What the Coupa Layoffs tell us about the State of Procurement Technology

The Volatile State of Procurement Tech

The layoffs that have happened at Coupa should not be a surprise. We’re not clear on numbers, but I’ve seen the 30% figure, which is probably 900-1100 employees losing their job.

Big numbers.

Thomas Bravo acquired them to their ever-growing portfolio of big tech. A company with over $2bn in debt likely had issues other big tech have been displaying.

Too many people.

We all saw earlier in the year when Elon Musk bought Twitter how he cut the workforce by approximately 80% and closed down one of its datacentres.

Twitter was losing $4 million a day - I’m not saying Coupa was losing the same, but it’s likely that no matter how much they were bringing in, they were always eating away at that.

Charles Goodman, Interim CEO of Coupa stated in his announcement email to employees, “that includes greater alignment across business objectives, reducing duplication of effort, examining our real-estate footprint, and going forward with a smaller workforce”.

What strikes me here is a few things:

1- Great alignment needed

2 - reducing duplication of effort

3 - real estate footprint