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Open Source Arrives in Procurement

by Jeff Moad, MA Editorial Staff

Posted on Sunday, April 15, 2007 2:00:00 AM       Sign Up to receive Daily News Alerts in your E-mail Inbox                               

Manufacturers that are open to the open source software movement have another new option following the launch earlier this year of Coupa Software and its Coupa eProcurement Express open source e-procurement software product.

As an open source vendor, Coupa lets users download and use the eProcurement Express executable product and source code for free. Anyone may modify the source code and redistribute the result, although, under the General Public License (GPL) agreement used by Coupa, no one may charge a fee for the modified application.

eProcurement Express is designed to break down the two barriers that most often prevent successful electronic procurement deployments at small and mid-market companies: deployment cost and ease of use, says Dave Stephens. Stephens founded Coupa last year after a 10-year career at Oracle Corp., which included a stint managing that company's procurement software development team. With no license or maintenance fees, eProcurement Express is inexpensive to deploy. And the product's user interface has been designed to resemble common Web sites familiar to users who may not have experience with e-procurement applications.

The Coupa eProcurement Express application, which can be downloaded from the company's Web site, supports employee requisitioning, approval, catalog and contract pricing, purchase order automation, receipt, and delivery.

With the Coupa offering, e-procurement joins a growing list of application categories that include open source options. In January, for example, Aras Corp. announced a freely downloadable, open source version of its Aras Innovator product lifecycle management product. And manufacturers have had a handful of open source ERP options, including the OpenMFG Suite from OpenMFG LLC. OpenMFG is now on version two of the suite, which, as of December 2006, includes usability and reporting enhancements.

So far, Stephens says, there have been 3,800 downloads of the eProcurement Express application. In March, 800 users downloaded the software. Coupa's near-term goal is 1,000 downloads per month.

In addition to supporting core e-procurement functions, eProcurement Express lets organizations write procurement policies and present them to users in context. The e-tool also lets users review products and tag items for easier identification and search. The product does not, however, include a workflow engine or out-of-the box integration with ERP and other applications.

Later this year, Stephens says, Coupa plans to release a non-open source, on-demand e-procurement product for larger enterprises. To be called eProcurement Enterprise, the product will add advanced reporting, support for complex purchases, and the ability for administrators to define which users can see which catalogs. Pricing for the eProcurement Enterprise product has not yet been determined, Stephens says.

This article originally appeared in the May 2007 issue of Managing Automation.