How Coupa Leverages SaaS Management to Fuel Rapid Growth

Challenge 1

Get Complete SaaS Visibility and Ensure Governance

Zylo’s Discovery Engine helped identify SaaS applications that IT was unaware of, shining a light on what lurks in Shadow IT. They found that there were several instances of redundant applications, tools that served the same function. Coupa found that they had multiple project management tools. Asana was a project management tool brought in by marketing and living in Shadow IT.

Armed with this data, IT was able to vet the project management applications to ensure governance and name Asana as a preferred project management tool. Collaborating across teams, Marketing got the tool they needed to do their jobs more effectively, IT ensured security protocols and Procurement negotiated enterprise pricing, lowering the per-user cost.

Challenge 2

Reduce Redundant Applications

As Coupa acquired companies and applications, the number of SaaS applications and spending grew rapidly. IT and Procurement partnered on a holistic approach of SaaS Management between Coupa and each acquired company. They used Zylo to understand what applications they had across the shared portfolios and how much each application was being used. This knowledge unleashed collaboration among IT, procurement, finance, and the M&A teams.

At its peak, Coupa had more than 600 SaaS applications, including those from LlamaSoft, one of the companies they acquired. Working together, IT and Procurement were able to reduce the number of applications to 400.

Challenge 3

Optimize SaaS Spend

The Coupa team was also able to leverage their combined buying power to lower the cost per user for SaaS applications 9-30%! 

When it came time to renew their development and collaboration tool, Coupa leveraged usage data from Zylo in their negotiations. Using these insights, IT and procurement were able to partner and save 20% on their renewal. When it was time to renew again, the teams didn’t think additional savings were possible. But IT and Procurement continued to partner and, using insights from Zylo, were able to shave an additional 17% at their most recent renewal.

Challenge 4

Governance and Efficiency

For Coupa, SaaS Management is not just about spend management, nor is it a “once and done” thing, especially with acquisitions and ongoing SaaS renewals. “Spend management is not just about reducing spend,” Coupa CIO Eric Tan shared. “It’s about ensuring governance and creating efficiency.”