Get Ready for a New Buzzphrase: Autonomous Commerce
AI-powered innovation is reshaping B2B payments, but not all AI is created equally, Coupa Chief Procurement Officer Michael Van Keulen writes in a new PYMNTS eBook, “The Innovation Mindset: How to Achieve It in 2025.”
At Coupa, we recognize that the current economic environment — characterized by volatility, structural shifts, uncertainty and margin erosion — demands a shift in mindset to navigate the complexities of this new economic order. It’s critical for businesses to view the current environment as a time for strategic investment rather than retrenchment — leveraging volatility as an opportunity to strengthen resilience and unlock growth. Instead of defaulting to a “no, because …” mindset in response to these challenges, businesses need to lean into a “yes, and …” approach. History has shown that companies that invest during uncertain times are the ones that far outpace those that didn’t.
The Best AI Is Based on the Best Data
When we think about technologies that could move the banking and payments industry to an innovation mindset, artificial intelligence (AI) immediately comes to mind. AI-powered innovation is reshaping the B2B payments environment. But not all AI is created equally. The best AI is based on the best data.
At Coupa, over the past 17 years, we have been collecting our customers’ data with their consent. Today, Coupa is able to leverage the power of our community-generated AI — which consists of data from $7 trillion in spend activity across a network of more than 10 million buyers and suppliers — to make our customers’ purchasing more effective, efficient and productive.
This data fuels our AI and machine learning to revolutionize business processes. Coupa’s AI-driven platform is critical to providing real-time insights into payment methods and supplier relationships.
AI Is Helping Revolutionize Payment Strategies
By analyzing data from past transactions, AI recommends optimal payment strategies that enhance cash flow efficiency and improve supplier relationships. These tools continuously learn from new data, becoming more effective over time in mitigating risks by providing real-time fraud detection, and analyzing transaction patterns to identify anomalies and flag potential threats instantaneously.
To date, Coupa has helped customers realize billions in savings and other financial benefits. From Uber recovering $24 million in sourcing efficiencies to Novo Nordisk saving 50 million euros from digital adoption, Coupa customers are better able to make their margins multiply and fuel their businesses growth.
Is AI-Driven Autonomous Commerce in our Future?
As we gear up for the future, our direction now is AI-driven autonomous spend and commerce — where procurement decisions and transactions are optimized and executed autonomously. We’ve asked ourselves what if we lived in a world where we can eliminate all buyers’ procurement costs and significantly reduce supplier sales and marketing expenses by leveraging network powered auto-matching and sourcing. This would free up significantly more resources that could be repurposed to fuel innovation and reduce risk profiles, ensuring only the best transactions are powered via the network.
Creating more autonomous procurement operations can fuel growth, productivity, resilience and sustainability, and mitigate risk. We believe business leaders have a huge opportunity in front of them, because the proper use of AI can not only yield huge benefits but also can make the world a better place.
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