Principal Strategist, Category Management COE - Nordics
Coupa makes margins multiply through its community-generated AI and industry-leading total spend management platform for businesses large and small. Coupa AI is informed by trillions of dollars of direct and indirect spend data across a global network of 10M+ buyers and suppliers. We empower you with the ability to predict, prescribe, and automate smarter, more profitable business decisions to improve operating margins.
Why join Coupa?
• Pioneering Technology: At Coupa, we're at the forefront of innovation, leveraging the latest technology to empower our customers with greater efficiency and visibility in their spend.
• Collaborative Culture: We value collaboration and teamwork, and our culture is driven by transparency, openness, and a shared commitment to excellence.
• Global Impact: Join a company where your work has a global, measurable impact on our clients, the business, and each other.
Learn more on Life at Coupa blog and hear from our employees about their experiences working at Coupa.
The Impact of a Principal Strategist, Category Management COE at Coupa:
As we scale our integration across Coupa's global sales organization, we're building a Center of Excellence (CoE) to enable and support the business in selling Cirtuo. We are seeking a Strategic Value Consultant, a seasoned procurement leader with deep category management experience, who can translate practitioner knowledge into commercial success.
This is a unique, hybrid role: part strategist, part evangelist, part executive deal sponsor. You'll educate and enable Coupa account teams, govern executive-level prospect discussions, and help shape how Cirtuo's value is positioned as a mission-critical strategic platform in the market. This role is strictly focused on strategic alignment and deal acceleration, not technical solutioning or basic pre-sales activities.
What You'll Do:
- CoE Enablement & Strategic Positioning: Drive organizational readiness by training Coupa's sales organization (AEs, Solution Advisors, CVMs) on Cirtuo's strategic positioning, Executive Value Narrative, and advanced use cases. Equip them with the confidence to transition the sales conversation from tactical to strategic.
- Executive Alignment & Credibility: Engage in critical, mid- to late-stage client and prospect conversations as a subject matter expert to articulate the strategic value of Cirtuo. Build immediate credibility at the CPO and VP level by connecting category management best practices to tangible business outcomes and operating model transformation.
- Strategic Deal Acceleration: Partner with sales teams during key inflection points of the opportunity lifecycle. Provide strategic governance for the value proposition, validating the ROI business case, and creating the urgency required to drive a successful, time-bound decision. Act as a trusted advisor during final-stage deal discussions to overcome strategic hurdles and close business.
- Thought Leadership & Evangelism: Represent Cirtuo as a procurement transformation advocate, in internal forums, executive customer meetings, and external industry events. Share proprietary insights on how leading organizations leverage strategy automation to drive impact at a global scale.
- Cross-functional Collaboration: Work closely with Product, Marketing, and Customer Success to feedback high-level strategic insights from the field, helping to refine messaging, analyst positioning, and the strategic narrative.
- Pipeline Influence: Help identify white space and strategic opportunities within Coupa's customer base where Cirtuo can expand strategic value and accelerate overall growth.
What You Will Bring to Coupa:
- 10+ years of strategic procurement or category management experience derived from a global, large-scale enterprise environment.
- Proven ability to engage, challenge, and influence at the CPO and VP levels on topics like category strategy, organizational design, and enterprise-wide value delivery.
- Deep experience influencing digital transformation and driving the adoption of procurement technology.
- Commercial acumen and comfort working alongside sales teams in executive-level pre-sales or consultative selling environments.
- Impeccable executive presence, strategic communication, and business storytelling skills.
- Collaborative mindset and ability to operate cross-functionally in a fast-paced, global SaaS organization.
- Previous experience in management consulting, procurement strategy leadership, or senior solution advisory roles is a significant advantage.
Coupa complies with relevant laws and regulations regarding equal opportunity and offers a welcoming and inclusive work environment. Decisions related to hiring, compensation, training, or evaluating performance are made fairly, and we provide equal employment opportunities to all qualified candidates and employees.
Please be advised that inquiries or resumes from recruiters will not be accepted.
By submitting your application, you acknowledge that you have read Coupa's Privacy Policy and understand that Coupa receives/collects your application, including your personal data, for the purposes of managing Coupa's ongoing recruitment and placement activities, including for employment purposes in the event of a successful application and for notification of future job opportunities if you did not succeed the first time. You will find more details about how your application is processed, the purposes of processing, and how long we retain your application in our Privacy Policy.