How CloudEagle.ai Complements Coupa for Optimized SaaS Management & IT Procurement

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For mid-sized companies evaluating their options to manage SaaS applications and IT procurement, Coupa is often considered due to its established reputation in broad spend management for very large enterprises.

However, while Coupa excels in traditional procurement processes, its capabilities in managing the unique demands of SaaS applications are limited.

CloudEagle.ai, on the other hand, offers a specialized solution that not only complements Coupa but also enhances your SaaS management capabilities.

This blog will explore the key differences and illustrate why you need a SaaS management platform in addition to Coupa to effectively manage your SaaS portfolio.

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TL;DR

• CloudEagle.ai complements Coupa with 500+ integrations and detailed SaaS insights, enabling a deeper understanding of app usage and shadow IT.
• It addresses Coupa's IAM gaps with automated access control, deprovisioning workflows, and compliance-friendly security features.
• CloudEagle.ai streamlines renewals, license reclamation, and app provisioning, automating SaaS-specific tasks that Coupa lacks.
• With robust benchmarking and expert negotiation assistance, CloudEagle.ai strengthens procurement, helping secure better SaaS deals.
• Integration with Slack enhances team collaboration, facilitating smooth renewals, approvals, and procurement decisions directly within familiar workflows.

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Why Coupa Alone Can’t Manage SaaS Effectively

1. Limited Application Visibility and Usage Insights

Coupa’s strength lies in its broad spend management capabilities, providing real-time visibility into expenses, tracking purchases, and highlighting areas to reduce costs.

Its controls and approval workflows effectively minimize rogue spending by ensuring all transactions remain within the organization's budget. Coupa's integration with ERP and CRM solutions also supports its generalized approach to spend management.

However, when it comes to SaaS governance, Coupa falls short in delivering the granular level of visibility necessary for effective SaaS management. While Coupa's capabilities cover high-level spend insights, it lacks direct integrations that can provide detailed visibility into sanctioned and unsanctioned applications from shadow IT.

To achieve comprehensive SaaS governance, a dedicated SaaS management platform (SMP) is essential to complement Coupa.

SMPs go beyond spend data by directly integrating with SaaS applications to offer a bird's-eye view of your SaaS portfolio, along with feature-level usage insights on individual licenses. This approach ensures that organizations can efficiently manage their SaaS investments and optimize usage at a deeper level.

2. No Integrated IAM Features for SaaS Security

Effective SaaS management must include robust Identity and Access Management (IAM) features to control who has access to which applications and to monitor that access for security and compliance purposes.

“There’s no doubt that companies face greater cybersecurity risk than ever. Most people think this risk comes from malicious outsiders bent on breaching their network and stealing their data. That’s often the case, but risk also comes from within when proper security controls aren’t in place,” Rod Simmons, Vice President of Product Strategy at Omada.

However, Coupa does not offer integrated IAM capabilities tailored specifically for SaaS. This gap exposes organizations to significant security risks, such as unauthorized access or the failure to revoke access when employees leave the company.

Without IAM, enforcing security policies consistently across all SaaS applications becomes challenging, increasing the risk of compliance violations or data breaches.

1. Limited Access Management: Coupa cannot manage privileged access, time-based access, or zero-touch onboarding and offboarding.

• Without these critical features, organizations cannot effectively control and monitor who has elevated access to sensitive systems.
• The absence of time-based access controls means that temporary access cannot be automatically revoked, posing an ongoing security risk.

2. Deprovisioning Shortfalls: Coupa also lacks deprovisioning workflows, essential for ensuring ex-employees can no longer access corporate systems.

• This lapse could result in former employees retaining access to sensitive data or systems, potentially leading to security breaches.
• Organizations might not even be aware of these vulnerabilities until it’s too late, highlighting the importance of integrated IAM in SaaS management.

3. Lack of Specialized Automation for SaaS.

Coupa excels in broader procurement workflows such as source-to-pay (S2P) and is effective for large enterprises managing procurement, invoicing, and supply chain activities, its automation capabilities fall short in SaaS procurement and other SaaS-specific tasks.

Three out of four IT professionals surveyed say they want SaaS solutions capable of insights-driven automation,

But, for mid-sized companies focused on SaaS management, Coupa can have its limitations in automation, so it has to be complemented with a SaaS management platform like CloudEagle.ai. Together, you can effectively handle SaaS-specific processes like automatically reclaiming unused licenses, app access reviews, renewals, and provisioning and deprovisioning with the help of an SMP.

Coupa has a robust contract management capability to manage the entire contract lifecycle, it can also automatically extract contract metadata, making it easier to parse, store, and review critical information.

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Coupa’s automated reminders help you stay ahead of renewals and prevent unwanted contract auto-renewals. When combined with CloudEagle, you can leverage Slackbot to manage renewals seamlessly, approving or rejecting requests directly from Slack without needing to access either Coupa or CloudEagle.

Additionally, you can create dedicated Slack channels to collaborate with stakeholders, making it easier to discuss and make informed renewal decisions.

4. Lack of actionable insights and ability to realize savings

Effectively managing and optimizing a SaaS portfolio requires actionable insights that go beyond basic spend visibility.

According to a recent report by Nexthink, nearly half of all installed software and licensed SaaS applications were left unused by employees.

To put this into context, to effectively manage SaaS licenses, and ensure optimal utilization, mid-size companies need deeper integrations that provide feature-level insights—such as the number of meetings hosted on Zoom or how many envelopes were processed through DocuSign. Coupa’s reporting tools, however, tend to offer high-level spend data without delving into these specifics.

1. Limited Insights: For example, Coupa might tell you that a license is active, but it won’t explain how various teams or departments leverage tools like Zoom for their specific needs.

This lack of deep telemetry can lead to several issues, including paying for premium features that are not needed or maintaining more licenses than necessary simply because the platform cannot dig deeper into the actual usage data.

2. Challenges in Realizing Savings: Identifying potential savings is one thing; realizing them is another challenge. While Coupa can highlight cost optimization opportunities, turning these insights into actual savings often requires manual efforts like renegotiating contracts or managing license deprovisioning. These steps can be tedious and time-consuming, delaying cost-saving initiatives.

CloudEagle.ai automates license harvesting by identifying and reclaiming unused licenses, reallocating them to where they're needed most. Workflows will automatically deprovision users after inactivity, harvest the licenses, and assign them to new users.

This process ensures you maximize your software investments without manual intervention, accelerating your savings and improving efficiency.

While Coupa can provide usage data, you can top it off with CloudEagle.ai to automatically reclaim unused licenses based on the insights provided by Coupa.

5. Limited Vendor Negotiation Guidance

SaaS contracts can vary significantly depending on factors such as user numbers, feature sets, and contract length.

Terry Larock, Head of Procurement at Tipalti, emphasizes the importance of viewing negotiation as a conversation, not a battle. "They [vendors] are not bad cops," he says.

Effective negotiation demands access to real-time data and benchmarks to ensure the organization is not overpaying for its software.

With Coupa, you might still need to contact your peers and conduct detailed research to understand vendor pricing. This process can be counterproductive and delays negotiations.

If your procurement team is lean, you can enhance Coupa's capabilities by integrating it with CloudEagle.ai to leverage expert negotiation services.

By combining Coupa's spend analytics and automated procurement workflows with CloudEagle.ai’s SaaS buying expertise, you can streamline your procurement process and free up valuable time for your team.

6. Implementation challenges

Deploying Coupa often requires significant costs, time, and a structured approach to ensure success. Many enterprises must also engage implementation partners and System Integrators (SIs) to navigate Coupa’s complex modules, further increasing the complexity and expense while extending the implementation timeline.

One key limitation is Coupa's lack of bidirectional integrations. Coupa cannot fully sync with other systems without this capability, meaning procurement, renewals, and contract management tasks cannot be initiated or completed from users' preferred platforms.

Instead, users must navigate Coupa’s interface to perform these tasks, often duplicating work already done in other tools. This inefficiency adds friction to workflows, slows down processes, and increases the learning curve for new users.

In contrast, a SaaS management platform like CloudEagle.ai with strong bidirectional integrations allows users to handle renewals, deprovisioning, and procurement from already familiar tools like Jira, ServiceNow, etc., ensuring a seamless experience and eliminating the need for redundant work.

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Why CloudEagle.ai is the right investment choice for SaaS management

1. Complete SaaS Visibility and Deeper Usage Insights

Poor visibility can be a recipe for numerous challenges, including shadow IT, underutilized licenses, missed renewals, and increased spend.

Get complete visibility on your SaaS portfolio with CloudEagle.ai. Its industry-leading 500+ integration will enable you to see both sanctioned and unsanctioned apps in a single dashboard. You can effectively rationalize your stack and eliminate redundancies with CloudEagle’s discovery engine.

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The lack of deeper telemetry into application usage will hinder you from optimizing and rationalizing your SaaS applications effectively. System integrations like SSO, HRIS, CLM, etc., can only provide surface-level insights.

That’s why CloudEagle.ai has direct API integrations with individual applications to dig deeper and provide accurate, real-time insights on license usage.

You can see how often specific features within a tool like Salesforce (e.g., lead management, opportunity tracking, or reporting dashboards) are utilized across departments.  This detailed usage data enables you to optimize spend, forecast budgets accurately, and negotiate more effectively with vendors, ensuring you're only paying for what you truly need.

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Shadow IT is a major concern in enterprises, as employees can easily purchase apps using corporate credit cards without IT approval. These unsanctioned apps are no longer hidden from you, as CloudEagle’s deeper integration will shed light on these duplicate apps, enabling you to eliminate shadow IT.

You can also configure proactive alerts that notify the admin whenever an unsanctioned application enters your system. This early detection helps prevent shadow IT, effectively curbing SaaS sprawl.

CloudEagle.ai’s CEO Nidhi Jain had an interesting and insightful conversation with Joshua Peskay, a CIO, CISO, and CPO of RoundTalble Technology, on Shadow IT risks in modern workplaces and how IT teams can optimize here.

Check out this insightful podcast as Nidhi and Joshua shares interesting practices on how to prevent shadow IT and keep your portfolio optimized.

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2. Streamlining IT procurement

Poor visibility in the IT procurement process can lead to purchase requests getting lost, causing delays, frustration, and a drop in productivity. Without a clear system to manage requests, these challenges can significantly impact efficiency.

CloudEagle.ai solves these pain points by bringing transparency and control to your IT procurement process. With its no-code automated workflows, customizable request forms, and seamless integrations, CloudEagle.ai ensures that every purchase request is tracked, prioritized, and directed to the right stakeholders, eliminating bottlenecks and boosting overall productivity.

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Managing procurement requests is challenging, especially when dealing with outdated or manual systems that slow down the process.

With a library of customizable templates, you can easily create procurement workflows with CloudEagle.ai that automatically route requests to the right stakeholders, ensuring that nothing falls through the cracks and approvals are managed seamlessly.

One of the biggest bottlenecks in procurement is waiting for approvals, which can delay important purchases and disrupt timelines.

Key Features:

Customizable Intake Request Forms: SaaS procurement varies greatly depending on the type of purchase and the specific needs of each request.

A standardized, one-size-fits-all form simply doesn't provide the flexibility required to handle this complexity, often resulting in delays, confusion, and misrouted requests.

CloudEagle.ai addresses this challenge with its customizable intake request forms that can adapt to the type of purchase. This tailored approach ensures that every procurement request is accurately directed to the appropriate stakeholder, speeding up approvals and making the entire process more efficient and responsive to your organization’s needs.

Slack Integration for Faster Approvals: Waiting for procurement approvals often slows down operations, creating bottlenecks.

CloudEagle’s Slack integration streamlines the approval process by allowing users to submit requests, receive notifications, and take action directly within Slack. This eliminates delays, speeds up decision-making, and keeps the procurement process moving smoothly.

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Visibility for All Stakeholders: With CloudEagle.ai, visibility and transparency are prioritized. Once a request is submitted, all stakeholders, including requesters, are automatically notified of any updates through their preferred communication channel—whether it’s Slack, Email, or Teams.

This reduces the need for follow-up emails and keeps everyone informed, leading to a more efficient and less frustrating procurement process.

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3. Realize Savings with License Harvesting Workflows

Unused licenses significantly contribute to rising SaaS spend, often going unnoticed as they quietly drain budgets.

When licenses sit idle or underutilized, businesses end up paying for software that isn't delivering value, leading to substantial financial waste.

CloudEagle.ai addresses this issue with its automated license harvesting workflows. You can continuously monitor user activity, flag licenses that are underutilized, or identify users who haven’t logged in for a specified period.

License reclamation workflows will automatically deprovision users from licenses for inactivity. You can then harvest and reassign those licenses to new users, ensuring optimal utilization and ROI.  

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A prime example of this capability is how CloudEagle.ai helped RingCentral achieve significant cost savings through license harvesting.

Here’s the success story of how RingCentral saved $1.2 million in a year using CloudEagle.ai.

4. Robust Access Management Capabilities to Enhance Security Posture

Improper access management poses significant risks in SaaS environments, such as insider threats, weak password management, unauthorized access, and lack of visibility into user activity. If not properly controlled, these issues can lead to data breaches, financial losses, and compliance violations.

CloudEagle.ai’s Privileged Access Management (PAM) ensures that only authorized users can access sensitive applications, with ongoing monitoring to detect and prevent unauthorized activity.

Time-based access controls add an extra layer of protection by providing temporary access that automatically expires, minimizing the risk of prolonged unauthorized use.

Additionally, automated app access reviews keep permissions aligned with current roles and responsibilities, reducing the chances of a security breach and ensuring compliance with corporate policies. This proactive approach to access management significantly lowers security risks and strengthens overall protection in SaaS environments.

5. AI-Metadata Extraction and Renewal Management

Managing SaaS renewals can be complex and time-consuming, especially with varying contract terms and conditions. Like Coupa, CloudEagle.ai simplifies this process with its AI-driven metadata extraction, automatically pulling critical information like renewal dates, pricing terms, and compliance requirements from your SaaS contracts.

This data is then organized into a centralized renewal calendar, allowing the platform to send proactive alerts, ensuring you're never caught off guard by a renewal deadline.

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Moreover, CloudEagle.ai eliminates the need for platform-hopping, enabling you to manage renewals effortlessly without switching platforms. There's no need to master CloudEagle.ai to renew contracts.

Through bi-directional integrations, the platform meets you where you are—receive renewal alerts directly in Ironclad, collaborate with stakeholders in Slack channels, manage third-party risk with tools like OneTrust, and track progress within Jira, all without leaving your existing workflow.

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You can create dedicated channels for transparent communication among stakeholders, raise requests, approve workflows, and add comments, all within Slack.

This comprehensive approach provides early warnings and gives your procurement team ample time to analyze usage, leverage price benchmarking data, review pricing, avoid costly auto-renewals, and renegotiate contracts—leading to better financial management and optimized contract terms.

6. Provisioning and Deprovisioning Workflows

Effective user management is crucial in a SaaS-heavy environment, yet IT and HR teams often struggle with the manual processes of provisioning and deprovisioning users.

They must visit individual applications to grant access, which delays a new employee’s productivity and increases the workload on IT. On the other hand, poor deprovisioning practices can leave lingering access for former employees, posing serious security and compliance risks.

CloudEagle.ai excels in addressing these challenges by automating both provisioning and deprovisioning workflows.

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When a new employee joins, CloudEagle.ai integrates with HR systems and identity providers to automatically grant access to the necessary SaaS applications based on the employee’s role and department. This streamlined process boosts productivity from day one by eliminating delays.

Similarly, when an employee leaves or becomes inactive, CloudEagle.ai automatically revokes access to all SaaS tools, ensuring that no unauthorized users retain access to sensitive company resources. This automation reduces the burden on IT teams and eliminates the risk of human error, keeping your organization secure and compliant at all times.

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CloudEagle.ai also includes automated workflows to identify inactive employees who haven’t logged into an application over a specified period, deprovision them, and optimize your SaaS investments by ensuring that your licenses are utilized properly.

7. Price Benchmarking and Negotiation Assistance

Securing favorable pricing for SaaS subscriptions can be challenging, especially without reliable benchmarking data.

CloudEagle.ai addresses this by providing AI-powered price benchmarking data through its SaaS Map, a mega-database of over 150,000 vendors powered by AI and ML algorithms.

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Updated weekly with data from field experts, extensive transactions, and a vast network of SaaS buyers, the SaaS Map provides you with the latest benchmarking data, giving your procurement team all the ammunition needed to secure the most competitive pricing.

This comprehensive data equips your procurement team with the leverage needed to negotiate better terms and avoid overpaying for software.

Furthermore, if you have a lean procurement team, you can seek our negotiation assistance, where our SaaS buying experts will work as an extended part of your team and do all the heavy lifting for you and ensure you purchase the right product at the right price.

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Benefits of Choosing CloudEagle.ai Over Coupa

Faster and More Cost-Effective Implementation: CloudEagle.ai’s ease of implementation stands out, with over 500 integrations and direct API connections that streamline deployment.

Designed specifically for SaaS management, it aligns seamlessly with your IT infrastructure, minimizing disruption and lowering onboarding costs. Unlike Coupa, which often requires extensive customization and manual effort during integrations, CloudEagle.ai allows you to start realizing benefits from Day 1.

Maximized Cost Savings Through Automation: CloudEagle.ai optimizes your SaaS portfolio with intelligent automation, such as automated license harvesting, ensuring you only pay for what you use.

The platform’s real-time data from direct API integrations allows for quick optimization, significantly reducing unnecessary SaaS spend and leading to a more cost-effective operation.

Enhanced Security and Compliance: CloudEagle.ai integrates deeply with IAM systems like Okta and Microsoft Active Directory, providing robust security and compliance. The Zero-Touch Onboarding feature automates user provisioning and deprovisioning, reducing unauthorized access and simplifying compliance management.

Privileged access and time-based access controls are available to ensure that users have the appropriate level of access only when needed, further enhancing security and reducing the risk of unauthorized activities.

Benchmarking data: CloudEagle.ai enables efficient SaaS negotiations with precise price benchmarking data drawn from over $2 billion in transactions, insights from field agents, and a vast network of SaaS buyers.

With a database of 500,000 vendors and real-time weekly pricing updates, you can make data-driven negotiations, avoid overpaying on SaaS, and purchase the right product at the right price.

Elimination of Shadow IT: CloudEagle.ai provides full visibility into all SaaS applications, eliminating shadow IT by centralizing spend data through integrations with finance systems like QuickBooks and Expensify. This ensures all software is approved, compliant, and managed under one platform, creating a more secure and efficient IT environment.

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Conclusion

For mid-sized companies and enterprises, the choice between CloudEagle.ai and Coupa for SaaS management and IT procurement is clear.

While Coupa excels in traditional procurement and spend management for large enterprises, to effectively manage the dynamic SaaS ecosystem, you need CloudEagle.ai alongside Coupa to govern and optimize your SaaS portfolio

CloudEagle.ai, is purpose-built for SaaS management, offering deeper visibility, advanced automation, and comprehensive IAM features essential in today's fast-paced, cloud-driven environment.

It simplifies implementation, reduces costs, maximizes savings through intelligent license management, provides superior vendor negotiation tools, and eliminates the risks associated with shadow IT.

Ultimately, CloudEagle.ai can help you streamline SaaS management and procurement processes, offering a tailored solution that meets the unique demands of managing a complex SaaS ecosystem.

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