooper is this platform that allows what started, I >> think, initially as more procurement corner invoicing is now expanded to also include payments and expenses and travel management and contingent workhorse management. So what the CPO now has the opportunity to do is get this visibility right across an entire business of all of the spending, to your point, make massive impacts to the bottom line. >> Yeah, I >> mean, data is so important, right? In the past, the vendors had all the information. Why? Because the sales people how to get commissions. They knew exactly what was being bought of that company. Today, you can reverse engineer saying, selling cells. I say it's reverse sales. I can't go in there and I tell them now I have the full picture. So if it's divided up that category by three or four different vendors, they're making assumptions about how much market share they have. I know it all. I can create a model, a pricing model on the reverse. Engineer it. It's really for sales. I'm telling them now why they should give me a great discount for the organization and >> I >> have the ability to actually enforce that and drive the savings that we have for the organization. It also helped them drive their numbers on sales. So it's a mutually beneficial relationship. They have more market share. I drive better value for the organization. It really works well, >> Well, one of the destructor is that you're kind of alluded to Is this consumer ization? You know, when you go to buy >> a car these days, you just walk in there. You have as a as a buyer of the consumer oven automobile. You have access to every piece of information possible, the whole transaction process. The sales process is different. So as consumers in our regular lives, we have so much expectation that weaken, find anything good Amazon, find anything that we want, get it delivered tomorrow and have all these information on what? Where's the best place I could get it? Who's selling it for what? How is this person that you know, more trustworthy supplier So this consumer ization element and how it's changing the role of the CPO in the CFO is >> really revolutionary. >> It really isn't so you think about it. Most of us go out to Amazon by something, and really the only control there for me, for example, is my wife has to approve it, right, so that's the only veto authority. So that's really the only difference between the two platforms. If you think about it is, there's controls in place, so you're doing the right thing. But from an end user perspective, if I go out there and find the right item and again in Amazon, I don't to go find the supplier. I don't know if that be on contract. Why don't you do that work? We shouldn't have to. I should just go out there and say, I need this And in the background, Cooper is working all those things, presenting the right products on the right contracts, driving right value and almost is important, minimizing the risk. So across all those different lenses, you see why the value of Cooper is for the end user. They're getting what they need for the organization, for the company we're reducing risk and we're increasing value, and then you have rich reporting on the back end. So it's just it's a great way of doing business. It really is taking what you used to do or what you do. It's Sunday afternoon like Rob, you say Monday at work, and I think that's really powerful thing of perspective. >> It is. And it can be so impactful if applied in the right way with an organization, whether it's a manufacturer or hospital or retailer that has a culture that is willing to embrace change, right? I mean, there's that right, Especially >> get him to get your >> perspective on when you're implementing Cooper at a large organization. Maybe have been around for many, many years versus maybe a more modern that we think might be more nimble organization. Culturally, Do you see massive differences in how they're leading procurement, and are you able to sort of level the playing field and show them doesn't matter what your culture is? Here's how your business, your body. >> So from a change perspective, I think there's a different perception. The newer, nimbler organization believes that they changed easy, but it still may have people the older organisation again still made people most people don't like to change. What I have learned is if you help them understand the value of it, how they're doing it, how their jobs are going to change and give them the tools to do it. Some people are gonna be early adopters. But finding that one person, the organization, no matter what level they are in that business unit or in that department that has that informal voice that people look to naturally, that the Nazi leader who's in a leadership position with leader from a personality perspective get them on board. And sometimes that's the hardest thing to do. They might be the most changed resistant, but was that person flips, They become your greatest greatest advocate out there. So it's a personal thing. This is hard work. That's why I talk about in our sessions, is going through. This requires a lot of work, but it's worth it. You can measure the value on the end that you got help. People understand why you're going on this journey and have have resource is there for help. >> So what were some of that? You said you did good Q and a session during your break out this afternoon. >> Tell me some of >> the things that that some of the audience said that you thought was really like they're getting it, >> Yes. So the whole point of our session was going live is not really the goal, right? That's just >> a guess, the exact right. >> And so most people focus on going live, and the answer is congratulations. You purchased the product, Kuba, and now it's working. So what? You don't have any real data? What do you do in the future? Some questions were as they're going through Supplier Neighborhood. The shift between procurement now taking a larger role in the relationships with the vendors. Well, that's great. It should be a balanced relationship. You know, there's a procurement role in that. And then there's the end. Users are the people in the organization from the business. You have to relate with those suppliers, so work together. If you were together in the past now it's a great time to do that. There's some other questions about if something is not working correctly. Post go live how quick It's not broken, but it could be optimized or you're getting complaints about. How quick should you change it? The answer is, I don't know, measuring yourself. I mean, obviously it's broken. Fix it. But it might be something around change. And maybe you have to help people understand why they're doing this new process. If people are giving feedback positive, negative, mostly native, was positive. We just go off our way. Welcome to Yelp. But if it's negative feedback, listen, don't get offended, understand that perspective and then measure it. Say, Is this something that we did is saying the platform, or is it just changed and work with it? What I tell our clients to is in Cooper, Just cause you can doesn't mean you should. I mean, that's really easy to build a field custom field, really easy to build, custom approval chance, really hard to maintain that stuff. So try to do it out of the not out of the box, but configured without as much customization as possible, and they can always improve it, understand it better. >> I think the key to adoption is the more customization that you have. I imagine the adoption funnel gets narrower and narrower. It's got >> interesting, so you customize because you think that's the way the process should go, because that's how we do it today. So if your goal is to take how you do your process today and put into Cooper, also tell clients congratulations. If you had a bad process now you're bad process that works faster. So take the time to say, Let's step back. Companies evolve, right? And so as they're evolving, if you haven't taken a really a view purposeful of you backwards and measure organization, where you're out from a charity model assessment, then you probably don't know where your gaps are. Take the opportunity when you're implying Cooper to use kind of leading practice that Cooper has start with that and said, Going back to what you're doing today, you know what a great example. That's improvers, right? So people like to have 10 approve er's because they think it reduces risk. So if I go back and look and I asked the audience, say, how many purchase order requests rejected? Very few. And how long do people actually have it open when they re prove it? So that's three seconds when they open it up and looked at it, do they really assess it from a risk perspective? Probably not. But if four people ahead of them approved it, that person's just gotta prove it, because I think it's okay because they're assuming someone else is looking at it, as opposed to in Cooper. Now I have the rich data to understand it. I could minimize risk that way instead of trying to do it. And what is a false sense of security? >> So getting people on board with bringing in automation and leveraging like I was saying in the beginning, the 1.2 trillion of spend that's going through the Cooper platform toe leverage that intelligence to not only have Cooper create the prescriptions for companies to be able to go. Okay, we don't we shouldn't your point. We shouldn't take a process that was clunky before and just do it faster. Still clunky, being able to have the automation thing. Analytics. Really, Those core enabling technologies can also be quite revolutionary. >> Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So the coop insights now, and you're seeing that measured against others and its mass, but you see how you're doing it, So this is really powerful sitting your goals out there and seeing how you're doing. Adjusting those really question yourself is, if we're not getting is approved in the speed that we thought, How do we do it differently? Right, So and that's nice about Cuba. It is really sounds right, and they really do come out with three releases a year, which is powerful. And so it's always changing, which means you have to be nimble. Understand your organization, adopting the new technologies to come out. They're also looking at their acquisitions and seeing that fits into what you're doing. >> Exactly. Last question for you is the announcement of the expansion of their in the AWS marketplace today and thinking, Wow, the I t person is probably gonna finally all these Shadow I T units that are popping up in finance and marketing and engineering and whatnot. They now have the ability to see and manage the entire software from search to deployment and management through AWS. What advantage is that going to give Deloitte when you're working with Cooper customers on implementation? >> That's probably too soon to say on that one. All the expansions they're having really help us with another tool. Tell clients I would say that there's always measuring the benefit for that client in the risk. So even if you take Amazon, for example, just opened by for Cooper is managing that So Amazon. When they first came out with Amazon for business open by, you couldn't control the categories that were exposed to the client. Now you can, but you can't control the items. So having a process in place, having a category strategy and then maximizing it if Amazon works that client fantastic, AWS is gonna get them or visibility across their platforms to manage those better. Fantastic. I think it just gives another opportunity to bring clients back into Cooper. Have a look at the value for Cooper from an end and solution, and all these wraparound acquisitions are making our expansions with their clients, people pay and all those other pieces out there. It's just another thing for them to have a goal and understand make a decision from their business, whether they're going to use it or not. But there's there's value across the board. Every every client is different, >> Absolutely. But it's also that that consumer ization approach that if you can take a process that somebody does on their own time, whether they're buying soccer balls or pool and bring that to their business life, that consumer ization following them. You think with potential there to transform every industry, every function, every line of business. It's just infinite. So >> truly dot, >> dot dot to me. Continue. Absolutely Wish we had more time. But Max, thank you so much for joining me on the Cube today and talk doing talking to me about what's going on at Deloitte and congrats on having us standing. You're only sessions. That's good, right? Take for Max Ground like I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube from Cooper Inspire 19. Thanks for watching.

>> Announcer: From the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, it's theCUBE. Covering Coupa Inspire 2019, brought to you by Coupa. >> Welcome to theCUBE, at Coupa Inspire '19. I'm Lisa Martin on the ground, at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas, and we're pleased to welcome to theCUBE Michael Van Keulen, Global Procurement Director of Lululemon Athletica. Michael, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> I'm a big Lulu fan, have been for many, many years. If anybody doesn't know Lululemon, this is a three plus billion dollar designer, distributor, and retailer of really cool technical athletic apparel. You've been there for a few years now, came from a finance background. One of the things that I love about Lululemon is the inspirational messages on the bags. Anytime I'm in a grocery store and you have to bring your own bags, and I'm nearsighted and I can spot a Lululemon bag from a mile away. Talk to us about just one of the examples of this procurement transformation that you helped initiate, when you came in and found something really interesting about this iconic bag. >> Sure, yeah, so when I joined the company you start to do your basic spend cube analysis and trying to figure out where the big spend items are. And given that the bag is so visible for everybody, I figured that's really a big volume, lots of spend, very visible, and very important to our business. So I started to dig in to our shopping bag as a category. And I uncovered that it was single-sourced with one factory in Cambodia, with a nine month lead time. But nobody in the company really knew that. So when I was put in front of our senior executives to talk about where do I feel there's opportunity, there was some pushback on me digging into our shopper and there was even perspective in the senior executive teams that I didn't really understand how important our shopper is. And then when I asked the question, where does the shopper come from? Where is it made? How is it made? What's the lead time? What's the cost? There were lots of unknowns, and when I threw that on the table and said, "Well, it's single-sourced, "one factory, in Cambodia", you could immediately see a lot of people going like, "Wow, that's very interesting." And they started to realize that procurement is not just about saving money, which we also did, but it's also about de-risking our supply chain, being more nimble and more agile. >> Yes, I was going to say that what you discovered was a massive risk to the brand. I think the bag, is the number one brand asset? >> Michael: Totally. >> It's very visible. But that was really the tip of the iceberg of some of the things you came in saying, "You know, as procurement, "there is a massive, massive, many massive, "impact elements that it can have on the business." >> Michael: Right. >> So going from sort of a tactical to a strategic approach. How was the bag, as an example, able to start helping you transform the culture of Lulu to be more strategic and start looking at all of the other ways in which this business can derive value from a number of the other elements besides the bag. >> Yeah, so we started to identify, what are some of our core principles when it comes to how we source, and how we procure. Those are things to me, like fact-based decision making, analytics, knowing what you buy, how you buy, where you buy, competitive pressure, making sure the suppliers realize that we have options in the marketplace. I mean, those are some of the key components of running a competitive department that drives a competitive advantage. And that's really what we focus on at Lululemon in procurement. >> Some of the disruptors that we see in procurement and finance today are consumerization. Rob Bernstein talked about it this morning with some of the things that Coupa is now doing with the Amazon Marketplace. But as consumers, whether we're consuming Lululemon products or software, we have choice. We also have this expectation that we can go somewhere and find anybody that's selling this particular product, I can see the prices, I can see, the pricing pressures put on, I can see all the different suppliers. So the consumerization sort of disruptor, is really interesting to every industry. How are you leveraging that to, to really drive much more value. Not just saving costs, but even things like impacting shareholder value for Lulu? >> Yeah, I think table stakes today is just managing spend, right? Knowing where your money goes, and trying to make sure that we stretch the dollars as much as we can, I think is what every procurement function does. I think what distinguishes the world class from the let's say, the middle of the pack, is are you able to contribute to top-line growth? How are you able to innovate? Are you able to innovate through your suppliers? And so one example, this is how we implemented third-party gift cards at many grocers across North America. That was an idea generating from procurement, tying into gift cards that we already source and that we now have third-party gift cards at the Kroeger's and the likes. That just drive more traffic to our stores. And that's just through a really exciting, cool idea, that wouldn't necessarily come from a procurement, traditional procurement function, but one that really wants to contribute to future growth. >> One that wants to contribute to future growth, that has a strategic vision. When we look at the Coupa community, there's now $1.2 trillion of transactions going through that. There's a tremendous amount of data, and we go to so many conferences at theCUBE every year, and we hear very commonly, data is the new oil. >> Michael: Totally. >> Data is gold. It is those things if you have the right, if you have visibility and the opportunity to extract value from it and act on it immediately. Talk to me a little bit more about the third-party gift card approach, and was that something that you said we have so much more visibility, into our data, into our consumers, into our suppliers. There's an obvious low-hanging fruit opportunity here. How did that data help you make that decision? >> Yeah, no this was more an idea where you start to look at what value can procurement drive other than just managing and reducing cost? And every other big apparel retailer is already in this third-party space and Lululemon is not. And the power of our company is we are vertically integrated. You can only buy our product at Lululemon, and some select strategic partners. But opening up the doors for people to be experiencing our brand in a different way, through purchasing a gift card or being gifted a gift card, I should say, and that audience then now comes into our store. It just could potentially be a completely new guest. And that is what is super exciting. >> So let's talk about some of the business impact of that. So, I would like to be on the receiving end of the Lulu gift card, for anybody who's watching my birthday's in March. (Michael laughing) But in terms of what are some of the things that you've seen map back to top line impact from that. Increase in new customers acquired, increase in customer lifetime value, what are some of those big impacts that procurement has made with what seems like an, aha, this is a simple idea, we should be doing this too. >> I think what Lululemon does better than any retailer on the planet is our educators. Right, our educators in our stores. And so, it's my job is how do I set these guys up for success? So I think one way we're now doing and leveraging the Coupa platform, is taking away administrative complexity. So the lesser the administrative burden is on our stores and our educators, the better they are with engaging with our guests. And educating them on our product, why we make it, what it does, so that our consumers that we call guests, ultimately, not just make the transaction, but also buy the right product, they know what the product is supposed to do for them. And how it's supposed to fit and how it's supposed to help them in their daily lives. And so what procurement really does is just take away that complexity that they have today, so that they can focus on what they do best. >> So walk me through who within, so one of the things that Coupa does, is more than I think any of their competitors, is it's procurement, it's invoices, expenses, payments. Tell me about all the different ways in which Lululemon is leveraging Coupa and walk me through kind of an average user experience. This is somebody, like an individual contributor in marketing or finance. Give me a little bit of a taste of that. >> Yeah, so we use Coupa for sourcing, contracting, requisitioning, purchase orders, and then flip that PO into pay, so we use the full suite of solution. The biggest focus for us is on the downstream, as we call, Procure to Pay. So it's a lot of people placing requisitions, and that can be in marketing, it could be in the store, it could be in any part of our business, really. And the downstream is the most important element, because that's where the visibility comes. And then from a procurement standpoint, we use the Sourcing and the CLM platform. But the downstream is where the magic happens. >> So is every business unit within Lululemon on the Coupa platform? >> So we launched North America on February 4th, we're live in 18 stores as a pilot, and we're going to roll out all of North America, the entire fleet, in August. >> So just February of 2019, so just what, five months or so ago. And the impact to the business that you've seen with just these first 18 stores? >> Yeah, it's not just the 18 stores, it's inclusive of our head office and our distribution centers in North America. We just now focus on supplier enablement, more suppliers on the platform, more spend through the portal, and with the stores it's a pilot. It's going really well and if the stores are going to get it I'm pretty sure they will be very pleased. >> So, we talked about kind of the consumer, the guest experience, supplier centricity. What have you achieved with respect to supplier centricity, using Coupa, and how is that affecting everybody up to the C-suite in your organization in terms of, wow, procurement is really a business engine, here we do invest in. >> Yeah I think our, if you look at our journey when we started three years ago where we literally had no real procurement as it is described today, we're still in that journey of maximizing our supplier relationships. And through our supplier relationships, really drive innovation. I think we're not entirely there yet, I think that is one of the next iterations, is how do we take procurement to the next level. >> And if you look back at the last few years, what surprises you about coming from a finance background, now being in charge of procurement for a major global brand. What are some of the things that surprise you about this future of procurement and where Lululemon is setup to be successful? >> I think the biggest surprise is that people never intentionally do business with a company that we may or we should be doing business with. People never intentionally do that, it's just because they don't ask the right questions around ownership structure and risk and sustainability, and reputational risk and environmental risk, and just cost aside. And what I think what procurement helps to do is to actually ask all those questions. So that we end up with the right company, with the right pricing, the right quality, the right specs, the right everything. I think that's what surprised me, is that missing link that procurement brings to the table. >> So if you had to give your peers, in any industry, some advice would it be first of all, help establish a culture that is willing to ask questions. 'Cause there's that whole thing too, right? We always think, well maybe it's a dumb question. Have that culture that is, no question is a dumb question, ask, ask, ask. >> Yeah and Lulu is, fortunately enough, such a young company so I had a lot of great stakeholders, I still have them today, that are highly supportive. It's never just me or my team, it is collaboration, it's cross-functional. Everybody has to have something in it, right? So Lulu's a very young company. So if you're a very, maybe mature organization where people are set in their ways it just becomes a little. So I used to work for VF Corps, which is a slightly more mature, been around for 100 years. There it required more convincing than maybe at Lululemon where, again, people are just, the population is much younger. And we needed more structure and people recognized that. >> The appetite was there. >> The appetite was there, for sure. >> Last question for you, Michael. Some of the things that are being announced this week at Inspire, we heard this morning about, we mentioned a minute ago about the size of the Coupa community. The amount of data, the value that it's driving for customers and for suppliers. Also they talked about this Amazon Marketplace that they're expanding this relationship so that IT folks can have this full suite of visibility. What excites you most about the direction that Coupa is going in? >> I mean, it's the data, it's the native integrations with Amazon and the likes, absolutely. What excites me the most in terms of the different modules is Coupa Pay. I've been wanting to go after dynamic discounting, that's what Coupa Pay is going to enable us to do. Virtual pay is another big opportunity where we can start flowing a lot of our payments through a virtual payment system, our payment cards, that excites me. But it's the data, and it's how do we as a community start to leverage our spend, I think will be absolutely awesome. I look forward to that. >> Yes and that collaborative spirit this morning was really palpable. Well, Michael it's been a pleasure to have you on theCUBE today. >> Thank you. >> Congratulations on what you've done at Lulu, and for Lulu being a Coupa Spendsetter. >> Thank you. >> For Michael Van Keulen, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE from Coupa Inspire '19, thanks for watching. (upbeat techno music)

>> from the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. It's the Cube covering Cooper inspired 2019. >> Brought to You by Cooper. >> Welcome to the Cube from Cooper inspired 99 Lisa Martin in The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. And guess who I have with me from the main stage CEO. Rob Bernstein. Welcome to the Cube. >> You so much. Thank you for having me >> exciting start today. One of Inspire really enjoyed the general session this morning. I learned three things more than three, but there's three that really stick out. One. You like pizza >> I do >> to you like kittens and kittens. And three, since 2016 there has been a five X increase and the spend going through the coop a platform with rocket ship. >> That's right. Huge momentum were well over 1.2 trillion dollars and spend that's gone through the platform. It's accelerating, and our customers are getting a lot of value and visualizing that spending, routing it to prefer contract saving money doing in smart, compliant ways. It's a really exciting time for us. >> It is, and this is across every industry manufacturing, healthcare, retail, et cetera. Every industry has the opportunity to leverage this wealth of data absolute. Cooper has to be able to get that visibility and control of all their spent. That's really revolutionary for any business. >> Well, we're really excited about it. Our community of customers is very excited about it, where building something very special here. I'll tell you one of the most exciting things. When you see that data being used in a way that drives intelligence for each individual customers, you know, we're helping them understand Where is their potential fraud with their expenses, where their suppliers maybe sending them duplicate invoices by accident? But Ari, I picks that up. So we are taking the space to a completely new level, and it's it could be more exciting. Honestly, >> well, the amount. You know, we go 1,000,000 shows a year, maybe a little bit less, But we always hear data is oil data is gold. It is. If you have access to it, you can extract insights from it really quickly and be able to act on it faster than your competition. >> Absolutely. You have to be able to normalize the data first informal, so you need a I capabilities. To do that, you have to access a massive data store you have to anonymous. The data obviously needs to be very, very secure, and then you have to draw insights out of that data. And one of things I share this morning is that we've given our customers just in 2019 more than 18,000 prescriptions of things they should consider, for example, putting some suppliers on hold if we think there's some risk with those suppliers. So absolutely, it's a I, but it's a I as the underlying element that brings out what we call community intelligence. And that's what's what's so powerful >> and the community as well, another really kind of under town that I felt and heard this morning from us. It's a community of collaboration, thes air, other businesses benefiting from what others have learned suppliers as well. So the customer centric city, the supplier central city, is there. >> Absolutely. It's all about this community concept, and we have well over 1000 companies that we've helped spend smarter, effectively and their community because these customers air sharing both in person and online, best practices, ideas for doing things differently, ideas for stretching this space beyond where it's ever been before, and that's really rewarding and every individual customers getting the benefit from that. Eso This community is developing very, very nicely, and it's serving the purposes of establishing this category, this new category of businessmen management, that world driving toward >> talk about that because that's something that's pretty innovative for Cooper. Business SPEND MANAGEMENT The role of procurement has changed. The role of finance has changed. They have the opportunity to become very strategic and really drive top line value. Talk to us about business, spend management What it means, how Coop is defining it >> absolutely well. First of all, any person I am in the world, and I've been asked this question for well over a decade. Now, do you think your company is doing a great job in managing its spending on older business needs that the company has, and you never get a resounding positive answer that, yes, we're doing a great job. And if you ask them, are you applying information technology to that problem in an effective way? The the answers or even worse? So we are attacking this full on with our customers in establishing the space, and that means everything from procurement expense reporting to invoice processing, two payments strategic sourcing, spend analytics supplier management contract lifecycle management. All of these application areas working together in concert help companies get their arms around spending and manage it in a much more smart way. And that's what this is. This is all about. >> One of the biggest challenges is you think about poor I t. Because every every line of business, whether your marketing, finance or engineering anything. Oh, engineering. I want to use lock. Start using flack. Marketing wants to use salesforce market Whatever these tools are in, suddenly this proliferation of shadowing T that's right and challenging to manage. But you can imagine how many supplier contracts are being duplicated triplicate, ID and even within the same organization, not getting the ideal price. So one of the great things big announcement today is the expansion of the relationship with Amazon in the AWS marketplace and wow, c I ose I t folks are gonna be able to do >> a lot >> through the Cupid platform. Tell us >> girls, that's right. Well, first of all, it's powered by an open by technology that we've developed, which allows you to have a very seamless experience. It's a purchasing experience that feels just like you're out on the Web, looking for any kind of item that you'd like to buy. But now you'll be able to subscribe to Service Is Cloud based. Service is through the Amazon AWS marketplace, and these Air service is that obviously would be approved by your CEO be approved by the folks involved in checking that it's secure, approved by legal and also approved by procurement So you can procure these cloud based service is very, very seamlessly right out of Cooper into AWS marketplace and back. And we think it's going to allow for obviously more volume of controlled spend, but also visibility into that spends. So it's properly matters >> that visibility is. You know, it's a word that we use in so many different applications. We don't want better visibility in our lives. In general, that is not easy to achieve. You talked about kind of these four core categories. You actually mentioned Maur that Cooper delivers its procurement, its invoices, expenses that can imagine travel management contingent workers getting an organization, whether it's a big organization like a staples or a smaller organization, that visibility is massively game changing. >> Yes, I think so. And I think one of the things that allows us to view that is we've really empowered the central hub organizations. Many the ones you described to roll out platforms to the end users all over the country, all over the world, wherever these people have employees to take control over spend. But have that Spence still routed to preferred, contractually righteous kind of spend categories that give them the results that they want. So this is a platform that is getting wide, wide adoption. And I'll tell you one of our application areas. We've seen more than a three x acceleration in the number of users over the last one year simply because of the adoption is so broadly accepted. And that has to do with our design and technology. Make it very, very usable. Our design concept of the best, you wise. No, you are right. So that's really how we're getting to where we're getting with a customer committee >> Adoptions challenging, you know. And there's if you look at the number of applications that an organization has a gonna work our list of sites, there's a lot and they're only effective if they're being utilized effectively by all of the folks that need to be doing that talk a little bit more. I love how you in your general session this morning shared with the audience. What c o u P a. Each acronym means. But and I saw that on the website best. Do I know you? I know what are some of the things that you think Cooper is doing really well that are really facilitating that adoption. That's again, that's hard to achieve. >> Well, it's in each of the letters in Cooper. So first, a comprehensive approach. That's what the C stands for. So cover every area of spend in one platform. We've never seen that before in the history of enterprise software, about a lot of siloed solutions all over the place, people trying to integrate them. We've put this all on one comprehensive platform. Secondly, doing it openly. That's what the old stands for. So being able to integrate to any ear piece system integrates a whole host of systems you mentioned slack earlier. We integrate into slack you could approve or reject spent purchased directly and slack. You have to get out to Cooper to do it, but you're doing it. The date is captured in Cooper. You is the user centrist city, so putting all the weight on the application itself and less of the weight on the employees themselves. Right now, we support guided buying with support all these capabilities, but our focus is on. You don't need any guidance in the future. Should require in the gun she should be. It should be so intuitive. The P stands for prescriptive, and this is using this community. Data we were discussing earlier to give real prescriptive advice. Teach customer, but how they should be spending or best practices, expenditures or benchmarks of how they could approve in the A stands for accelerated. It's the time of deployment. We're getting our customers live in a matter of months. They're accelerating their business process internally. I shared a stat that our customers in the last 12 months have improved the speed of their approvals by 30%. That's an aggregate. That's millions of millions, hundreds of billions of dollars in spend buying. So these five there is really differentiate us and they're really the vision areas that we focus on is a company with our with our community of customers. >> I was looking at some of the numbers from Cooper. You guys have consistently managed to grow revenues over 40% your rear in your fiscal year. 20 Q one earnings, which was just what last month or so. So revenue up 44% year over. You're crushing Wall Street's estimates by more than a 10 point gap. Lot of moment in, As you mentioned, let's talk about customers because at the end of the day, that's what you're all working towards. I know some of your proudest moments are when you get to talk with customers whose businesses have been transformed and you're giving them that the ah ha moments all the time. I love this morning how there >> was a lot >> of the voice of the customer covered there from so many different industries. The impact that you guys are making it Rolls Royce, for example, and MasterCard massive. Tell me some of your favorite stories that really articulate the breadth and depth of the value that delivers. I >> love it when the story begins in a situation where the CEO or CFO of the company don't necessarily get it, but somebody within our community steps up and shows them the business case of what we could achieve together. And then we, as a team is a collective unit delivered on achieving. Looking at was on themselves. I mean, they're processing more than $2,000,000,000 a month >> through our platform. I >> mentioned Procter Gamble. It process more than $50,000,000,000. Star Platform. Now >> these air, >> not initials. These were early adopter customers. They didn't have to go in our direction. There was some individual in that company that saw the spark of opportunity seized it, got it approved and worked with us hand in hand to drive it. And that's the stories that I love the most. And I shared so many of them this morning, but there are literally hundreds of them. All over the world in this community were cultivated. >> There are, and it's that's I think there's no bread or brand value that you can get Van it being articulated from the voice of a successful customer who it's not just normal, agile. We're saving money. It's no, we're driving shareholder value. There are significant business imperatives that are being driven because procurement is changing. We got to react to pricing pressures and forces like consumer ization. You know, we think of way have these expectations as consumers private lives, of getting anything that we want within a day when it shows up, you forgot what you ordered. It was that fast. That's right, what you guys are doing to enable the business buyers to have that same capability in their business lives. But to get that visibility, that 360 is really interesting. >> And the key also is to handle all the complexity on the back end for them. I could tell you so many companies I know that a really proud of crossing their paper based invoices very, very quickly, but they may not even know whether or not they got the goods of service is for which they're paying the invoice. So we do all of that heavy lifting on the back end on the platform itself, alleviating then users from that complexity and allowing them to have the experience that's similar to the one that that you just described >> can imagine how much money is being wasted on paper. They probably have absolutely no idea, absolutely no idea where you guys launched an Index. The Cooper Business Spend Index Just, I think, a month or two ago this is behavioral based data that you're bleeding from your community. Talk to us about the coupe of business spent index and some of the insights that you're already uncovering about the economy. >> Absolutely so. One of the things about this business spending nexus. It's something I've been thinking about frankly for over a decade. Can we collect enough data that's statistically significant enough actually be a leading indicator to future economic sentiment. You think about the data. We're looking at an aggregate. We know the average spend companies have per employee. We know how long approval cycles are, and we know the changes in those approval cycles. We know what percentage of spend is actually being rejected. Verse accepted at a moments notice aggregated those air in combination are leading in the Kidder's to the sentiment that companies have about the future of the economy. So we backwards tested this index that takes an account, these three elements that just described back to 2016 and it's proven to show pretty strong correlation with the way the economy actually played out for many of those quarters that many of those quarters. So last quarter we released our first verse, our first data set of the business spending. Next. And it showed that future economic economic sentiment for the next 3 to 4 months is actually very positive now, in some industries, more than others. But now, with three months later and clearly, the last three months have been pretty strong. So we're gonna be soon releasing our next quarterly Businessmen index. And we're gonna be doing this every quarter. Try to provide the business community with insights about where things are going. That's what everyone of business wants to know, where things are going, not where things have been. And we think we're in a unique position to share that and also, you know, sort of unfairly build awareness for brand out there so that people understand >> what we're all about. >> But that's that's critical. I'm gonna be talking to China tomorrow. You think of awareness Acquisition? Yes, Yes. Advocacy. Yes. Check, Check. Check. Old three. Those are critical last question robbery. As we look at the impact that procurement and getting this visibility of all of the distances spend can have on the business. Where is it as it relates to enabling businesses to digitally transformed >> to be competitive? Well, look, underlying all of this is the digital transformation that's happening for every company in every industry, without a doubt. But the use cases we support us so quantifiable. That's so clear not only in terms of cost savings that only in terms of compliance only in terms of visibility and getting your arms around spent actually drive revenue as well. If you do spend management effectively, you can change the way consumers experience your brand. And I shared a number of those stories. MGM resorts to Lulu Lemon to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and others. If you can get your arms around the spent and get people in the company, the goods and service is they need in record time. They're better position to express the company's vision to help them push towards an incredible iconic customer experiences. And we're just so proud to be ableto power that for this fast growing community of customers around the world, >> such an exciting time. Rob, thank you for having to queue, but inspired 19. It's been great. It's for looking forward to talking with lots more of your of your folks as well as amazing innovators and thinkers like Susie Orman and Deepak Chopra. Wow. Awesome stuff. Thank you. Well, thanks for having us. Thank you. All right. For Rob Bernstein. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube from Cooper Inspired 19. Thanks for watching.