At a time when businesses globally are focused on improving operational costs, electric vehicle designer and manufacturer Rivian has fuelled its business with Coupa Software‘s Business Spend Management (BSM) Platform.
In one year, Illinois-based Rivian used the Coupa platform to save more than $200 million in smarter purchasing, planning and business execution. Those dollars are serving Rivian as an engine for investment throughout the company.
Brad Hood, Rivian director of indirect procurement, said: “In the past two years, we’ve saved more than $280 million using Coupa – $213 million last year alone, which represented $4 million saved for every member of our procurement team.
“The impact of these savings was astronomical for the organisation during such tumultuous economic times. Not only that, but the benchmarking performance data Coupa provides through Community.ai pushes our team to exceed the industry standards. We’ve become more efficient and effective, and we’re just getting started.”
With Coupa, Rivian rolled out scalable spend management initiatives to support turbo-charged growth. The company is able to focus on tactical buying, ensuring all spend is competitively sourced and funnelled through the appropriate channels. Rivian evaluates spending across the company, analyses supplier data, and measures that information against industry standards to elevate performance.
This is good news for the company in terms of its economic viability as well as ultimately offering the best value for its customers. Back in September 2021, the company saw its first Rivian R1T zero-emissions truck roll off the line. This was ahead of Ford’s F-150 Lightning, General Motors’ Electric Hummer and the much anticipated Telsa Cybertruck.
The company also had an extremely productive 2022, In July, Amazon announced that customers in the US would soon see custom electric delivery vehicles from Rivian delivering their packages. This rollout was just the beginning of what is expected to be thousands of Amazon’s custom electric delivery vehicles in more than 100 cities by the end of this year. The online retailer plans to have 100,000 electric vehicles across the US by 2030.
In September, Mercedes-Benz Vans and Rivian, announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to initiate a strategic partnership. The partnership will enable the companies to cooperate on the production of electric vans.
The companies intend to establish a new joint venture manufacturing company. The purpose is to invest in, and operate, a factory in Europe to produce large electric vans for both Mercedes-Benz Vans and Rivian. This is intended to start in a couple of years.
Mark Riggs, Coupa chief customer officer, said: “Cost savings is a top priority for every business. The Business Spend Management community has shown that by spending smarter together, we also save smarter together.
“We’re thrilled that Coupa is helping Rivian to drive strategic decisions and improve their entire operation, from planning to production to sale. The ability to then redirect those savings to transitioning the world toward more sustainable energy is huge. We’re proud to play a role in enabling such an important and impactful mission.”
