Coupa Inspire: Harpreet Narula, CrossCountry

At Coupa Inspire 2026, Harpreet Narula, Coupa Practice Leader at CrossCountry Consulting, reflects on a whirlwind 12 months defined by artificial intelligence and its rapid, unrelenting spread across every corner of business.

Talking to Procurement Magazine during the event at the Aria Resort, Harpreet discusses how AI is reshaping roles far beyond procurement, offers practical advice for organisations still hesitant to adopt the technology and reflects on CrossCountry Consulting's recognition as Coupa's Sales Partner of the Year for North America, crediting a client-first culture and genuine collaboration for the win.

We spoke at Coupa Inspire last year. What's been going on over the last 12 months?

It’s been an exciting journey to see how the world is changing in front of our eyes every day with this crazy thing called AI. I don't even know what it is yet.

Just how much is AI continuing to influence your job?

It's not just my job. I think everybody, probably in the world, is being impacted in some way or fashion with AI.

If they’re not, they're probably behind the curve.

What would your message be to those behind the curve – those a little bit hesitant about AI implementation?

The first thing is: be curious, learn. AI is so vast and it is changing so rapidly. Nobody knows everything.

I don't care who the best expert in the world is — they probably don't know everything around AI. What I would recommend is take the baby steps, learn what AI is, figure out what you can do and take some of the courses that are available for free.

Then look at simple things that you can potentially leverage AI for before you think, "Oh yeah, I could change the world." Do the baby steps and move forward from there.

CrossCountry Consulting has been named Coupa's Sales Partner of the Year for North America. Firstly, how does that feel? And secondly, why do you think you stood out?

Thank you. It is an absolute pleasure to receive the award from Coupa. We've been receiving these awards for the last five, six years.

First of all, thank you to the Coupa community, thank you to Coupa the company, but more importantly, thank you to the CrossCountry team. The main reason we consistently win these awards is because of our team.

Our goal is to deliver a different experience – a better experience – for clients. And the way we do that is by making sure we go above and beyond to help support the client in their needs for Coupa or whatever else they might need. And that is exactly what is being represented by the awards that we're receiving.

When we think about partnership, it is a collaboration, and that's how we approach it with Coupa, but also with our customers. We want to make sure we're doing right by our team and keeping customers at the front of how we manage these things.