Two members of the Spend Matters team had an exceedingly booked and intensive time at Sapphire this past week. Between the two of us, Thomas Kase and I probably saw a dozen demonstrations, had over twenty formal meetings with SAP team members and partners and spoke informally to over two dozen more customers, SAP solution managers and partners. Even by our usual hectic standards, it really was a completely packed and chaotic few days of learning and interaction. In the coming weeks, we'll continue to share our learnings about SAP's latest procurement, network and supply chain direction -- digging into current and planned product releases as well as new solutions and overall market and solution directions (you can read our initial dispatches here, here, here, here, and here).

Somewhat ironically, on a late night flight back from Orlando, I was reading a good book spanning the history of World War: Adam Hochschild's To End All Wars. In it, I was struck by a passage that could be apropos to what SAP may have up its sleeve -- even though the right hand might not always be talking to the left -- in the procurement and supply chain business applications, cloud and mobile arenas:

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Please click here for Part 1 of this series.

We'll continue our look at Seal Software by tossing out a few more case examples for good measure, to show the breadth of applicability for this truly special product, starting first with M&A. In an M&A situation, Seal can enable new levels of visibility into all contract exposure areas before a deal is completed and then drive a rapid post-merger integration as soon as deals are complete. Based on speed, quantity of contract analysis and the amount of deals processed at any given time, Seal's approach can enable contract visibility an order of magnitude faster than manual (or even other automated) approaches across many different contract fields and metadata (e.g., change of control, non exclusivity, escrow, end-of-life, auto renewals, most favored nation status, right of first refusal, limitation of liability, exclusivity, non-competes, non-solicitation, indemnity). A large law firm currently uses Discovery to reduce contract review time using bundled extraction rules.

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One thing we took away from Sapphire is that networked-based business models are going to factor prominently into the value SAP sees itself generating for customers beyond providing just business applications. These networks may take the form of information-rich environments that cross companies and tiers of supply chains to drive predictive risk analytics (e.g., Supplier InfoNet). Or they may enable new levels of operational efficiency by allowing suppliers to connect a single time to a network to maintain basic vendor information without having to register with (and continuously update) multiple supplier portals and supplier management platforms. Regardless, SAP's network vision is real, even if they haven't yet finalized all of the details of their strategy. And it's clear that Hubwoo, at least for the foreseeable future, is going to have some part in it.

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It isn't every day that I get to write about a solution that every company of some size needs, no matter what they already have! This series is about a revolutionary way to really understand what is in contracts -- either your own, or those of an M&A prospect. It's not about the standard elements of contract management (even though in this case, the vendor in question has those as well: authoring, clause libraries, repository, milestones, requests, alerts, dashboards, compliance, etc.). No, it's about something just as -- if not more -- tangibly valuable, an approach to contract management that can likely deliver greater ROI and faster than any other solution in this area.

Moreover, with this approach, not only do you get to a nearly unprecedented level of insight, but it is done quickly in an automated manner. In two to three weeks, you get tens of thousands of contracts scanned and analyzed -- we use the phrase "scanned" loosely because much of the power of the tool comes from automated scanning across a network -- with full visibility into not only basic (yet critical) terms such as expiration and renewal dates, but also the type of contract, parties involved, assignability, insurance, indemnification, IP rights, discounts, start/termination dates, renewals, solicitations, value, rebates, liquidated damages and more. The standard results come back with around 40 core data points per contract (as applicable), and many more can be retrieved per specific client needs. The solution can even search on its own for contracts across a distributed desktop environment.

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Looking at functional enhancements, Coupa has very specific goals in terms of what it intends to build. For example, take the area of contract management. Coupa does not plan to ever be "an Upside," in Rob Bernshteyn's words. "We won't go down to the level of creating n-tier templates and authoring tools as they do," he remarked. But they do want to be the "Google drive or Dropbox of contracts...providing metadata around individual agreements, alerting and contract management capability that is pre-integrated into requisitioning to drive compliance and POs specifically based on contract terms." If someone needs true contract management depth -- for legal authoring and redlining, for example -- Rob suggests that their partners like Emptoris will always be happy to take a call. But Coupa will deliver contract management as a means to further the capabilities of its core P2P capabilities.

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Baltimore was the host city for this year's International Supply Management (ISM) convention -- a 4-day activity that concluded last Wednesday. For those who haven't been to these conferences, ISM is a nearly 100-year-old not-for-profit organization that draws nearly exclusively on members and volunteers for its events. This approach creates a setting which might lack some of the creature comforts of corporate user conferences, but in return is rich with participants, ranging from students to junior buyers and seasoned professionals at all levels as well as representatives from solution and service providers, many of whom are exhibiting at the trade show run in parallel with the many workshops on various supply chain topics.

I had the pleasure of participating in this year's event, as I have in so many previous ISM conferences. It is always a good learning experience, a great opportunity to make new contacts, and to maintain old relationships. It is a small industry and there are many familiar faces every year at ISM. This conference had a unique angle for me -- my first ISM after a solid year of working as a Spend Matters analyst. In prior years I'd worked for various solution providers. Approaching the event in a unique non-competitive position let me speak comfortably with everyone attending while getting a quick feel for the latest plans from many firms.

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Earlier today, Coupa announced it had raised $22 million in financing -- you can read our first take on the news here -- in its latest capital raise. Based on the valuation and size of the round, there's no question that investment interest in P2P is alive and well. We hope this round will provide a much-needed jumpstart to the sector for VCs and private equity firms to invest in innovative providers across the eProcurement, e-invoicing and supplier network areas. But what are the most important takeaways from Coupa's sizeable round?

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Earlier today, Coupa (the fastest growing eProcurement software provider in net new customer wins by our calculations, including Ariba, SAP, Oracle and others), announced that it had raised $22 million in its latest round of financing. According to the announcement, the Series E financing round was "led by new investor Crosslink Capital with existing investors Battery Ventures, BlueRun Ventures, El Dorado Ventures and Mohr Davidow Ventures also participating." While terms of the round were not disclosed, "the latest valuation was a very significant multiple of previous rounds," according to the announcement.

Coupa's momentum undoubtedly contributed to the high valuation and multiple. At their customer roadshow in Chicago last week, Coupa shared that year-over-year bookings are up over 180% and platform usage has increased by over 150%. But how will the new funding round support Coupa's strategic direction? Spend Matters put the spotlight on Coupa's CEO, Rob Bernshteyn, earlier in the week. We asked him some pointed questions around how and where he intends to spend (or not spend) the war chest, including planned areas of product expansion.

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A few weeks ago, Richard Lee and I caught up with the analytics team behind Rearden Commerce/Deem's travel solution and platform. On the call, we dug into ways that Rearden is beginning to inject a new set of useful predictive analytics into the business travel area. Their approach incorporates the level of quantitative and correlation analysis of historical data (both personal and publicly available) that makes even a CMU graduate's head spin (Richard's b-school alma matter). Among other dataset combinations/mash-ups layered with predictive analytics on top, Rearden is leveraging Bureau of Transportation statistics covering 67 million flights in the past decade and using this information as a foundation to deliver personalized travel analytics to assist with decisions at the point of booking and travel.

The platform is thus able to predict and recommend connecting schedule, flight dates and times, specific carrier and flight number, etc. The approach goes far beyond the "on-time" recommendations for single hops that Orbitz (Richard's former employer) and other travel sites provide by taking into account the realities of actual travel conditions. It's somewhat analogous to some of the work SAP has done in the supply risk area by applying predictive analytics based on more than just single-site (and company) supplier performance ratings with the InfoNet offering.

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