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December 18, 2025
Coupa’s Nari Viswanathan on Autonomous Spend, AI Accessibility, and the Future of Planning
At the Gartner Supply Chain Planning Summit in Denver, Scott Luton sat down with Nari Viswanathan, a veteran innovator in the planning and procurement technology space and a key leader at Coupa. The two reconnected after several recent collaborations—including webinars, industry sessions, and conversations in Dallas—and discussed the new realities of supply chain planning and how organizations are embracing technology like never before. Coupa and Autonomous Spend Management For those less familiar with Coupa, Viswanathan explained the company as the global leader in autonomous spend management—a framework that brings together direct and indirect spending to help organizations manage total spend more intelligently. Direct spend, of course, is where supply chain operations come into focus, making planning, design, and cost optimization central to the value Coupa delivers. Viswanathan leads Coupa’s global supply chain strategy, shaping how the company positions and scales its solutions across the market. After years spent in supply chain planning technology, he now sits at the intersection of procurement, supply chain, and advanced analytics—an area he believes has never been more exciting or more critical. Old Problems, New Pressures—and a Greater Willingness to Innovate When asked about the biggest challenges facing planners today, Viswanathan emphasized a…
April 23, 2021
This Week In Supply Chain Now: April 18th – 23rd
Listen up! Catch up on all the latest episodes, interviews, conversations, and livestreams from this week right here. On Monday, we released 3 new episodes! On Supply Chain Now, hosts Scott Luton and Ben Harris welcomed Colton Griffin, CEO of Flourish Software, to talk about how the supply chain for cannabis operates and how it could influence the modern supply chain. On This Week in Business History, host Scott W. Luton dives into 10 things that you may not know about the Suez Canal, a modern engineering marvel that has been the subject of global fascination recently. On Supply Chain Now en Espanol, hosts Enrique and Jose Miguel welcome Ignacio Alcalde with TW Logistica to the podcast. On Tuesday, we released 2 new episodes. On this episode of TEKTOK, powered by Supply Chain Now, hosts Karin Bursa and Scott Luton welcome Transplace CEO Frank McGuigan to the podcast to discuss how disruptions drive supply chain innovations and advancements. On TECHquila Sunrise, host Greg White sat down with Peter Stangeland, Chief Commercial Officer of DB Schenker, to talk about the exciting progress his teams have made in clearing the path to sustainability through innovative forms of transportation and his advice for…