[May 28, 2015]

Highmark Health Saves Big on Reverse-Auction Sourcing Event

Coupa Software (News - Alert), the leading provider of cloud-based spend management solutions, announced today that Highmark Health completed a successful sourcing event that saved the company more than 20 percent on its annual Computers and Imaging Services contract, while turning a month-long traditional RFP process into an 80-minute reverse auction.

Companies are increasingly turning to sourcing events to quickly and easily arrive at the most competitive, true market price for the products and services they buy. Coupa self-service sourcing makes it easy for procurement and sourcing professionals to host and actively participate in such eBay (News - Alert)-like bidding events in which suppliers compete for customer contracts for specific products and services.

Highmark Health conducted the sourcing event to improve its contracted pricing for 12 categories of technology equipment that the company would purchase throughout the year. Four vendors participated in the reverse auction, which lasted 80 minutes in total and netted the company more than 20 percent savings over the incumbent's pricing - with virtually zero effort or time. By the way, this was more than double the savings the incumbent offered prior to the auction.

"After signing the contract, Coupa was able to activate our sourcing system and run an event in a matter of weeks," said Michael Dewitt, Vice President Sourcing Solutions, Highmark Health. "As soon as we began implementation of our Coupa Procurement system, we were able to use Coupa Sourcing to deliver optimal results that allowed us to get an immediate return on our investment and virtually pay for our first year's subscription. Coupa was easy to use; our category manager was fielding supplier questions through the online message board and demonstrating the bid graph to our executives without any training."

Coupa Sourcing allows customers to negotiate more efficiently, and import information from the winning bid into Coupa Procurement to create catalogs and contrats, turning negotiated savings into realized savings. Coupa Sourcing is extremely flexible and requires almost no setup or implementation time. In many cases, Coupa sourcing events can generate immediate first-year ROI before full Coupa suite goes live.

About Coupa Software

Coupa Software enables businesses everywhere to recognize bottom-line financial success via Savings-as-a-Service. More than 500 customers headquartered in over 40 countries use Coupa to support business agility and reduce costs. Only Coupa provides an organic suite of true cloud applications including accounts payable, procurement, expense management, sourcing and inventory, allowing customers to realize a return on investment that starts within a few months and grows continually. Learn more at www.coupa.com. Read more at our company blog, Making Cents or follow @Coupa on Twitter.

About Highmark Health

Highmark Health, a Pittsburgh, PA based enterprise that employs more than 35,000 people nationwide and serves 40 million Americans in all 50 states, is the third largest integrated health care delivery and financing system in the nation. Highmark Health is the parent company of Highmark Inc., Allegheny Health Network, and HM Health Solutions. Highmark Inc. and its subsidiaries and affiliates provide health insurance to 5.3 million members in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Delaware as well as dental insurance, vision care and related health products through a national network of diversified businesses that include United Concordia Companies, HM Insurance Group, Davis Vision and Visionworks. Allegheny Health Network is the parent company of an integrated delivery network that includes eight hospitals, a community-based network of physician organizations, and a group purchasing organization, ambulatory surgery centers, and health and wellness pavilions in western Pennsylvania. HM Health Solutions focuses on meeting the information technology platform and other business needs of the Highmark Health enterprise as well as unaffiliated health insurance plans by providing proven business processes, expert knowledge and integrated cloud-based platforms. To learn more, please visit www.highmarkhealth.org.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150528006114/en/

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