About the company

Coupa Software is a global technology platform for Business Spend Management (BSM). The company is headquartered in San Mateo, California with offices throughout Europe, Latin America, and Asia Pacific. Coupa helps companies gain visibility into and control over how they spend money, optimize supply chains, and manage liquidity.

We have an office in Uppsala (Kungsängsgatan 17) with a team of about 40 people, primarily supporting on the software called “Sourcing Optimization”. Coupa Sourcing Optimization (CSO) is a SaaS solution which helps the largest companies in the world, with the largest sourcing projects in the world. Think about IKEA’s process to buy Ocean Freight, or Maersk inland logistics program. We help companies like this run strategic sourcing programs and enable flexibility and optimization in how they collect and evaluate suppliers proposals.

The team that supports Coupa customers with this technology is called “CSO Solution Delivery”, and we have a global team of Solution Architects working with our global customer base. Our backgrounds range from PhD’s to procurement practitioners to former consultants, and is one of the brightest and dynamic teams you can find!

Thesis Work Opportunity

If you would like to write your thesis on a topic related to our CSO tool, we are happy to have a discussion. Some examples we have already have in mind are:

• Trends in sourcing event data
  We would like to identify and test various hypothesis on our sourcing data. E.g. is there a correlation between time of day of negotiation and results? Can a tender be too big – do results decrease after a certain amount of data is added
• Monte Carlo Simulation
  How to better predict cost given certain uncertainty in demand
• Technology’s Impact on Buyer/Supplier Relationships
  Our solution has a capability called “collaborative bidding” which offers the suppliers to propose alternative offers and package items for discounts. This can be a tremendous value to both parties involved in a negotiation. However, technology is often perceived as cold and distant. We would like to better understand; the value that can be derived, how to improve collaboration with the technology , how to change the minds of those against technology, understand how game theory and common value can be utilized via the technology. Your thesis could be written on any of these elements!
• Optimization Rules in Sourcing Events
  How does implementing certain rule types like e.g. soft limits, change the results
  We would like to take some of our recent tender data and do some regression analysis to see if there are things we missed, and how implementing certain constrains change the outcome of our optimization.

If you're interested, please contact Lucas Rulff at lucas.rulff@coupa.com.