SUPPLY CHAIN PARTNER

That consistency extends to accessibility. Describing her relationship with Glencore’ s Christopher Courtemanche, she says simply:“ I’ m a phone call away.”

More than 13 years of delivery experience and upwards of 335 implementations feed directly into how SCP advises new clients.

“ The benefit is that we’ ve already made the mistakes, so our customers don’ t need to pay the school fees,” says Chimae.“ We can show them bad designs and good designs and explain why one is better than the other. It’ s not just a template, there’ s reasoning and learning behind it from other customers.”

Coupa Elite Partner status matters less to SCP as a badge than as a by-product of how it treats people.

“ It’ s not really about the badge, although we do appreciate it,” admits Chimae.“ It’ s more about the fact that our customers value what we do, which is the most important thing to us.”

From Coupa’ s side, Martin explains the status gives SCP“ inside access to our product roadmap” ahead of the wider market, plus a direct line to Coupa’ s engineering and product teams to resolve technical roadblocks quickly.

Asked what SCP does differently compared with larger SI partners, Martin points to lifecycle depth over pure configuration. Where many firms focus narrowly on implementation, SCP runs a“ full customer lifecycle model, a value-as-a-service approach” that stays involved from a client’ s earliest thinking about a solution through to managed services long after go-live.

Chimae attributes that same continuity to how SCP hires:“ When we recruit, we look for what people are passionate about and steer them towards it, so they can really innovate and grow, and the whole team gets better, which benefits the customer.” Long-term relationships are what sustain that track record. Reflecting on the Glencore partnership specifically, Chimae calls the years of continuous engagement“ critical”.

She adds:“ We’ re so grateful to Glencore for giving us the opportunity to work alongside them for so many years, because we’ re also learning about their business as we go. We’ re the enablers, but we need to understand what we’ re enabling.”

Where clients only engage for a single project, the relationship rarely reaches its full potential:“ If it’ s touch-and-go, it’ s harder to pick up and keep innovating.”

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