Six revisions of a business process document, and three playbacks, before a single thing was configured.
A digital technology group in Singapore was putting procurement, supplier management, risk and contracts onto Coupa, with NetSuite as its finance system.
The group operates across several markets, which makes the interesting problem the rules rather than the software. Approval thresholds, tax handling, invoice presentation and receiving tolerances all vary by jurisdiction, and a platform configured for one market becomes a source of workarounds in the others.
Get that wrong and the cost is not a failed implementation. It is a working implementation nobody trusts, which is harder to fix.
Valtatech implemented Coupa procure-to-pay alongside supplier information management, risk and performance management, and contract lifecycle management, integrated to NetSuite.
Design came before build, and was written down. The business process document went through six revisions in five weeks — reworked after a procurement and invoicing playback, an internal review, an approval chain playback, a review with the client's own team, and a final playback.
That document is specific rather than aspirational: chart of accounts segments, budget setup, approval groups and chains, submission blockers and submission warnings, receiving tolerances, invoice tolerances, custom fields, commodity structure, standard and custom user roles with mapping, security controls, currencies, exchange rates and payment terms — plus a market-specific invoice presentation distinct from the default.
Supplier enablement and reporting were scoped in the same document rather than deferred to a later phase.
Valtatech is software vendor agnostic. The technology named here is what this client selected; we start from requirements, operating model and existing systems. See how we approach Source to Pay →
The temptation on a multi-market implementation is to configure first and handle the exceptions later. Exceptions handled later become permanent workarounds, and workarounds are what people point at when they say the system does not work for them.
Talk to us about what this would look like in your business.
Start a conversation