>> 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)

>> 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)

>> Narrator: From the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas Nevada, it's The Cube. Covering Coupa Inspire 2019. Brought to you by Coupa. >> Hey, welcome to The Cube. Lisa Martin on the ground at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas for Coupa Inspire 19. This is a really exciting two day event. We're going to be here covering, talking all about spending smarter. Very pleased to welcome to The Cube for the first time from KPMG, Dipan Karumsi, procurement advisory practice leader. Dipan, welcome to The Cube. >> Thank you very much, glad to be here, appreciate it. >> So this is an interesting event. Coupa in the last few years since becoming a public company really seems to be on this rocket ship. The momentum that CEO Rob Bernshteyn talked about this morning, there's now 1.2 trillion dollars of spend transactions going through the Coupa platform across companies in every industry from manufacturing to health care to retail. Loads of opportunity for businesses of any type to really get that control and visibility on spend. Talk to us about what KPMG is doing with Coupa. You're both a titanium sponsor here at Inspire 19 as well as a partner but give us a little bit of overview of your partnership with Coupa. >> Absolutely, so we've actually been coming to the conference for seven years now, I think since the very beginning and been the top level sponsor since the very beginning so it's been a fantastic relationship where we've helped a number of the customers that they talked about today, a lot of those customers were ours and we've had the opportunity to kind of get them live on the platform and see success by bringing spend through the platform and getting the visibility of those transactions. So we're fortunate enough we have 100 plus clients, globally, that we've been able to bring live on the Coupa platform across 90 plus countries and so we're really excited to be here. >> So some of the things I was reading about Coupa is that a lot of times, in the beginning, last 10 years or so, companies came to them looking for help with procurement or invoices. Now they're able to help companies get that visibility over all spend across procurement, invoices, expenses, travel management, payments. Talk to us about how you help some of those joint customers to really go from that siloed approach, going all right, we've got a few things under control, to getting that visibility because there is a tremendous amount of business impact that can come from getting that visibility into where all of your spend is coming from and where it's going. >> That's right. So I think in the beginning days as you kind of mentioned right, it was important to get the majority of the spend on the platform and so you looked at your indirect spend categories that are most commonly purchased, you get them onto the platform, you start analyzing that, more effective sourcing, drive value out of those categories. And as you look at the different categories that companies are spending in, they're evolving. More services spend, might be different categories in marketing, digital media, et cetera, and so as Coupa has expanded they've focused on some of the other categories and how to bring them in. So they bought companies that focus on contingent labor and those types of things. And so you start bringing all that spend together and all of a sudden you have a very nice pool of data from which you can analyze and from which you can make better decisions upon. So it's going to be a constant kind of proliferation of the tool and it's going to get broader and I think that's fantastic because organizations can see exactly what they're doing in a lot of different areas. >> Wouldn't it be nice if we all had that visibility in our personal lives as well? Well speaking of your relationship, you mentioned this is your seventh year sponsoring Inspire. Let's talk about how the role of procurement is changing, and the role of finance. Going from more tactical to much more strategic. Thinking about some of the disruptors like consumerization. You know, we're all consumers and we have this, we all have Amazon on our phone right, And we have this expectation that in our personal lives we can get anything at any time with the click of a button. And now when consumers are business buyers we want the same thing. Talk to us about what you have seen at KPMG as that procurement role has changed and what makes your implementation with Coupa unique. >> Yeah, that's exactly right, you put it exactly right there. You know, consumers or your employees internal of the organizations, are looking to buy in the way that they buy at home. They're looking to have visibility into when the shipment is, the products are going to arrive, they want to provide ratings as to what they thought of those products, they want to be able to have visibility into what they spent, and in fact where it's going is they want to be alerted when they should be buying something else. I mean, lot of the spend can actually be predicted as to what's going to be happening. And so think about an application that's going to alert you, it's probably about time that you need toner for this printer, or it's probably about time that you need XYZ to come and do this service for you. And so moving to that as you analyze the spend that's going to the platform is exactly what's happening. And I think it makes lives of employees better, easier, and it makes it a little bit more effective to kind of get spend through the application as well. >> When you're talking with customers, whether it's been a man or a woman who's been a CPO for a long time, where are they in terms of being receptive to having these predictive technologies? Is that a big cultural mind shift within whether it's a large manufacturing company or a smaller health care insurance carrier? >> It is, I mean the reality of it is with the data to be predictive there's a lot of things that have to be evaluated in the back. So you have to have clean supplier data, clean spend data, you have different applications that are integrating and you need end to end visibility in order to have a data set that's long enough and accurate enough to be able to predict from. So it's one thing to say okay we're going to go predictive, but it's another thing to be able to have the data to be able to accurately predict. So I think procurement organizations, kind of back to your other question of where are they going, you know historically procurement hasn't been one of the areas that CFOs are the first ones to jump into. And I think what organizations are realizing and was the C-suite is realizing is, this is the one place in the organization where we can see most of our third party spend. And so procurement has to quickly grasp, okay how can I get a handle on that information to be able to make better decisions and so show value to the organization. So that's how procurement's getting into the game, I think that's how they're going to show their value, by making that data set accurate, and that will lead them to kind of that predictive aspect of it. >> So what are those, what's the conversation like in terms of, all right there's many many sources of data, where we all know, you hear all the time data is the new oil, data is gold. It is if you have the ability to, like you said, make sure it's clean, but also be able to extract valuable insights from it faster than your competition. So from an infrastructure perspective, where does KPMG start with implementations with Coupa, are you first doing assessments with customers to understand all of the different data sources, how best to bring them together so that the power of AI can actually be applied to this massive pool of oil? >> That's right. So we start by kind of looking at the target operating model. What is it that the span of control for procurement's going to be? What is it that they want to do, what is it that they have ownership over? Then we identify kind of what are the technologies that are in place to house some of that information to help you make better decisions and to ultimately serve your end customers. And as we identify that architecture of what's going to be needed in the future, that's when we start getting into how we create and develop that oil infrastructure. And so as we look at the gaps in the infrastructure an application like Coupa can plug in with the appropriate procure to pay process, with the contracting process, with sourcing, spend analytics, whatever that may be, and it helps to plug the different gaps that allow you to kind of get all of that data into one place. >> Allowing customers to as Coupa says, spend smarter. I wanted to get your opinion on this BSM category that they are working to develop and lead. Business spend management. You guys recently, KPMG did a study on the future of procurement. Tell us a little bit about some of the interesting insights that came from that study and where you think business spend management is really going to be applicable and a big driver of business value. >> Yeah so, that's great, and I think business spend management, you know it continues to expand. I mean what Coupa's been every year, you've been to these conferences, is continuing to expand their portfolio and the modules that they have in order to kind of attack business spend management. And it's an important factor, a lot of spend happens through procurement and they need to have the application infrastructure to manage that. In the future procurement we talk a little bit about supplier centricity and customer centricity. So how is it that you're being able to work more effectively with your supplier, share information. Can they actually log in to the portal and see what the ratings are on the products that people are buying from them, I mean that's where we're kind of moving to. Customer centricity, giving them that Amazon-like experience so that they can go in on mobile and go in on any which way they want to, buy the things that they want, or be prompted to buy the things that they want. How are you innovating in categories, how are you using external data insights. You know the days of having that 20 year category manager who knows one category, sitting in one place, it's just not possible anymore. There's so much data and information out there you have to be able to leverage all of the external insights. And then of course using the digital platform to bring everything together. And that's where kind of Coupa plays, and the other e-procurement solutions, they're bringing all those insights together, allowing the foundation to be set so that you can execute on the processes that have to happen within it. >> We talk a lot about customer focus, customer centricity, Rob Bernshteyn talked about it this morning. Dig a little bit more into what you talked about with KPMG in terms of supplier centricity and some of the value that all of these suppliers are getting. How is KPMG helping some of these suppliers to really dial up their business, get better insights and really make a bigger impact with what they're delivering? >> Yeah, I mean it's really about visibility into the transactions that are happening and how their clients are using their products or services. So the more you can analyze around spend patterns, about the products that are being purchased, not purchased, the rigor of the catalog environment that's being created for your clients, the more they can analyze around that that allows them to be a little bit more focused in the way that they're dealing with their customers. And so we talk a lot about creating a very content rich environment. I mean if you went to Amazon today and you didn't see a picture, you didn't see ratings, you didn't see a description, would you purchase something? No. And that's what's happening inside organizations. Gone are the days where you have one line item that says this is it, and you don't know what you're buying. And so creating this content rich environment which is allowing and requiring suppliers to get into the environment to create their robust catalogs is really important. And so supplier's going to be a big part of what they're doing in the future to create this kind of appropriate spend management platform where the catalogs are set. >> I'm really getting on board to harness the power of that data. To your point, we have, the consumerization effect is so strong. We have this expectation that we can get anything and one of the things that Coupa was talking about this morning in the general session was not only the data, that they are now harnessing the power for their customers, for their suppliers, but also let's allow companies to go through the Coupa platform and search through software and products and deploy and manage and pay everything through that, bring in that consumerization approach to businesses in any industry. >> That's right. That's every right. So having it in one place makes it a little bit simpler, the visibility's there. I think the other thing that we can see a lot of is just self service. You walk into an airport, you do your own boarding pass. You come out of a parking garage, you pay for your parking and you leave. There's no people involved and frankly consumers like that. So being able to create an environment when you can do self service and things are being pushed to you to make decisions from versus having to go out and do a tremendous amount of research to make decisions is going to be a huge factor. I mean in the area of supplier risk management having bots and things that are mining social media in different areas for what's happening with your supplier so that you can be alerted to an event prior to making a large contractual obligation with them. You know, those are the types of things that we haven't seen in the past which I think we're going to get into now. >> It's so exciting. Dipan, I wish we had more time to get into it but thank you so much for stopping by The Cube and sharing what you guys at KPMG are doing to help customers really extract a tremendous amount of value and spend smarter. We appreciate your time. >> Thank you very much for having me. Appreciate it. >> For Dipan Karumsi, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching The Cube from Coupa Inspire 19. Thanks for watching. (bright music)