Principal Strategist, Coupa
Invoice to Pay
Business spending management platform
Open for applications
Business spending management platform
1001+ employees
Open for applications
1001+ employees
Company mission
To provide a clear idea of business value for clients.
Role
Who you are
- 12–15+ years of experience in finance transformation, treasury, shared services, management consulting, or senior practitioner roles
- Deep hands-on or advisory experience across Invoice to Pay, payments, treasury operations, and working capital management
- Proven success engaging and influencing CFO, Controller, and Treasury leadership in complex enterprise environments
- Experience supporting or shaping SaaS, value selling, pre-sales, or commercial advisory motions is strongly preferred
- Exposure to global, multi-entity, or shared services operating models
- Expert-level understanding of AP, payments, treasury, and working capital mechanics
- Strong command of finance and AP KPIs (e.g., cost per invoice, touchless rate, exception rate, cycle time, DPO, cash forecasting accuracy)
- Ability to connect operational finance improvements to enterprise financial performance and shareholder value
- Executive presence with the confidence to challenge perspectives and guide strategic conversations
- Strong analytical capability to build, explain, and defend value models under executive scrutiny
- Exceptional storytelling skills grounded in real-world transformation experience
- Comfort operating in ambiguity with incomplete or imperfect data
What the job involves
- The Principal Strategist – Invoice to Pay, Treasury & Working Capital is a senior, customer-facing finance expert who serves as a trusted advisor to executive finance leaders and a strategic force multiplier for Coupa’s go-to-market organization
- This role sits at the intersection of domain authority, executive engagement, and commercial execution
- Strategist partners closely with Account Executives, Industry & Value Advisors, and Solution Advisors to shape finance-led value narratives, influence C-suite decision making, and accelerate pipeline generation and deal progression
- Unlike traditional delivery or advisory roles, this position is focused on executive credibility, deal shaping, and knowledge amplification, deep expertise in Invoice to Pay, Treasury, and Working Capital to Coupa’s most strategic opportunities while scaling that expertise across the broader sales and advisory ecosystem
- This role is pivotal in shifting Coupa’s finance-led conversations from product discussions to executive decisions
- You will directly influence pipeline creation, deal quality, and executive confidence—while scaling finance expertise across the organization. Success in this role is measured not by activity, but by impact on pipeline, deal velocity, win rates, and strategic credibility with finance leaders
- Executive Advisory & Deal Shaping
- Act as a peer-level advisor to CFOs, Controllers, Treasurers, Heads of Shared Services, and Finance Transformation leaders
- Participate in executive discovery conversations to uncover financial, operational, and risk-related priorities tied to AP, payments, liquidity, and cash management
- Shape and influence complex, finance-led buying decisions by connecting Coupa’s capabilities to measurable financial outcomes
- Pipeline Generation & Acceleration
- Partner with Account Executives to identify high-propensity accounts and finance-led entry points that unlock new pipeline
- Support territory and account planning by defining where Invoice to Pay, Treasury, and Working Capital narratives can drive differentiation and urgency
- Actively engage in priority deals to accelerate velocity, improve win rates, and increase deal size through value-based positioning
- Value Narrative & Business Case Leadership
- Translate operational improvements into CFO-level KPIs, including cash flow, working capital efficiency, risk reduction, and cost-to-serve
- Support the creation and validation of executive-ready business cases addressing:
- Invoice automation and cost-to-process reduction
- Payment accuracy, controls, and fraud mitigation
- Working capital optimization and liquidity improvement
- Governance, audit readiness, and compliance
- Challenge assumptions and guide customers toward fact-based, defensible investment decisions
- Knowledge Expansion & Enablement
- Elevate finance domain fluency across Industry & Value Advisors, Solution Advisors, and Sales through:
- Best-practice frameworks and reference architectures
- Benchmarks, value assumptions, and financial models
- Deal playbooks and executive messaging
- Serve as a thought partner to internal teams, helping mature Coupa’s finance-led value motion globally
- Coupa Solutions Focus Areas
- This role primarily supports strategic value positioning and executive engagement across:
- Coupa Invoice – Invoice intake automation, matching, exception management, controls, and scalability
- Coupa Pay – Centralized payments, virtual cards, payment controls, early pay programs, and supplier financing
- Coupa Treasury – Cash visibility, forecasting, liquidity management, intercompany netting, and financial governance
- Coupa Working Capital – Dynamic discounting, payment-term optimization, and cash acceleration
- Coupa Procure (Finance Outcomes) – PO compliance, upstream data quality, and controls that enable AP and treasury excellence
Our take
In 2006, Noah Eisner co-founded Coupa with Ravi Thakur, two fintech start-up specialists, as a provider of business spending management (BSM) services. Coupa has grown into its niche with a comprehensive platform that enables companies to gain greater control over their spending, supply networks, chain optimisation, liquidity management and payment solutions.
Coupa has been recognised as a leading brand in third-party risk management (TPRM). Using artificial intelligence software, its TPRM software takes data from hundreds of sources and generates risk flags across the entire platform, informing the user’s processing decisions.
TPRM integrates into Coupa’s business spending management systems to provide one comprehensive platform, a feat that gives it a definitive edge when it comes to secure management of company funds. Acquired in early 2023 by Thoma Bravo, Coupa is a company to watch, as progress in AI software could open opportunities for greater software automation on its platform.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
-3% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 7 rounds)
Jun 2015
$80m
SERIES G
Mar 2014
$40m
SERIES F
Total funding: $169m
Company benefits
- Employee stock purchase program
- Health benefits for employees and their families
- Retirement and savings plans
- Flexible work environment
Company HQ
Town Center, Foster City, CA
Leadership
Leagh Turner
(CEO & Board Of Directors)Previously on the Board of Directors at Plan International Canada, was the Co-CEO of Ceridian and was COO at SAP.
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