Coupa Software (NASDAQ:COUP), a leader in cloud-based spend management, today announced that it has completed its acquisition of Trade Extensions TradeExt AB to make it easier for organisations to reduce supply chain risk, increase profit margins and achieve operational compliance.

Based in Uppsala, Sweden, Trade Extensions offers a strategic sourcing and advanced optimisation platform used by many of the world’s largest brandsto run sourcing projects for the most complex categories - such as transportation and logistics, production planning and supply chain design.

With the addition of Trade Extensions’ industry leading sourcing optimisation capabilities, Coupa can deliver a robust spend management solution for everything from indirect goods and services such as IT hardware and marketing services to complex categories such as direct materials and fresh produce. Organisations can source numerous categories of spend, seamlessly build contracts, manage buying, analyse spending and easily collaborate with global suppliers, ranging in size from independent contractors to multi-national businesses - all on the same unified Coupa platform.

“Our cloud platform has transformed how organisations spend money, as evidenced by the significant and measurable results achieved by our customers. With our acquisition of Trade Extensions and our earlier acquisition of Spend360 for AI based spend classification, we are executing on our vision of a globally networked platform that delivers community intelligence to optimise business spend,” said Rob Bernshteyn, CEO of Coupa. “We’re entering the next chapter of our industry leadership and we look forward to bringing our comprehensive solution to both Coupa and Trade Extensions customers.”

Because Trade Extensions can be configured to collect precise data that organisations need during the request for information (RFx) process, it allows buyers to benefit from the mathematical optimisation that Trade Extensions provides in the analysis phase. Numerous scenarios can be quickly analysed, which allows buyers to ‘play’ with the data and answer countless ‘what if’ questions to find solutions that meet their strategic objectives.

"Coupa's acquisition of Trade Extensions is an inspired combination of brains and brawn. When it comes to the myriad applications of optimisation to improve supply chain performance, Coupa just bought itself the market leader, along with warm introductions to dozens of massive-sized companies that have been quietly using Trade Extensions for years,” said Tom Finn, analyst at Spend Matters. “Beyond having the ability to now source the most strategic areas of client spend, look for enhancements to Coupa Advantage, as the horsepower it just acquired is a dominant trading algorithm that bodes well for network buying."

Trade Extensions users are able to source and allocate the components of a supply chain to deliver an optimum solution when looking at the supply chain as a whole. This approach allows buyers to apply negotiation techniques to incredibly complex sourcing projects involving tens of thousands of items, thousands of suppliers and multiple award criteria. Optimised scenario analysis allows sourcing professionals to make informed decisions and identify the solution that best matches their precise requirements with their suppliers’ expressed capabilities.

“Trade Extensions radically changed the way manufacturers and retailers source critical goods and services. Through the years, our optimised sourcing has become the de facto standard for companies needing true strategic sourcing,” said Garry Mansell, former CEO of Trade Extensions. “Joining Coupa gives us the opportunity to share this innovation with even more forward-thinking companies while offering end-to-end spend management to our existing customers. We are excited to become part of the Coupa family.”

Coupa is not updating its guidance for its fiscal year ending January 31, 2018, which it provided on March 13, 2017.