Coupa Software, a leader in cloud-based spend management solutions, today announced Coupa Release 16 (R16), its third major cloud platform update of the year. R16 delivers better visibility into the operations and business value of customer spend management initiatives, increases collaboration, and adds new capabilities across the entire Coupa platform from expense management to sourcing, to e-invoicing, and more.

“We are pleased to see this latest update, Release 16, and we look forward to using it in production within the next few weeks,” said Mike van Gerven, head of procurement and logistics EMEA at NEC Europe. “We look to Coupa to continually innovate their cloud platform.”

As with every Coupa platform update, R16 was designed with a collaborative and innovative approach that involved customer ideas and feedback through the active Coupa Community and Coupa Advisory Boards. R16 was rolled out four months after Coupa R15 in May 2016.

“True cloud software companies have a proven ability to innovate rapidly using customer feedback and market input,” said Jason Busch, founder and head of strategy at Spend Matters. “By our estimates, Coupa’s rate of software development is at least three times as fast as typical competitors.”

Some of the new features of the R16 platform update include:

• Act As User Visibility - one of the most difficult aspects of troubleshooting is to understand what is going on from another user’s perspective. Administrators may be left having to call a user and ask for a walk-through of the issue. Now, authorized Coupa system administrators can act as another user directly, making troubleshooting and testing easier and faster.
• “At Mention” User Collaboration - collaboration can often be difficult within enterprises. Coupa makes collaboration easier by now letting end users invite a colleague to review a request simply by typing the “@” symbol and the user’s name.
• Success Metrics Dashboards - embedded dashboards that pull together operating information with business key performance indicators (KPI) to monitor success against their business goals. Each KPI is automatically calculated and gives the ability to drill down into underlying operational data across transactions and suppliers.
• Strategic Sourcing Dashboard - one of the biggest challenges in Sourcing has always been the gap between negotiated savings and realized savings. When this gap is significant, money is left on the table and the value of the sourcing effort may be called into question. Now, organizations can monitor the effectiveness of their sourcing efforts, including how off-contract spend may reduce the impact of sourcing in any category.

R16 also adds numerous features across the cloud platform in areas including:

• E-Invoicing - Enhanced compliance templates for Germany and Netherlands
• Analytics - New management span of control reporting
• Platform - Increased globalization of catalog item data
• Supplier Information Management - Easily request new suppliers across the platform

“We’re proud to deliver our third release of the year as our customers rely on us for continual innovation in a predictable model that improves business value,” said Rob Bernshteyn, CEO of Coupa. “R16 helps our customers see the value their Coupa spend management initiatives are delivering, improves visibility into the user experience, and increases collaboration throughout the enterprise.”