CEO Leagh Turner's Opening Keynote at Coupa Inspire 2025

Coupa Inspire 2025 is officially under way at the ARIA Resort in Las Vegas.

Amid global trade challenges, the premier conference is aimed at equipping procurement, supply chain and finance executives with transformative strategies to effectively manage disruptions.

The two-day event offers numerous sessions focusing on how the comprehensive adoption of Coupa's solutions can streamline operational efficiencies.

Proceedings began on Tuesday (May 13) with an insightful keynote delivered by Coupa CEO Leagh Turner, highlighting the company's ambition to shape the future of global trade.

Adapting to trade challenges

Leagh opened by outlining Coupa's transformative vision to reshape global trade via data-centric innovations and AI.

This spend management powerhouse, with nearly two decades of experience, is leveraging a colossal US$8tn in transactional data to enable businesses to navigate market complexities.

"The world has not been faced with such enormous impacts to trade in more than a hundred years," Leagh stated, echoing Carol B Tomé, CEO at UPS.

"Decades-old concepts of globalism are changing," she added. "Trade flows are changing, partnerships will change, supply chains will change."

Key benefits for procurement leaders

Amid challenging times, Coupa presents three essential benefits to its community of 3,200 customers and 10 million suppliers.

Firstly, the platform enables companies to achieve cost efficiency without hindering expansion.

Leagh noted that "global trade amounts to about US$33tn a year and is growing at about 14.5% per year," with about "half a trillion dollars of inefficiency to be extracted" from global supply chains.

Secondly, Coupa's community-centric model provides unmatched flexibility and resilience.

"In this community, you know that there's a big difference between predicting uncertainty and knowing how to embrace it," Leagh emphasised. 

Coupa's anonymised, structured data provides crucial insights such as "who bought from whom and when, against what regulation and why, in what quantity and at what price"—vital for planning optimal scenarios during supply chain disturbances.

Finally, Coupa is harnessing AI to refine procurement workflows, offering "an opportunity together to reimagine workforce, leveraging the power of AI, taking out transactional work and freeing you and your teams up to be exactly what you are, which is strategic thought partners to your business."

Turner explained that this evolution delivers "bottom line savings and top line growth at exactly the same time".

Shaping global trade dynamics

Leagh expanded on Coupa's ambitious outlook: "At Coupa, we're building the network that powers the future of global trade."

The company is making strides through what she described as a "multi-sided network based on Coupa's community data with interconnected business flows executed by AI agents."

Leagh went on to say Coupa's endeavors are "ambitious, measurable and achievable".

With its cloud-first architecture, comprehensive workflows for buyers and suppliers and collective community data, Coupa aims to foster an ecosystem where "trade flows autonomously without human intervention," enabling companies to "embrace change and find opportunity in volatility," while enhancing global commerce to be "more sustainable, more equitable and more accountable". 

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