 Good afternoon from Las Vegas, Lisa Martin, not the Cosmopolitan. Here on day two of the CUBE's coverage of CUPA Inspire 2022, I'm excited to be joined by one of CUPA's many successful customers. Jaime Robles joins me, the Chief Procurement Officer at KC's General Storage. You're going to be talking about building a technology hub with source to pay and interconnecting ecosystem platforms. Welcome Jaime. Thank you Lisa, it's a pleasure to be here today and this week hearing about CUPA and all the fabulous things that we can do around technology. CUPA is amazing in terms of their innovation, I don't know if you had a chance to see the keynote this morning, but the slides of that Raja show with just the arrow going up and to the right. Talk to us a little bit about KC's General Storage. This is the US's fourth largest convenience store retailer, but just for the audience who may not know, give us a background. So just a little bit about KC. So KC's is, as you said, one of the largest convenience store chains out there. We've got more than 2,500 locations in 16 states in the Midwest in the US and just out of curiosity, we are the fifth largest pizza company as well. Is that right? We make a great pizza and our guests love it. So we are in two business, we are in a convenience store, we are in fuel and also we are in the food business because we got a kitchen in the inside every single store that we got out there. So for us has been a fabulous journey with procurement because we came to the company, joined the company two years ago in the middle of pandemic and the whole idea was to build the procurement function from the ground up. KC's didn't have a formal procurement function. So pretty much all the spend was done by the functions, by themselves, but no formal process, no technology, no platforms, nothing, very old school. And we came here to build the foundation and build, as I call it, a procurement tech house. A procurement tech house, so talk to me. And so I know that KC's goes jades back to 1959 and what you described sounds like a lot of paper-based manual processes, technology really wasn't in the mix. Is that what attracted you to take the role going? I want to bring technology and build this powerhouse. Yes, that was amazing. So over my career I've been doing this for several companies, such as in the past, in Philips, GE, and recently with Walmart. And then what attracted me for this opportunity was, well, everything is paper, everything is manual. There's nothing digital in this company. There's no team, there's no sourcing, no process, no policies. It's like building everything from the ground up. So it was very attractive. It's huge opportunities for the company and we were going through this massive transformation to digitize the company all across the operations. So procurement wasn't the core of those strategies for the CEO of the company. And that's what the opportunity lies. It was like, how do we move from manual transactions to all this digital world and where now everything is frictionless that we move from 80%, 85% that it was all manual. Now we are plus 65%, everything is digital now in the company and just within one year of moving all over. So the savings, the cost, the leakage, all the waste on the processes that we have is just amazing after one year. Sounds like the company had a cloud of digitization strategy brought you on board to help make that a reality for procurement. So the appetite was there at Casey's from a cultural perspective, it wasn't like battling uphill to get folks to go, let go of the paper, let's go to Kuba. That's total, that's the truth. So it was the whole digital transformation for the company, not only on the procurement, span side, but all the processes in the company. So as COVID hit or stores and the whole world, right? So we have to move into more digital ordering, into more digital transaction, into more how my guests can interact with my stores without going to the stores, how they can order from the app, how they can get their food directly to their house and all the stuff. And procurement was right there hand to hand as part of those strategies from the very beginning. And we were, I would say very lucky to be on time to make all those digital transformations for the company. So when the COVID really hit, we were ready and prepared to take over. That's good, being ready and prepared, oh my gosh. Some of the few people I've talked to. Talk to me about the core technology requirements that you had for the right BSM solution and why Kuba ticked all those boxes. Yeah, so for us it was one of the most important ones is, as I said, bring the digital across the whole source to pay. Another big element for us it was how do we bring transparency into the process? How do we bring transparency on how much we pay? How do we spend our money? Which areas, which categories? How do we build a model in cases that I call is a self-service model? And this self-service model is, I put the technology in its core, which is Kuba, and I give my users and my internal stakeholders all the power to take those decisions. So now they can see how much they spend in different categories with different suppliers for the preferred vendors. What type of contracts do we have? And how do we manage that spend versus their budgets as well? They have all that ability to take those decisions and they don't need a procurement team. As I like to call in my, a couple speaker notes during this week, we like to make procurement invisible. We are in the back, they don't see us and they got all the power to use the technology out there to do the job for us. Transparent but empowered at the same time. Exactly, exactly. That's what we want moving forward for this company and I believe that is the vision that we got in the procurement 2.0. Procurement 2.0, talk to me about some of the solutions that you implemented. You talked about source to pay, but give us kind of an idea if you double click on that and then we'll kind of unpack what you talked about on your sessions. Yeah, pretty much for Coupa, we implemented the whole source to pay. So from sourcing, procurement, invoicing and payment. So we implement all that at the core of the Coupa. I believe in an ecosystem of procurement technologies that are interconnected with Coupa to interact for other needs like counter-life cycle management, tailspin management, TNE, and some others that we're going after like now for us is going after supplier data hop, which for us is very important also to get it right. And that procurement ecosystem of different technologies connected is going to give us the ability to move faster, to be more lean and to have better data and technology accessible for the team that is in charge of procurement to operate under that environment. You mentioned a few minutes ago that when the pandemic hit, Casey's was ready from a digital perspective. I imagine that was a huge advantage going into such unknown times that we're still kind of in. Well, when I said ready, it's like we were ready to go and we were in the flying, implementing everything. And what the pandemic did is to accelerate all this. So as many companies did, we were already in the process of going this direction. And when the pandemic start hitting, we accelerate everything and we made it happen. So we went live in three, four months and a year later, we were completely live since we joined the company and we were starting all this pain coming towards. So 18 months later, we are pretty much hitting best in class levels in terms of transactional, operational, tactical, savings, visibility, span, transparency, risk management. Now we're going to take it to the next level on the maturity. It's like, how do we go for ESG? How do we go for, you know, supply diversity? How do we manage risk management, right? And all those things. Right. You had a couple of presentations here at Inspire. Talk to me about those and some of the top takeaways that the audience gleaned from you. Yeah, one of the most important ones yesterday was about how to build a procurement organization from the ground up or how to go through a digital transformation in procurement. That is something that has been on the topic on procurement community for years now. Everybody talks about procurement transformation, et cetera. And I just showed to them a journey in the companies that I've been doing this for the last two decades across the world in many different countries and the things that work and the things that doesn't work really and how they need to build for the future of procurement, a technology procurement house on the core. And that's how you operate it today. Yeah, and for us, our decision was Coupa. And then on top of that, you need to build a procurement ops model, right? How you want to operate your procurement operating model. So it's centralized, decentralized, a hybrid model. And it all depends about the type of company, the type of industry you are, how mature is your organization, et cetera. And another big, big piece element in all your strategy is how you're going to serve your customers, right? What type of service model do you have in place? If you're going to be like full service mode, or you're going to be in a strategic direction, or you're going to be a self-service mode. And pretty much what we have chosen as the best way to move forward in the future is, let's put the technology in the middle. Let's give the support our users need, but let them be self-service. And let's make our job invisible in the back where we have all these sourcing events, all these beautiful negotiations, all these great deals, contracts, et cetera. So by the time they use the technology, they know where to buy, how to buy, what's the right level, how to make it happen. And they don't need us, they can do it by their own. And they've got that visibility that before it sounds like they didn't have it at all. Exactly, so now we know how much we spend, where do we spend it, where are the opportunities, where are some gaps that we can go after as well. And I think one of the most important aspects in these transformations that many of my colleagues are going through is, then you have a model that you can repeat year over year and evolve with the company. So it's agile and it's flexible because companies keep evolving. You buy business, you sell business, you acquire, you expand, you grow. And how that model is going to shape around. So by the time you're done, it's not obsolete. So technology is going to keep evolving with your model. And that for me is the key part. Do you feel like this is a marketing term future proof? And it always is one of those things that, well what does that actually really mean? Do you feel though that what you've put in place is future proof that it's going to be able to grow and scale as the company changes? Totally, totally because as I said before, we put the technology on the core. And for us, having that technology on the core and plugging different technologies around that and sourcing around that with an amazing sourcing team is going to evolve whatever the company needs. If we expand into different regions, we're ready. If we expand into different business types, we're ready. I believe what we need to keep evolving as well is there will be new emerging technologies. There's going to be way more AI. There's going to be way more machine learning. It's going to be more predictive analytics sourcing stuff. How do we keep pulling those technologies into our platforms to keep giving us that advantage and that edge to the market? I think we have the model and I think this is one of the most advanced procurement functions that I've seen in the industries around. And it sounds like you designed and deployed it really quickly, especially during a global crisis. Yeah, we are disruptors by nature. We love change, we love speed and that is, I will say my procurement brand. We make it happen and we make it fast. That's how we do it. We keep momentum. That's incredibly important. I mean, one of the things that we've learned many things the last two years is that access to real-time data, a couple things, access to real-time data is no longer a nice to have. It's absolutely business critical. The patience of many people, including myself, was quite thin the last two years. But also, every company has to be a data company. Keysies has to be a data company. If I have the ability to order from my app or order things, I want them to know what I'm here for, what I ordered before, make my visit personalized, efficient, easy. So that data strategy, having that data at the core is nowadays you have to have it. It is essential. We're building a data hub for the company completely showing us all that information as you can imagine being in those three business on the food industry, on the retail convenience store and in the fuel. So data for us is our living breath every single day. And not only having the data now is like what type of decisions we're taking with all this data and how fast we are adapting to all that in pricing and cost and margin and availability and inventory and logistics and transportation and your whole supply chain. So that is extremely important for us. Not only having the data, but what kind of decisions we're taking with the data and everything starts with the transparency, right? Whenever you see it, you act. You should be able to act. But to your point, you have to have that visibility. You have to be able to see it and act on it. Talk to me about what it's like being a Koopa customer. I know how I've been to many inspires and I always love seeing all the customer success stories everywhere across industries. What's it like being a Koopa customer in terms of having the ability to influence, say the roadmap? Is that something that you're able to work on in partnership with Raj's team? Yeah, that's great. So Koopa has been a great company to work with and I know them for some years now. And not only they've been able to support or vision of what we're trying to build, but at the same time they're taking many of our feedback to make Koopa better in many of the different models. Listen, Koopa's not perfect, right? So I don't think any tool out there is going to be perfect. But being in so many different industries and with so many opportunities in different areas, they've been able to take our feedback and make those improvements for ourselves. We have so many conversations with the Koopa product development team when we were going through the transformation asking them for things that we thought it was very valuable to have in the tool that it was in our eyes, no brainer. And they were very fast to react and make the change. And we are, I think, one of the most lousy customers, guilty as charged about that, but we just wanted to make it better because it's in benefit of the whole community. Everything that we've been talking this week about community AI, it's amazing. All the things that we're sharing during this week, all the ideas that we are getting about things that we can do, that's amazing. That's the value. It's huge value and that's that sort of flywheel of the community and the power and the insights. Last question for you. You talk to peers or when you talk to peers who are maybe starting their procurement digitization journey, what advice do you give them? Don't take a no as an answer. Make it happen. Own it, own it. I think you need to have a vision, you need to put a strategy in place, you need to build a business case, you need to earn your seat at the table at the C suite, but you need to own it. You can let the IT function, finance community to own and decide how you want to operate and how you want to move your function as procurement or build, how you operate. You need to own it and you need to build a business case and you need to make it happen. You need to, yeah, to struggle with that, but if you're a hustler as we are in cases, we are disruptors and if you don't disrupt, it's not going to happen. I completely agree. Own it, make it happen. Jaime, great to have you on the program. Thanks so much. Thanks for sharing what Casey's is doing, how you're really leading the charge and how you owned it and made it happen. That's awesome. Thank you, Lisa. Thank you for being here. Thanks. For Jaime Robles, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage day two, Coupa Inspire 22 from Las Vegas. Join me with my next guest coming up shortly.