BSM Firm Coupa Buys Yapta To Help Firms Slash T&E

Business spend management (BSM) firm Coupa Software has acquired travel price optimization startup Yapta to help companies slash travel and expenses (T&E), Coupa announced on Tuesday (Jan. 7).

Seattle-based Yapta tracks prices for airlines and hotels in real time and alerts people instantly when prices drop. The startup services thousands of clients, including over 100 Fortune 500 companies. According to the company, average savings work out to 2-4 percent of corporate travel budgets.

Rob Bernshteyn, chairman and CEO of Coupa, said businesses spend over $1 trillion annually on travel. “Yapta offers greater transparency into travel spend, helping businesses get the most value from their travel planning. I am excited to welcome the Yapta team to Coupa and look forward to furthering our joint mission of empowering businesses with the visibility and control they need to spend smarter.”

Working within the T&E offering on the Coupa platform, Yapta will automatically rebook airline and hotel reservations at the lowest price offered without affecting a traveler’s experience.

“Yapta was founded on the concept of enabling travelers to get the most value and savings out of their travel plans, and we’re proud to have saved our corporate customers across the globe hundreds of millions of dollars,” said James Filsinger, CEO of Yapta.

He added that becoming part of the Coupa BSM platform was “a logical next step for our company, given Coupa’s strong focus on delivering value across business spend management.”

Headquartered in Silicon Valley and founded in 2006, Coupa claims that its cloud-based BSM platform has connected business clients with over four million suppliers across the globe, offering transparency and control over how companies spend money.

Home rental platforms are dealing with an influx of fraudulent listings, much like the broader sharing economy, but fake listings on such marketplaces represent higher stakes due to the high costs involved. Business travel comes with its own challenges that consumer travelers may not share, including the need to have expenses and locations carefully vetted by travel managers within the company.