AI Supplier Data Validation Takes Shape in Coupa Marketplace

Hello everyone, this is Colleen Coll at Techstrong TV. We're at Coupa Inspire 2026. This is day two, and this is a first for me.

We have two Erics as a host. We're calling it Eric Squared. Love it.

So, they have joined me to talk about Coupa's App Marketplace and Coupa Link partner, Relish. But before we dive into that, you guys have been here for two days so far. What's the buzz?

What are the insights that you're going to take back to your team? Let me know what's up. Well, I'd say, so representing Coupa, the energy around our innovation is clear.

Our customers are very excited and jazzed to lean in and look at and leverage what we are bringing to them that's new. There's almost an insatiable appetite to dig in, especially on our AI and agent activities. It's clear they're getting pressure from their companies to be looking at this technology, and the more that Coupa can bring to them to make that possible, the more eager they are to lean in.

Yeah. And thanks. And of the two Erics, that is Eric Washer, Senior Vice President of Product Strategy at Coupa.

And now we have the next Eric, Eric Weitz from Relish. You are the Vice President of Sales at Relish? Correct.

So what have you seen so far on the floor, conversations? I would echo a lot of what Eric said. I think the real focus, and it has been for the last two years I think at Inspire now, the innovation around AI, and the expectations of leadership teams- Mm-hmm ...

and for the attendees here at this event to figure out how can we use Coupa to create more value within our business. And AI, just as a general speaking point, oftentimes the connection between what the expectations are and the ability to execute, there's a lot of questions around that. Yeah.

And I think that's fueling a lot of the discussions here. There's been a lot of amazing events that I think for the first time are opening people's eyes to, I really think there's an opportunity to use Coupa to help us bridge that gap between leadership expectations and our ability to deliver value for the business. So it's been really exciting to be able to move from concept to more execution in this particular event.

Concept to execution. So let's start simple. Start with Eric Washer.

What is Coupa App Marketplace? How does that help your customers? Yeah, great question.

Maybe I'll start from the beginning origins of Coupa. Okay. One of the first core principles of Coupa was to be an open platform.

Our desire is to be a trusted, secure, highly performant platform that companies depend on to run their operations. Yes. To run their spend management operations is one of the most critical activities that go on with an organization is how they spend their money with the critical suppliers that they do business with.

And happy anniversary, by the way. Thank you. So being that trusted platform is a great responsibility.

And companies can take one of two paths when they become that trusted platform, be closed or be open, and Coupa from the beginning chose to be open. And I think it's most proud of that principle of Coupa, and that continues to be the case. Mm-hmm.

But being open can also create risks for customers as well, because you can, to some extent, maybe use that openness with other third-party applications and get in trouble. Not be secure, not have the great performance, not have the use case definitions clear to be scaled across the companies. And that's where we bring our application marketplace program to the table to work with trusted third parties like Relish and really make sure we define and agree and harden the use cases that we do together so then our customers can just flick a switch and that risk is wiped away.

That's fantastic. And Eric Weitz, Relish, as a Coupa Link partner, and that's a tech partner, tell us more about Relish and what that means as well, your relationship with Coupa. 100%.

Relish was one of Coupa's first App Marketplace partners and, again, carrying on from Eric's point that the opportunity to work with an open platform like Coupa allows us to do some pretty special things for customers. As I think Eric Washer talking about a little bit, there's some companies that design a technology product, and it's a standalone product, and then as an afterthought, they decide it would be great to integrate with Coupa. And then there's another path which the marketplace has opened, which is more collaborative.

It's an opportunity to listen to Coupa's community of customers to understand what they would like to see from Coupa and from their partners, and then to build a solution that's intentionally and purpose-built to, as Eric said, snap in and flip a switch. And for us, it's been a great opportunity and partnership over the last five years, and working with customers to deliver value and shared value together. Yeah, five years is a long time.

This seems like the relationship makes sense. So you both talk about the idea that the most powerful enterprise platforms are ecosystems, not closed systems. So what does that mean in practice for a customer trying to solve a specific problem?

We can start with- Well, that's just it. They can solve that specific problem. Okay.

I don't believe any one vendor can solve everything. It's impossible. But software vendors like Coupa that are being chosen to be a trusted central platform for a critical part of the broader business process, I think it's their responsibility to be able to have alternative options that can hang off them for specialized high-value activities like what we do with Relish.

And that develops that broader ecosystem that's bigger than just Coupa. And ultimately for us creates happier customers. What can they do with the ecosystem that they couldn't do before?

Coupa can't do everything, right? That- Why not? We can't take every specialized adjacent function around our platform and do everything.

In a lot of cases, we're not suited to, we don't have the skills to, we don't have the expertise to, and that's where we take a well-thought-out approach and make sure we're curating the right partners for- Yeah ... what matters to our customers. Yeah.

I can comment on that. Yeah, and I think the way we think about it a little bit is Coupa's working with the largest, most influential businesses on the planet. Mm-hmm.

And these are complex companies, and so to solve it with a singular technology approach is oftentimes tricky. Which is why, because every business operates differently, and they have different processes and different needs, and so by having this ability to adopt an ecosystem, it allows Coupa to have partnerships, deep partnerships like with Relish, to solve for very unique business challenges that these customers have. So through the marketplace, Coupa continues to deliver value.

And when I think about our early stages of our relationship five years ago, it was community fueled. There was a very simple use case where they wanted the ability to be able to validate one piece of supplier information, just simply stated, "How do I know this information is right? " And that was the inception of Relish, the ability to validate one very small thing where we were able to strategically extend Coupa through partnership and deliver value together for the customers.

Now AI. AI-powered supplier data validation is one of the things you guys work on. How can AI improve that process?

We've been talking a lot about that for the conversations we've had in the last two days. But we have to talk about it with the two Erics, so who would like to go first? Well, I guess I'll give it a shot first.

We'll continue. Look, one of the areas of highest risk with organizations doing business with third-party suppliers is knowing your supplier. Do you know everything about them?

Mm-hmm. Without having a comprehensive 360-degree view of who they are, is all the data correct, as my friend Eric here highlighted, but also what else around that supplier do we need to know to make sure that we are protecting our business as we continue to depend on them for whatever we're buying? Understanding financial activities, understanding sanctions list details, understanding whether or not there's any potential of bank account fraud issues that may be prevalent as we're thinking about paying them.

Their performance with other customers, and other maybe risk factors they have with dependencies on certain customers or certain suppliers. There's a ton of information around suppliers that Coupa is striving to bring in and make it really simple for our customers to understand, and Relish is playing a big part of that. It's also important to understand that we talk about the positive impact of AI, and the efficiencies it's going to create, the data that exists inside of Coupa's platform that's going to deliver these insights for customers.

But also what I talk about a lot every day, and the discussions we have is nefarious actors are using AI to create fraud at scale. So the ability to send emails or infiltrate businesses in order to try to essentially fool them into transacting with them, sending them money for whatever purpose. Mm-hmm.

And working in our partnership with Coupa and leveraging this idea of this 360-degree data model. Is this information that we're receiving from a third party, is it true and accurate? Is this safe for us without having to go through a manual effort and being able to basically use AI and data to combat AI that's being used for fraudulent behavior is now the forefront that we're on.

So we're using the AI for good and for good insights and information to also help our customers ensure that they're safely transacting in the ecosystems that they're working through right now. Not even scripted, we both probably used data right there more than we used AI. Yeah.

And what's really important in this area in particular is the data. Is the data trusted? Are you able to get it from a variety of different sources?

And the only way to then sift through all that data is AI. Correct. But you can't have just AI without the data, right?

This is a- Oh, yeah ... definitely a combination, especially in the area of looking at suppliers and knowing your supplier as well. So a company that's already on Coupa, and they want to go deeper into AI.

Where do they start? What's the onra... on-ramp?

Well, the journey for customers is personal to them. Yeah. It's always where are they right now?

And being at this conference, I couldn't be more empathetic with that. Almost every customer I talk to, they're at a different place in where they're at today, so where they go from here is unique to them. I relate to our customers that have been with us for 10, 15 years.

They're ready for a lot of those great agentic capabilities that Solva showed up on main stage. I sat down at lunch with a customer that's six months into being live, and they're getting massive value out of really simple things. They're not ready for an agent to take over a business process.

And then everyone in between. So it's really unique to the customer, where they are on their journey- Mm-hmm ... and how they've taken their journey.

The great thing about Coupa is we can meet customers wherever they're at, start from different areas of the business process, and then help them grow into a leader if they have that appetite. And throughout that journey, they'll be leveraging AI throughout, but-I just would always advise don't boil the ocean. Make sure you're starting where you're at, and progress in a well-thought-out way.

Yeah. Makes sense. Anything to add, Eric?

No. I would say as a marketplace partner, we've seen the same type of journey. Your customers are all different states of what they're ready to consume.

But interestingly, at leadership levels, when we all read the headlines, the expectation is that AI is going to perform some role in our business. We don't know what that is. I think everybody feels very comfortable using AI or getting more comfortable using AI as an efficiency opportunity, not necessarily replacement.

The goal here is human in the loop. How do we make us all more efficient and do our jobs better and more safely? But being an extension of Coupa and the opportunity to engage customers has given us some unique abilities introducing AI capabilities.

For the first time two or three years ago, we could see what the adoption curve would look like. And now partnering with Coupa on their journey through some of the embedded UI applications and things that we're building for them as extensions of Coupa, we continue to watch how these companies are consuming this information. Oh, fantastic.

Love it. Any last words before we finish up? I would just reinforce the point, as we're representing the application marketplace, reinforce the point that Coupa sees the application marketplace as a strategic advantage.

We do not believe we can build everything. We want to be open and service our customers holistically, not just with what Coupa can deliver. Mm-hmm.

So I want to thank Relish and all of our partners that participate in that marketplace, and participate in the approach and the process we take so that when a third party like Relish is certified and validated, that the customers can trust it, that it's gone through that process and see it as something that's a value add that's bigger than Coupa. Yeah. " Because I think one of the big takeaways we talk about with customers is this isn't just an integrated product.

We are working collaboratively with Coupa, with their product teams. We're listening to their community, and our goal is to continue to extend, not compete with the technology that they're building. And so it becomes very complementary, and truly, I think a win-win for customers that the marketplace exists, and it has the vetting and the partnership routes that it has over the last several years.

And we've seen a lot of that in the success of our shared customers. A lot of my conversations the last couple of days have been positive partnerships, and this seems like it's of course one of them. Two Erics, zero confusion.

I'm calling that a success. And thank you all. Eric Weitz.

Yes. Eric Washer. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you. And we will be back. More to come.

Stay tuned at Techstrong TV.