How Coupa uses Watershed to power its climate program
After noticing a sharp increase in customer requests for Coupa’s climate measurement reports, Coupa knew that launching an ESG program would be critical to long-term customer acquisition and retention, investor relations, and employee engagement.
With its climate ambitions established and a program launched, the team realized gathering and processing carbon emissions data was more time consuming than expected, and partnering with an external consultant left them looking for more detailed, actionable information.
The team needed a way to set goals, track emissions, and make climate an organization-wide effort, from sales to procurement and engineering.
Challenge
The Coupa ESG team needed a platform to holistically measure emissions through scope 3, capture more real-time data, and streamline efforts to move to net zero. A consultant proved limiting (measuring mostly scopes 1 and 2), and spreadsheets were unscalable with 20+ global offices and 95% of their emissions coming from scope 3.
Solution
Moving from spreadsheets and consultants to Watershed's platform allowed the Coupa team to manage all climate inventories and reporting in one place. The team uses the facilities platform for utility usage, the supplier portal to drill down to supplier spend, and the estimation tool, among other tools. Coupa's 2023 CDP questionnaire through Watershed also moved much faster than managing spreadsheets and offline calculators.
Outcomes
• Reliable data to set strategy and goals—from limited emissions data to comprehensive scopes, 1, 2, and 3 data, Coupa's team now has granular understanding of their emissions factors.
• A faster path to decarbonization—with current data coming into their platform from across their offices and teams, the Coupa ESG team can disclose emissions and act on their goals much faster, without arduous manual work.
• Delighted customers—the team can respond quickly to customers asking for climate strategy info and emissions data.
• Cross-functional buy-in—the team's climate strategy now involves teams across the company, including procurement, cloud operations, sales, legal, and more. All teams are able to achieve their goals more quickly and with better data.
• Investor relations—As a portfolio company of private equity firm Thoma Bravo, working with Watershed helps Coupa align with Thoma Bravo's ESG and climate tracking initiatives, reporting easily on their own goals and actions.
Challenge
“What makes our ESG efforts unique is the intersection of climate with our social impact programs and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) strategy,” explains Kellie McKelvey, Coupa’s Senior Manager of Sustainability and ESG Reporting. “For example, when we look at carbon offsets or renewable energy credits, we always seek solutions incorporating environmental justice. And we collaborate with our Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) to leverage our social impact and ESG programs, such as our Equal Air Project.”
ESG also plays a role in Coupa’s product: The total spend management platform recently began computing carbon emissions associated with different travel modes and purchasing decisions. This functionality empowers Coupa’s customers to make climate-informed decisions and brings Coupa’s ESG commitment full circle.
Finally, investors and the market generally view companies that do climate well—accurately gathering, measuring, and reporting their impact with an eye to reductions—in a favorable light. As a Thoma Bravo portfolio company, Coupa must consider its investors and market sentiment as it builds out its climate program.
In the conversations Gina Tesla, VP of ESG at Coupa, has with customers, climate and DEI come up weekly. “Having a climate strategy was integral to comply with regulations and meet our investor, customer, and employee needs, but to even start on our climate strategy and accurately report on ESG, we needed a platform to do so,” she explains.
The team would have had to dedicate an entire person’s time to just processing climate data—a task that would be nearly impossible to begin with.
In the beginning, the team partnered with a consultant, but they still encountered limitations. The consultant couldn’t measure their full footprint—only scopes 1 and 2, and business travel for scope 3, which meant they couldn’t take a holistic approach to scope 3 and establish a net zero target. Because scope 3 includes all indirect emissions outside of electricity, heat, and cooling—such as those from suppliers and cloud operations—it was more challenging to quantify, leading Coupa to look for a way to measure these emissions. Without this data—or with incomplete versions of this data—they were unable to set a clear direction for their climate strategy.
They also had to backpedal to understand the numbers, running their carbon emissions inventory and then going back into the weeds to understand emissions factors and where the data was coming from, which rarely painted a full picture. “We wanted more real-time data,” McKelvey explains.
This lack of understanding meant that they would never reach net zero emissions. “We can’t make real reductions in our scope 3 emissions without seeing the details within each category,” McKelvey says. She wanted to drill down into data to understand where exactly Coupa’s emissions are coming from, especially its scope 3 emissions, like cloud operations and supply chain, and understand what suppliers made up the largest portion of emissions.
“We knew we had to have a climate strategy, but we knew we couldn’t do it on our own.”
Kellie McKelvey,
Senior ESG Manager, Coupa
Solution
With its climate program launched, Coupa began using Watershed to manage all climate inventories and reporting. To do this, they compile their annual inventory by running all applicable scope 1, 2, and 3 carbon emissions through Watershed.
Where they previously used spreadsheets—unscalable with 20+ global offices and 95% of emissions coming from scope 3—Coupa now uses Watershed’s facilities platform to get an accurate picture of utility usage and Watershed’s supplier portal to drill down into supplier spend and emission factors. The workplace operations team is empowered to update facility information, and use the estimation tool to understand and report how their work impacts Coupa’s carbon footprint.
Using the platform’s CDP reporting feature for the first time in 2023, Coupa completed its first CDP questionnaire. “Without Watershed, CDP is very time-consuming,” McKelvey explains. “I love that Watershed populates our data from the platform into CDP responses. Previously, I would have had to manage several spreadsheets and offline calculations.”
Finally, Watershed empowers Tesla, McKelvey, and the team to give cross-functional partners like procurement and cloud operations access to their climate data, driving a deeper understanding of and commitment to climate initiatives across the organization. For example, procurement conversations with suppliers are now about more than just what Coupa is buying and the cost—they’re about carbon emissions and their environmental impact, too.
“Without Watershed, CDP is very time-consuming. I love that Watershed populates our data from the platform into CDP responses. Previously, I would have had to manage several spreadsheets and offline calculations. ”
Kellie McKelvey,
Senior ESG Manager, Coupa
Outcomes
With Watershed, Coupa has established its climate program, begun measuring a baseline, and set its first climate goals. Some results the ESG program has achieved with Coupa include:
Increasingly, Coupa has observed customers requesting climate information at the RFP stage and in renewal conversations with existing customers. “We’re seeing more customers shift from climate strategy as a recommendation for suppliers to climate strategy as a requirement,” Tesla says. “Many customers knew we previously didn’t have a climate strategy and have loved seeing our evolution.”
To respond to customer requests, the sales and legal teams have prepopulated the answers to climate questions at the RFP stage and can field more detailed requests by pulling data from Watershed as needed. Watershed helps the team by providing necessary data that adheres to stringent methodology: “Our customers understand that emissions factors are audited and want to make sure the data we’re giving them is correct,” explains McKelvey. “It’s helpful to provide them more information about where our methodologies are coming from, which Watershed helps us do.”
Watershed has shifted Coupa’s narrative around working with customers in a climate-positive way.
In the early stages of establishing its climate strategy, Coupa had limited emissions data, and when they worked with a consultant, they didn’t see much of an improvement in data quality or coverage. Plus, gathering and processing data was time consuming for the team. They needed more granular data to understand their scope 3 emissions and develop a data-driven climate strategy.
With Watershed, they now have reliable, current, and comprehensive data to measure all their scopes 1, 2, and 3 emissions and drive their plan for action. With more actionable insights for real decarbonization, they can set intentional goals and measure their progress. This strengthens their ESG efforts overall, improves customer and investor relations, and will help Coupa achieve its climate goals faster.
Using Watershed has helped the entire organization become more climate-focused. McKelvey relies on Watershed to educate different teams, like procurement and cloud operations, about the impact of their work on climate.
On the customer-facing side of Coupa’s work, sales and legal have understood the imperative behind climate for a while. With Watershed, they are confident that they have the most relevant, accurate climate information from audited methodology.
This cross-functional understanding of and buy-in for Coupa’s strategy has also brought ESG to the forefront of the organization, even prompting Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) to pursue climate initiatives.
When Coupa created its climate strategy, it was a public company. Since then, Coupa was acquired by private equity firm Thoma Bravo, which strongly emphasizes ESG and climate tracking within its portfolio companies.
With Watershed, Coupa can align on initiatives and goals—and report to Thoma Bravo more easily.
Since launching their climate program, Coupa received validation from the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) in July 2024 for its near-term and long-term targets including net zero emissions by FY2041.
In addition to Coupa striving to meet regulations and establish a baseline for its climate work, its customers face increasing regulatory requirements. “Regulatory bodies are becoming more and more stringent, and so are our customers, whether they demand climate reporting because they are regulated or it is core to their business,” McKelvey says. “Watershed helps us tell the full story to our customers and reassure them of our commitments and achievements.”
With Watershed, Coupa’s climate strategy—and story—have become part of the broader organization, helping to embed sustainability awareness, initiatives, and impact across the company.
Watershed has helped Coupa establish and hone in on what it must do to meet its climate strategy, and also understand what its customers need in a total spend management platform.
“Soon, we’ll have multiple years of data to understand how to curb our footprint by working with our suppliers, amending our travel policies, and empowering employees to partake in environmental initiatives,” McKelvey says. “And as we deepen our environmental understanding across our organization, we’ll be able to build a better platform for our customers.”