One of the more important jobs of the accounts payable professional is keeping up with what is happening in the industry at large. This is critical for a few reasons, including skills development and the hunt for new technologies, but is sometimes difficult to do. That is why, each week, the team at Payables Place collects news stories and announcements on the people, companies, and events that can have the biggest impact on the accounts payable team; this cuts down on the amount of time that the AP professional needs to spend keeping up to date and makes it easier to get back to the task at hand—driving strategic value for the organization.
This week in payables news includes a few developments: Concur inked two new partnership deals, Coupa announced its most recent earnings, and European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi advocated for greater Eurozone financial integration. Read on to find out more about these and all the other impactful news from around the accounts payable world.
Coupa’s Continued Customer Growth Fuels Record Revenues in Q3 2015
Coupa Software last week announced it had achieved a new quarterly revenue record, as well as continued its trend of customer subscription growth for the third quarter of 2015. The announcement also wrapped up key business highlights for Q3 2015, including the acquisitions of TripScanner and InvoiceSmash, and new customer wins across North America, EMEA, Asia, and Latin America. Coupa stated its client roster now included enterprises such as Quantum Murray, Michael Kors, Arizona State Credit Union, Dental Corporation of Canada, OVO Energy, Oberthur, and CEVA.
Coupa has been on a growth trajectory in the past few months, between acquiring two solution providers—one in business travel and one in accounts payable—and hosting its second Coupa Inspire in Europe. The company also added capacity in Europe this summer, including opening a hub in Dublin. Coupa is running hard to create a significant market share for itself, and looks like it is well on its way to becoming a significant player in its space.
Concur Partners with AccorHotels, Booking.com to Extend Business Travel Capabilities
SAP subsidiary Concur recently announced partnerships with both AccorHotels and Booking.com, integrating both solutions into its platforms. The partnership with AccorHotels, announced last week, allows for enterprises to book directly with AccorHotels properties through the Concur TripLink platform, which offers visibility for travel managers and all the other benefits accrued from working in the Concur platform.
The partnership with Booking.com, announced this week, means that the website’s more than 800,000 properties will be available in Concur Travel. The accommodations that Booking.com offers include traditional hotels, apartments, and B&Bs worldwide, each of which will now be accessible for professionals using Concur’s apps to book corporate travel.
Concur is smart to pursue as many of these partnerships as possible, especially given some of the intense fragmentation in the travel marketplace. As more solutions become enabled on Concur’s applications, the likelihood that a business traveler will go outside policy and book travel through an unaffiliated provider becomes less and less. This increases visibility for travel managers and can help ensure employee choice as well as policy compliance in the long run.
European Central Bank Chief Mario Draghi Hammers Home Need for Closer Eurozone Financial Integration at the Bank of England’s Open Forum
Speaking at the Bank of England’s Open Forum this week, European Central Bank (“ECB”) President Mario Draghi used the opportunity to advocate for greater financial integration among Eurozone economies. City A.M. reported that the ECB chief advocated for tighter financial integration in Europe to protect the value of bank deposits within the economic zone—i.e., ensure a €1000 deposit in Greece is worth the same €1000 in Spain (it is not today)—and to prevent the possibility of bankers hiding behind national borders when the market gets dicey.
Draghi’s reasoning makes sense here from a stability perspective. Right now, the European Union’s financial life operates more as a selection of interconnected systems rather than one coherent whole stretching throughout the EU. Moving toward a centralized system has the potential to simplify financial decision-making and also allow for EU nations to share financial risk. The Single Supervisory Mechanism, put in place on November 4, 2014, is the first part of this kind of union, and in fact Draghi heavily pushed for further integration beyond that—something that may very well help to strengthen the Eurozone from a fiscal perspective.
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