 From London, England, it's theCUBE, covering Coupa Inspire 19, EMEA. Brought to you by Coupa. Hey, welcome to theCUBE. Lisa Martin on the ground in London at Coupa Inspire. Because I'm in the UK, I have to say, you know of Sting, right? Well, guess who's here? Somebody cool enough to go by one name. It's Chandar, the CMO at Coupa. Welcome back. Great, Lisa, it's great to be here. So this morning kicked off with Rob's talk all about community. One of the interesting things about Coupa is this community that you guys have built. Talk to me about, I know $1.3 trillion of spend is going through the Coupa platform, the community. Talk to me about how you've cultivated this community. Yeah, it's a great question. Now, if you take a step back, you know, people don't buy features. People buy tribal feelings. And if you look at like, you know, if you look at a product like Harley Davidson, you know, anybody can go buy any bike, but people are not buying the features. They're buying the tribal feeling of being part of that community. If you look at a product like Peloton, you know, people can go buy, who have any stationary bike or any workout bike today, but they want to be part of that community. And as my wife tells me, Sephora, right? I don't have a lot of experience with that. She's right. She is, okay, great. Thanks for the endorsement there. But again, it is about being part of the community and people like that and stuff. And that's what we're doing is, it's not the features or the capability, it's the community, the tribal feeling. And that's what Rob was talking about, the inspirational attributes of these different people that are part of this community and how we are building this community by showcasing the great leaders and their attributes and how they're transforming change in their organizations. And that's what we're creating in this conference, the feeling, the hashtag emotion of I want to be part of this cool club. And that's what we're doing. We know a lot of companies talk about customer first, customer centricity. The community here is really helping Kupa innovate on its own technology. Talk to me about some of the things that, since we last spoke a few months ago, that have been inspired by the voice of the community. Yeah, so there is this concept of co-creation that Rob talked about today with our community and a lot of the community is inspired by the community and it's for the community. And we have a number of innovations, AD plus innovations that have been inspired in the last one year by the community. And even a concept like Source Together that Rob talked about and the idea of Source Together is how can we come together as one community and drive the best negotiated savings together with a supplier. This is an idea that's been co-created with the community. So there's a number of different things. You look at community intelligence, Rob talked about commodity insights, as well as a number of other capabilities that we are showcasing today has been driven, co-created, inspired by the community. And that's what great, you want to set the innovation agenda for the industry by having this community inspire us. In fact, we had our customer advisory board in every conference that is happening to us and that's what drives us to a lot of the innovation that we do today. Speaking of customers, Rob shared a lot of examples during his keynote this morning. I lost count of how many of your Coupa spend setters were mentioned, other customers all with very strong business, measurable business outcomes. I know tomorrow in your keynote, you're going to be talking with a number of customers. But some of the things that are interesting about what Rob shared is these are examples that aren't just about refining procurement and reducing spend and it's much more transformative. Give me some of your favorite examples of where this is beyond improving procurement. Yeah, it's a great question. It's a great question. And we have a number of stories. For example, tomorrow in my keynote, I'm going to be talking about storytelling. I'm going to be talking about how we can inspire the storytelling, how can we inspire the community with storytelling. And great storytelling starts with great storytellers. And these spend setters, and we can see them in the hallways here, we've profiled about 15 of them. And they're all great storytellers for one reason. They have great transformative stories in businessmen management. But what makes them a great storytellers is they're telling a story beyond the boundaries of businessmen management. Let me get a couple of examples, right? So one story that I'll highlight tomorrow is about Yarko, the CPU of Talia. Now, I don't know if we know Talia, but 60% of the world's internet traffic goes through Talia. 60%. 60%. So if you're every day morning, checkinoutcooper.com that we all do. Every day. Or looking at some less popular sites like Facebook or LinkedIn or anything else. You're probably on the Talia network, especially in this part of the world, right? And their challenge, their businessmen management challenges, they're pretty fragmented across the Nordics and the Baltics and other regions. And now with Yarko, he's a strategic crusader, not a hired gun, but more of a driven crusader was coming, transformed the sourcing function, made it more strategic, consolidated seven systems into one system with Cooper, and had 20,000 employees using that, as well as all the different people for sourcing so that they get the global benefits of scale across the regions. Now, that's a great businessmen management story. But what makes him a great storyteller, he's telling a story beyond the boundaries of businessmen management, because he's not talking about savings attainability, he's talking about environmental sustainability. And the story he talks about is what their initiative at a board level is, zero emission and zero waste by 2030, and how the work that his team is doing is directly impacting that board level initiative on how they're driving a communication strategy across the supplier base to get their environmental plans into the Talia's operations, and how he measures plans and progress of every supplier in their CO2 emission, and how that's going to be an explicit pause on how they work with the suppliers, and how he's a trusted advisor that he is actually challenging everybody to rethink this whole idea of source to pay. So that is telling a boundary beyond the boundaries of businessmen management, it's telling a story. So that's one example, right? Is that a gentleman who's in procurement and finance within that organization? He's a CPO. That is having an impact on the sustainability footprint of the company. That's right. So directly associating with the initiative at a board level, right? So he shifted it, by shifting the storytelling from talking about savings attainability to environmental sustainability, he shifted the perception of the organization from something that's operational to something that's very strategic in the organization. So that's one good storytelling. The other one I'll highlight as an example is Mateo at Global Fund. Now, the Global Fund is the world's largest financer of fighting malaria, AIDS, HIV in 100 plus countries. They disperse $4 billion every year for that. And they have this product called Wombo.org, it's powered by Koopa, that Mateo and his team are doing. So he could tell a great businessman management story. You can say, you know, I've driven distilled transformation, I've done 99% of my POs are electronic, and I've come to this new age of where, you know, on-contract spend is being done, et cetera. Now, what makes him a great storyteller? He's telling that story beyond the boundaries of BSM again. He's talking about a story of how this, the work that his team is doing is directly impacting saving 32 million lives. How they're treating millions of people to get the right treatment for HIV. How pregnant mothers go on HIV, to get the right treatment on time so that the babies don't get infected with HIV, and how they're distributing hundreds of millions of mosquitoes throughout the world for preventing malaria through this Wombo tool that's powered by Koopa to get the right medication on time. So that's millions and millions of lives, but the speed and ease of every single medication to get there is an impact on the life of that person. And that's the story he's telling. This is so interesting because it's so common for businesses to tell the common success story. And a lot of what Koopa shares with customers holding those big white cards with big numbers of what they're saving are very impactful. What was the idea behind the Spend Center's program? Because when I was reading a few of them in preparation to come here, it seemed like it was a little bit more about the person and how that individual has facilitated transformation. Tell me about the concept. It's a great point. If there's two components to it, right? One is empirical, two is emotive. And if you look at both concepts, one is the empirical value that, yes, ultimately Koopa is about driving value. And that has to be as a company, as a capability of driving value to our customers. And that's the empirical value of you have driven so much savings, so much percentage of Spend, and millions of dollars, billions of dollars savings, et cetera. Procter and Gamble, for example, 2.5 billion dollars in savings. That's the empirical value. It's very clear that's the value. But behind that is a person. And that is the emotive story of what is that person? What is the personal story? What have they gone through in their life? What's their nurture and nature? And how that's influenced them, that's made them into the great leader today. And that's the emotive stories we're trying to also tell on the Spendsetter side. So there's the value side of the story, and then there is the emotive side of the story. And the Spendsetter.com is purely on telling the human stories, because behind every purchase order is a person, and we're telling the story of that person. So as we look at the changing role of the chief procurement officer, the changing role of finance decision makers, not just here in the UK, and I know Koopa recently did a study that showed that 96% of UK financial decision makers said, hey, I don't have complete visibility over all my spend, so big opportunity there. But even from a transformation perspective, the Spendsetter's examples, how is that showing that Koopa can fundamentally help a business, not just change procurement, but have such wider, wide lasting impacts? Yeah, I think ultimately, if you look at procurement, for it to go as it's going from operation to strategic, it is getting that seat at the table. And getting that seat at the table in any executive discussion is about first aligning to some strategic initiative that is important at that executive table. So more as we align these value stories and the value that procurement is driving to these strategic initiatives that are important at the board level, at the executive level, the more the profile and the more the RESPCT. So you like to say, and get that seat at the table, and that's what this whole Spendsetter's program is aiming to do is, A, showcase the personal heroes, and B, showcase how they're telling stories that align to bigger level initiatives that's getting them to elevate their position and get that seat at the table. And that's what the plan is there. So lots of growth, second quarter results, I was taking a look at those revenues up, billings are up, very high renewal rates. So from a customer satisfaction perspective, the data is there to show that Coupa is going in the right direction. From your perspective, how influential are your existing, your incumbent customers in helping prospective customers evaluate Coupa and go, this is the right decision for us? It's a great question. I say we live in a peer-bound world, where it's really, more and more, first of all, 80 to 90% of buyers' journeys are self-directed because buyers are more powerful than ever before. And second of all, in anything we do within our consumer, in the personal lives, as well as business decisions, we rely more on peers and people we trust to help us make those decisions. From that perspective, our best sellers, the best sellers we have in this conference are our customers. I just came from an executive luncheon where we had 50% of the room was customers and 50% of the room was prospects. And we had our best sellers, not our salespeople, our customers talking to the prospects in real, authentic conversations of what's value, what's their journey, what did they struggle with, and what are the lessons learned, and how did they get there? And those are really meaningful interactions that ultimately is going to make a prospect, influence a prospect on what decision they have to make. Right? So that's very, very important from us and providing a platform for this authentic dialogue and this authentic interactions, right? That's important for us. And also I think ultimately in a SaaS business, the true measurement of success, I say is two things, right? One is what I call lifetime value, and two is the number of brand advocates. So the idea that if someone is staying with you longer and giving you lifetime value and is shouting from the rooftop that I really love my interaction with this brand, then invariably you're driving value to them in a long-term way. And that's really the true measure of success and that's what excites us from our perspective. And is the foundation of that trust? The foundation of that is two things. It's trust based on value, right? And you've got to deliver value. And Ram has a great line where he talks about it is not about customer satisfaction, it's about customer success. Because many times the customer may be satisfied, may not really know what their success metrics really mean, but it's not about sometimes the customer may not be satisfied, but really be successful because you're driving the true metrics what is important to the customer. So once you get the value delivered and do it in an open, authentic way, then in that case, there's trust that build and based on that trust, you earn that trust and that becomes the foundation of the lifetime value. We were talking about, well, Rachel Botsman was talking about the importance of a brand, any brand earning trust. I loved how she gave that example in her keynote where she showed three brand logos, Uber, Facebook, and Amazon and said, trust is so contextual and so subjective, but clap for which brand you trust the most. And it's so interesting when she started talking about Facebook got the least. In fact, Facebook got no applause at all. I was expecting a few folks to maybe do some clapping, but Amazon being the clear winner and I thought, yeah, I trust Amazon to deliver whatever it is that I buy when they say they're going to deliver it. And she said she trusts them to do the same, but would you trust them to pay their taxes on time? So when she started talking about trust being subjective and contextual, it really kind of changes the whole dynamic. So that's earned trust, but also the ability to reduce the risk that your customers are facing, whether it's overpaying suppliers or paying duplicate invoices, that trust risk balance seems pretty critical as well. It does, it does. It's an interesting perspective. I think because in the case of Amazon, I think there's operational trust that they're going to get the job done and deliver the whatever you ordered in one day with Prime or two days with Prime. So there's operational trust, but is there a trust in the sense of purposes where she was going with, right? And today for organizations, especially with the Millennial Crowd as being customers as well as employees, the question is you can get operational trust, but do you also have a sense of purpose that they trust in and have that and be authentic as an organization? And that's where I say it is not being, we talk about AI as artificial intelligence, the real AI is authentic interactions. Authentic interactions. And that's really the authenticity as a brand, being open and acknowledge your failures, but strive for excellence for success and have this open platform with your customers and always look towards adding value. I think that invariably over time creates this trust feeling that ultimately drives long-term lifetime value for us. So that I think is the most important thing. Absolutely, so which, tell me again, which three customers are going to be on stage with you tomorrow sharing their stories? It's great. So I have three, one Procter & Gamble, a company that my mom knows about, my 86 year old mom, so one of the greatest brands. So that's a great story about again, they have a great business management story, but they're telling a story beyond the boundaries of business management and that's a fun story. And then we're going to have the global fund. Again, I told you, one of the world's largest financial fighting HIV, malaria and AIDS. And we're going to have Telia, one of the largest telecommunications providers. Excellent, so really kind of showing the breadth of the technologies and the industries that Coupa helps to transform. And the breadth of the personalities and the people behind that are driving all this change. Excellent, well Chandar, thank you for joining me on theCUBE. I wish we were going to be here tomorrow to see your keynote, but it sounds exciting. And the Spence Center program is certainly one that I think is quite differentiated in terms of telling those transformative stories that you said are both empirical and emotional. Yes, thank you Lisa, it's great to be here. Likewise, for Chandar, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE from Coupa Inspire London. Thanks for watching.