Streamline Procurement with the Docusign CLM Connector for Coupa

How much can an inefficient procure-to-pay (P2P) lifecycle cost an organization? The answer isn’t pretty. Companies located in the US and Canada are losing $1.5B per year and wasting 32 million person hours annually due to inefficiencies in procurement processes or technology.

Procurement departments are responsible for consolidating spend, maximizing supplier performance and ensuring compliance with company sourcing policy – with many companies still stuck using manual processes even as many other departments are transformed and optimized with customized software.

Leaving procurement behind as the rest of your business progresses with smarter, faster, and better tools will leave threads of inefficiencies that reach into each department of your company – and, even worse, to your customers.

Don’t leave procurement behind as your business matures

There’s a level of stagnation in technology advancement for procurement teams that simply isn’t present in just about any other department – even finance with its propensity to cling to spreadsheets.

With best-in-cloud technologies that increase ease-of-us and cross-departmental collaboration, procurement teams can overcome the long-spanning problems they’ve had for a decade, especially if they’re still largely manually handling procurement tasks.

Optimized technology can also have a great positive impact for procurement teams who aren’t using the right or best technology for their needs because not only does an inefficient procurement setup frustrate internal departments who need materials to run the business, lack of appropriate technology can also jeopardize relationships with third parties.

Disconnect across the P2P lifecycle can result in serious issues, including: 

• Limited or a total lack of visibility into contract terms and statuses 
• Inefficient contract generation and approval processes 
• Heightened risk associated with reviewing third party paper 
• Excessive manual data entry which comes with greater chance for error 
• Lost time moving between systems 
• Costly mistakes associated with out-of-date information 

What’s the answer to all of these problems?

One recent solution that’s been trending on the market are fully connected procure-to-pay (P2P) lifecycles – which typically involve a Business Spend Management (BSM) tool connected to a contract lifecycle management (CLM) tool.

If you don’t already have one, adopting an intuitive, well-implemented procurement system is step one. The next step is connecting a contract lifecycle management (CLM) system.

Docusign CLM allows you to streamline the contract lifecycle by automating manual tasks, orchestrating complex workflows and eliminating unnecessary risk. It provides document generation, collaboration, workflow, seamless integration with Docusign eSignature and a searchable repository for completed agreements. Docusign CLM is designed to work for the entire enterprise, with integrations into common Sales and Procurement systems, in addition to the core contract management capabilities listed above.

This enables the procurement team to not only better service and collaborate with internal teams, but to improve buyer-supplier relationships through increased management.

Mature procurement: The Docusign CLM Connector for Coupa 

The “right,” effective technology stack for your procurement, sales, legal and other teams is one that enables better servicing for internal teams, improves buyer-supplier relationship management, and increases contract standardization.

To hit this trifecta of benefits, organizations need a CLM solution that works across their entire enterprise, removing information silos and bottlenecks, streamlining contract generation and approval chains, creating a searchable, centralized repository, and improving institutional efficiency. They also need to invest in department-specific tools, like Coupa, to effectively manage procurement processes.

Using both together provides optimum efficiency.

The Docusign CLM Connector for Coupa does just this, streamlining the P2P process by supplying a slew of benefits for teams on both sides of the coin, especially since they’re both best-in-cloud, highly integrable technologies.

Coupa is a cloud-native Business Spend Management (BSM) tool that’s propelled itself to Gartner-level excellency thanks to its ability to automate tasks, set budgets, institute accountability, and empower informed spend decisions across the entire procurement lifecycle.

Together, Docusign CLM and Coupa enable procurement and contract teams to:  

•  Automatically create or update contracts and metadata in Coupa or Docusign CLM, eliminating manual data entry and reducing errors 
• Share purchase orders, requisitions, invoices and more across systems for improved consistency 
• Synchronize pertinent procurement information used for contracting such as purchase requests, orders, approval chains and more between Coupa and Docusign

What it all breaks down to is that this connector creates what resembles a Single Source of Truth (SSOT) for your entire procurement process. A procurement specialist can work with a new supplier and begin the onboarding process with a clear step-by-step process, tracking the progress of the pending contract using Coupa. They can see where a contract is in the process, who’s waiting on who, and more.

In Docusign CLM, the legal team can closely manage any modifications of contracts, quickly add clauses or other necessary sections, get signatures, and alert the procurement team when all is ready to move ahead.  

Back to Coupa, the procurement team has an onboarding process in place and, moving forward, can easily manage a correspondence cadence with their suppliers, which is incredibly important during shortages and competitive marketplaces.

This isn’t a pipe dream – this is easily within grasp using the Docusign CLM Connector for Coupa, since the above is all out-of-the-box functionality with no customized code required.

Spaulding Ridge: solving global business problems one issue at a time 

As a Docusign integration specialist for many years now, I’ve worked on a lot of projects at Spaulding Ridge. Much of my work integrating Docusign was predominantly on the sell-side but I began to see a large gap in the buy-side where a CLM could be intensely valuable, which drove me to instigate a solution.

I wanted this solution to become a reality using two best-in-cloud technologies, ones that were optimal for both sides of the coin.

Today, I’m proud to debut the Docusign CLM Connector for Coupa that can help organizations generate fewer errors, more efficiency, and less friction in your procurement processes.  

Learn more about the Docusign Connector for Coupa by contacting me, Alisha Ahuja, at aahuja@spauldingridge.com.

About Spaulding Ridge 

Spaulding Ridge is an award-winning cloud advisory and implementation firm, deploying Best-in-Cloud solutions on a global scale. They enable organizations to accelerate operational efficiency, drive digital transformation, and increase competitive advantage.

Spaulding Ridge partners with digitally savvy companies to help:  

• Finance gain control: Increase top-line revenue, gross margins, and profits through better insight. Connect financial planning to strategy and automate financial close processes.    
• Sales increase productivity: Manage quota and territories more consistently and effectively, automate customer contracts and onboarding.  
• Operations drive efficiency: Improve supply chain agility, automate strategic sourcing and purchasing, deliver superior customer service experiences.

To learn more, visit spauldingridge.com.