Coupa and AI: Overviewing New Developments

ERP vendors across industries have been racing to develop and sharpen Artificial Intelligence offerings that save their customers labor and time. Coupa is no exception. The leading Cloud-based business spend management system is incorporating AI to unlock new levels of business performance, profitability, and growth. Coupa is now rolling out AI advancements with its major releases, and more. 

In this blog, we’ll explore how Coupa’s own internal AI can help in increasing profitability, optimize cash and margins management, and eliminate risk. We’ll also highlight how an AI-powered test automation platform can help Coupa customers test for success.

AI for ERP Transformation

Cost management plays a critical role in enhancing the financial performance of an organization. Coupa, as a leading spend management platform, helps in managing spend that can be complex and time-consuming otherwise. Since Coupa is a comprehensive solution for enterprise procurement and business spend management, it stores huge amounts of data that can be difficult to absorb and interpret by individuals. 

Since AI forms the basis for all computer learning and is the future of all complex decision making, Coupa has also incorporated it to optimize various aspects of procurement, expense management, and supplier interactions.

How AI is Transforming Coupa

Coupa has taken a comprehensive and data driven approach to creating robust AI elements that support financial decision making. Here’s how:

Spend Analysis and Optimization

Coupa’s AI features have the ability to analyze an enterprise's historical spending data to predict future spending patterns. This helps decision makers more accurately forecast budgets based on these insights. 

Since AI can identify trends and anomalies better than a human can, organizations can use these predictions to reduce costs and improve procurement efficiency.

Supplier Management

Coupa centralizes information - contact details, certifications, and compliance documents of all suppliers and also tracks key performance indicators (KPIs) such as delivery times, quality ratings, and compliance scores. 

Coupa is now leveraging AI to make these key performance indicators (KPIs) more efficient. By evaluating supplier risk and continuously monitoring supplier performance, Coupa enables organizations to maintain high standards and mitigate potential risks.

By providing comprehensive reports and dashboards, Coupa offers insights into spending patterns, enabling decision makers to track and analyze expenses across various categories and departments. With AI-powered prescriptions, Coupa helps enterprises to get more value out of their business spending. Coupa's AI can analyze anonymized spend data to provide program KPI benchmarks and tailored prescriptions for even greater savings and efficiency.

Procurement Optimization

AI can revolutionize Coupa’s procurement process. It can be used to automate approval workflows based on predefined rules and historical data. This will speed up the procurement process. AI can also be used to optimize the routing of the purchase orders for timely and cost-effective procurement. Errors and discrepancies can be reduced as invoices with purchase orders and receipts with the help of AI.

Turning to Testing: Why Is AI-Enabled Coupa Test Automation Now Necessary? 

To understand the importance of AI-enabled Coupa Test Automation, you first need to understand how it will roll out its AI-enabled features. 

Here’s how Coupa will roll out its AI-enabled features:

• Pilot Programs: Here, AI enabled features are rolled out for a select group of customers to gather feedback, identify issues, and make necessary adjustments before a broader release.

• Gradual Rollout: Following the pilot phase, Coupa will gradually roll out AI-enabled features to its wider customer base. In fact, it has started rolling out AI-enabled features with its major releases. 

• Coupa rolls out three major releases per year. These occur in January, May, and September. Major releases introduce new features and functionality in a controlled manner.
  

In its latest May 2024 release, Coupa has already launched new AI-Driven Automations that can help organizations drive efficiencies.

Since Coupa major releases have the potential to impact existing customizations and integrations, testing needs to be done to ensure business continuity remains intact. As multiple rounds of testing are required over a year, manually testing Coupa isn’t logical. AI-enabled Coupa test automation is the only way to maximize ROI and minimize risks.

Learn more: How AI Is Optimizing ERP Testing & Software Efficiency

AI-enabled Coupa test automation assures that features are reliable, effective, and secure. By incorporating AI into testing, Coupa customers can ensure that their AI-driven features deliver accurate and valuable results.

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How Opkey's AI-Powered, No-Code Test Automation Enhances Testing, Compliance, and Security

Opkey’s Coupa AI automation testing platform employs Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Generative AI, and Agentic AI to provide the world's fastest and most seamless test automation experience. As one of the leading test automation frameworks, Opkey enables Coupa customers to expedite their test automation initiatives, mitigate risks, and ensure the platform's stability and performance. 

With Opkey as an official Coupa partner, customers can enjoy seamless Coupa test automation. Opkey’s zero-code test automation platform empowers QA teams to create, execute, and manage automated tests seamlessly. Opkey eliminates the need for extensive coding, making it accessible to testers and subject matter experts across the organization.

Learn more: How to Maximize Coupa ROI with AI-Enabled, No-Code Test Automation

Streamline testing processes with Opkey’s AI by identifying test scenarios, generating automated tests, and maintaining them efficiently.

Here's how Opkey’s Coupa AI testing features can help customers

AI-powered Impact Analysis

As a leading test automation platform, Opkey’s AI powered impact analysis engine takes all the guesswork out of determining what needs to be tested during a Coupa release. Opkey identifies change in your transactions, configurations, and custom screens to highlight the impacted tests due to those changes. Instead of executing all the test cases, you only need to test those that are highly risky and their dependent components. Thus, eliminating hours of effort and struggle.

AI-Powered Self-Healing 

Coupa is a highly dynamic application and maintaining test scripts can be a challenging task. Opkey's AI-powered Self-Healing feature detects and automatically resolves issues that arise due to updates. The time and resources required for script maintenance are drastically reduced and AI’s ability to continuously learn and adapt to changes ensures that your automated test suite remains functional.

Learn more: A Guide to Test Maintenance: How to Maintain Your Testing Program With Test Automation

Wilfred: Opkey's Chatbot (Generative AI, Natural Language Processing) 

Wilfred is based on Natural Language Processing. It makes it easy for anyone to create and manage tests, saving you time and reducing complexity. 

Wilfred helps you generate and maintain test scripts using Opkey’s business-specific language model. Whether you’re an expert or not, Wilfred is a game-changer in simplifying and accelerating the test creation process.

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