Business Strategy and Outlook
| Julie Bhusal Sharma |Coupa Software's moaty cloud-only platform in business spending management has significant market share gains to come, in our view. We think Coupa benefits from a narrow moat based on strong switching costs and a network effect. Coupa’s core platform allows users to procure indirect or direct spending for a company—everything from bottled water to laptops. While these use cases vary in mission criticality, we think switching costs persist throughout the business from the significant implementation time and costs as well as risks involved in changing vendors. Coupa’s network effect is driven by the increased benefits each supplier and procurer gain when additional users are added to the platform.