 Welcome back to the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas. Lisa Martin here at Coupa Inspire 2022 with a couple thousand people here and I got to tell you it's really great to be back in person. Donna, we'll check joins me next. The SVP of product strategy and innovation at Coupa. Donna, welcome to the program. Thank you so much. It is great to be here and it's great to be live again. It is great to be live again. I feel like I'm exhaling for the first time in a long time. I know, it feels just so wonderful. So I want to talk a little bit about you. You've been at Coupa for a long time since it was just a baby startup. A little baby. Basically, and you've also had a lot of leadership roles, product strategy, marketing, customer experience, professional services. I also read that you have 12 software patents. I do. I love that. I know, it's been one of the most amazing things at Coupa which is this ability to be creative and innovate and then get your item patented. It's wonderful. Talk to me about obviously the last two years have been so interesting, shall we say? Sure. And we were talking before we went live that we haven't, the Coupa hasn't been at Coupa Inspire. Inspire hasn't happened since 2019. And I thought, wow, that's almost three years ago. Talk to me about the last 10 years at Coupa and the massive acceleration. I'm, Rob was saying this morning in the keynote, 3.3 trillion under spend, under management. Almost at a trillion a year run rate. Yeah. Huge growth. The numbers have just started to really become a flywheel, right? More customers, more spend. And really now, having this big data repository of 3.3 trillion dollars and the ability to apply AI to that data. But it really has been a journey. When I joined about 11 years ago now, we had this vision. The vision was always a data-centric model where we could apply AI to that data and create intelligence. And now we're finally at a volume of data where we can anonymize the data and we can create insights at a level that we just were not able to do 10 years ago. One of the things that we've learned, I think, fairly recently, is that every company has to be a data company, regardless of industry. Even I think about that, like, my grocery store has to be a data company. Sure. There's no more... It'd be nice if we had a data strategy, or it'd be nice if we actually could glean insights from our data. That's table stakes, that's business critical, that's differentiating. Absolutely. And I think what's really interesting in enterprise software is that as a SaaS provider, although we may host the systems, we don't actually own our customers' data. We need to actually have permissioned usage of the data. And that was one of the things that Kupa did very early on, about 10 years ago, where we started working with our customers and really building that permissioned use into the contracts themselves. And that has really created now this motion of having data that we can now consume and use, where a lot of businesses in enterprise software had not really thought about the notion of permissioned use and having data available to them. Well, that's the power of the community, right? Absolutely. And that's one of the things that clearly sets Kupa apart from its competition. Yes, indeed. We have spent so many years on creating this model of how does the community, and how does community.ai help each individual customer become more efficient, save more, and also do good for the planet in a way that has just never been able to do if that company was doing it alone by themselves. Speaking of good for the planet, let's talk about ESG, your customer conversations. ESG is broad. How are customers approaching the topic of it to bring it in as a strategic initiative? You know, I think this is a really great question. So what happened about a few years ago is our customers sat down with us. And we said to ourselves, if we were going to make every dollar more sustainable, more inclusive that we're spending, what would we need to do? What would be the places within a spend function that you could improve the outcome of that dollar to be more sustainable and inclusive? And we broke it down into so many different features. And over the last three years, we've delivered over 80 different features now available in our BSM, Sustainable BSM Toolkit, that our customers can configure Koopa to impact their ESG goals positively. So BSM can be a facilitator of ESG or an accelerator? Definitely an accelerator. And one of the things we're trying to do is democratize the ability to do good, right? So oftentimes larger organizations are able to invest people into these problems. Well, now smaller and smaller organizations are expected to comply with government regulations. How do these businesses do it? They can do it with technology like Koopa. Got it, okay. One of the things I was looking at in my prep for the event was a recent survey that Koopa did just in February, it's just a couple of months ago, 800 decision makers who either have overview or responsibility for the supply chain and businesses with over a thousand employees. And this was global. What are some of the improvements that businesses, what did you find that they want to make with respect to ESG? You know, I think there was a really great survey that showed businesses have the intent. They want to do good, but the problem is the execution of it. How do they actually make it happen? And technology systems have largely failed them or have only looked at a part of the problem without looking at the whole problem. I can give you an example. Yeah, please do. So in scope three emissions, which is on everyone's mind right now, how are we going to comply with scope three emissions? At first on the surface, it looks like a reporting problem. Oh, I'll just create a report. But the real problem is data related. The data itself that these organizations have on what they purchased and who they purchased it from is terrible. And so if your data is bad, your report to the government is going to be terrible. So you have to look at the problem holistically, solving the data problem before you get to the reporting problem. And that's what CUPA really specializes on. One of the things I was also looking at in the survey was from an overall theme perspective that the availability and reliability of crucial supply chain data is preventing organizations from operationalizing their corporate purpose with respect to ESG. Will CUPA solve that problem? Absolutely. Talk to me about that. Yeah, so let's talk about things like third party risk management when you are working in a supply chain. You need to know who your suppliers are, not just your suppliers, but their suppliers as well. Tier two, tier three, tier four, or even beyond even. And this is everything from anti bribery and anti corruption to infosec and GDPR and so many different government regulations on knowing who you're doing business with. And CUPA solves that problem of collecting that data from your third parties and then continually monitoring it and passing it into the different systems within your spend processes in order to make sure that the person that is making a decision has the data at their fingertips. That's critical. And one of the things we've learned in the last two years is that everybody wants things now instantaneously in real time, it's no longer, oh, that's great to have that. No, as a consumer I want that and business I want that. Every company has to be a data company. But if organizations can't be able to extract insights from that data and make smart decisions on it in real time, they're going to be out of business. Absolutely. The ability to be able to process data at the time you're making a decision, the best data possible at that moment is critical in order for these companies. Really, it's an ability for this company to thrive and even survive. Absolutely. Nobody's going to want, one thing I think we know, nobody's going to want less data more slowly as time goes on. It's always going to be more data faster, faster, fastest. Absolutely. And that's why this model at Koopa has really been formulated over the last 12 years of how do we collect the data across our customer community? How do we pull it together, normalize it, aggregate it, anonymize it and create insights that are so powerful. Like what we're just announcing now is our ocean freight pricing index. Talk to me about that. So we've collected all of the data from our customers that are sourcing ocean freight and we're taking that data and we're creating a market index for the pricing of ocean freight. So now within Koopa, you can actually see what's happening with the price of ocean freight and we're going to continue to add more and more services as more data gets processed in Koopa. Talk to me about the customer influence in your role. You talk with customers a lot. You used to be on the road a lot. Obviously that's changed. Hopefully that's coming back. But let's talk about one of the things I always know when I come to Inspire, I always know I'm going to see a lot of customer logos. I'm going to see a lot and on theCUBE here from the voice of Koopa's customer. Talk to me about some of the influence that your customers have been able to have in the last two years alone. Absolutely. So our philosophy at Koopa's, none of us is as smart as all of us. And it really is the DNA of this company, the heart of the company. So when the pandemic hit, we just really said to ourselves, okay, how do we continue that collaboration and now a digital world? And that's what we did. We just pivoted really fast into a digital world, but the same volume, the same collaboration, the same conversations were happening with our customer community. And in the last year alone, we probably met over 400 customers. Over 90% of the features we delivered had customer input into those features. And the model continues around our customers collaborating with us via the digital channels. And our product owners really working with them as a co-innovation team and not as a product in an ivory tower somewhere. I like the co-innovation kind of team part, but it's really what you're describing as that flywheel that you mentioned a few minutes ago that's really always been there at Koopa for a very, very long time. And it's just getting faster and more efficient and I would say in a nerdy way, more data driven. More data driven. Data, data, data. I will talk data all day long. It's just wonderful. Even this ocean freight thing, I'll tell everyone 10 years ago, this was the dream, to have enough data to be able to create these types of supply chain insights that are just unparalleled. And now as the data continues to increase, the next year's insights in the year after are going to just keep improving because as the data increases, the insights get better in different categories, different ways. So when you're in those customer conversations with customers who may be prospects, I'll say who aren't yet Koopa customers who say, Donna, we've got a huge data problem. Where do they start? How do you advise them to be able to overcome that so they can use the data, glean the insights in real time and be competitive? You know, the first thing I always say to our customers or prospective customers is start the journey and have conversations with Koopa as a partner and not as a vendor. The more that we can work together and say help us understand your technology architecture, help us understand your pain points, where are the parts of your business that are critically damaged, that need us to prioritize? And then let us have a discussion for you as a company that we can make recommendations to you based on other customers that have been like you and have those same pain points and then lay it out from that point of view. But it's hard when it's a very classic old model of we're procurement and you're a vendor and we're going to silo it because what we see is a lot of, well, this is how we used to do it. So we're only asking you questions around how we used to do it and now how the rest of the, not about how the rest of the community is doing it. So my advice would really be open up the doors, have a conversation, start as a partner and then let's figure it out from there. Well, one of the things that came across in Rob's keynote this morning was about Koopa, we got to get rid of the silos. Every organization and every industry cannot operate in a silo. And even Barbara Corcoran's keynote when she was talking about some of the best ideas. In fact, I think I saw a tweet from her the other day that said she doesn't think she's ever had a really great idea. They've always come from basically collaborating within a group, so not in a silo. Absolutely, collaboration is key in everything we do. None of us is as smart as all of us and it truly is a key point. In technology, these silos that are happening in business that prevents the risk from properly be operationalized. So for example, the risk team may be aware that there is a supplier that has now gone onto a government watch list. But the payments team is not aware. So the payments team is still issuing payments to that vendor or new orders are going to that vendor or sourcing events. Koopa brings those silos together and says instead we're going to employ what we call sweet synergy and we're going to stop the transactions when the risk is increased. Route it to the risk team for review before the money goes out the door. And how does, I love sweet synergy. How does that resonate? Who are you talking to within customers? Are you talking to the C-suite? How does sweet synergy resonate that far up the stack? Because the concept is clear. Yeah, it's about the collaboration for more value and protecting the brand. The people we speak to are generally the CFO, the CPO, the Chief Procurement Officer and the CIO. Those are generally who we speak to, but increasingly we see the Chief Sustainability Officer, the Chief Diversity Officer. And especially from a notion of how do I not just report on my data? How do I improve it? How do I impact diversity by helping the person making a spend decision? Giving them diverse options at the time they're doing that spend decision. Instead of just reporting on it, grow it. Grow it, act on it, take the insights and actually make smart decisions faster. Absolutely, and before the money goes out the door, once the money goes out the door, you cannot influence it to be going to a diverse supplier. It's already done. Right, yeah. So I know we're only on day one here. Last question for you is, what are, it's a great turnout, all the people behind us, it's great to hear that buzz of a conference environment once again. What are some of the things that you've heard today that really excite you about the direction that Coop is going in? I think for me it all started today and yesterday, yesterday, we had our community advisory boards, we had hundreds of customers that were meeting with us and it was just a sense of co-innovation being alive and well. So many customers. Today I sat next to ADM, one of our customers and they're working with us on supply chain collaboration and the next generation of supply chain collaboration. And it was just so wonderful to finally meet the people that we've been working with for so long in a digital world. That's right. It's always nice when you look at badges. I know you, I've been talking to you on video conferencing for two years. You're taller than I thought you were. Exactly. I don't get that. I don't get that you're taller than I thought. Really, are you guys all? I don't get the taller. No, I'm pretty smart. Donna, it's been great having you on the program, talking about the strategy, the innovation, the direction Coop is going and what you've witnessed, the evolution of it in the last 10 years. We congratulate you on your success and we just look forward to seeing Coopa continue to evolve and mature. Thank you so much. It was wonderful to sit down with you today. Excellent. Good. I enjoyed it too. For Donna Wilczak, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of Coopa Inspire 22 from Las Vegas. Thanks for watching.