Aiming at helping users locally discovery retail services (e.g., entertainment and dinning), Online to Offline (O2O) service platforms have become popular in recent years, which greatly challenge current recommender systems. With the real data in Alipay, a feeds-like scenario for O2O services, we find that recurrence based temporal patterns and position biases commonly exist in our scenarios, which seriously threaten the recommendation effectiveness. To this end, we propose COUPA, an industrial system targeting for characterizing user preference with following two considerations: (1) Time aware preference: we employ the continuous time aware point process equipped with an attention mechanism to fully capture temporal patterns for recommendation. (2) Position aware preference: a position selector component equipped with a position personalization module is elaborately designed to mitigate position bias in a personalized manner. Finally, we carefully implement and deploy COUPA on Alipay with a cooperation of edge, streaming and batch computing, as well as a two-stage online serving mode, to support several popular recommendation scenarios. We conduct extensive experiments to demonstrate that COUPA consistently achieves superior performance and has potential to provide intuitive evidences for recommendation

Over the last few years, companies across industries from retail to manufacturing have started using digital twins to weather the worst of the world's ongoing supply-chain disruptions. "We wanted to step back and look at a country's whole health care network," says Heidi Albert, head of FIND South Africa. "That's what led us to supply-chain thinking." FIND (Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics) is a nonprofit based in Switzerland. Testing is one of the weakest links in global health care, says Albert: "Our aim is to make sure that everyone who needs a test has access to one."

Coupa Software has acquired AI-powered supply chain design and planning startup LLamasoft for $1.5 Billion. Founded in 2002, Michigan headquartered LLamasoft offers an AI-powered Enterprise Decision Platform. The company has raised a total of $56.1 million in funding to date, according to CrunchBase. Organizations can leverage the llama.ai Chairman and CEO at Coupa, Rob Bernshteyn, said, "We are witnessing an unprecedented shift in what businesses are demanding to effectively manage their supply chains. They need instant visibility, agile planning capabilities, and timely risk mitigation support. LLamasoft's deep supply chain expertise and sophisticated data science and modeling capabilities, combined with the roughly $2 trillion of cumulative transactional spend data we have in Coupa, will empower businesses with the intelligence needed to pivot on a dime. Together, we will deliver a more powerful Business Spend Management platform to help organizations everywhere maximize the value of every dollar they spend in a smarter, simpler, and safer way."

Coupa Software (NASDAQ: COUP), a leader in Business Spend Management (BSM), announced that it has acquired LLamasoft, a leader in AI-powered supply chain design and planning for a purchase price of approximately $1.5 billion. Based in Ann Arbor, Mich., LLamasoft's technology is used by hundreds of enterprise customers, including brands such as Boeing, Danone S.A., Home Depot, and Nestle. The acquisition will strengthen Coupa's supply chain capabilities, enabling businesses to drive greater value through Business Spend Management. The events of this year continue to demonstrate the importance of supply chain agility, as companies work to more rapidly adapt to changing consumer preferences, economic conditions, and the political landscape. With demand uncertainty on one hand and supply volatility on the other, companies are in need of supply chain technology that can help them assess alternatives and balance trade-offs to achieve desired business results.

Llamasoft's software helps companies model, design and optimize their supply-chain networks, using AI and algorithms to map out scenarios and mitigate potential risks. The Ann Arbor, Mich., company is backed by private-equity fund TPG Capital, which took a stake in 2017, and counts Boeing Co., Danone SA and Home Depot Inc. among its customers. This is Coupa's third acquisition this year. The company's platform helps businesses manage procurement, invoicing, payments, sourcing and other spending functions and has more than $1.95 trillion in cumulative spending by its customers under management. "We've pulled all these siloed processes together," Coupa CEO Rob Bernshteyn said.

What is the future of ITOps, and how is technology shaping that future? At a recent meet-up--co-hosted by Workato, Coupa, and VictorOps with guests from Splunk, Prysm, and Praecipio Consulting--ITOps professionals of all stripes gathered to hear a panel of industry experts address these questions. Leaders from four high-profile SaaS companies shared their insight into what the changing world of ITOps holds and how businesses can gain a competitive edge. One recurring theme all panelists agreed on is the power that emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) can bring to ITOps. "We need to ask: how can you augment processes with AI and ML?" commented Sreeni Garlapati, the VP of IT at Prysm.

Artificial intelligence is not new but, suddenly, everyone seems to be talking about it. We have hit an inflection point with computing power and data that is finally allowing for commercial applications of this technology, and that's what all the excitement is about. It's only going to get faster and better from here on out. Along with talk about the new possibilities, there is also a lot of fear about people possibly losing their job to a robot, or even becoming irrelevant. Despite the wow factor of being able to shout a command at Siri or Alexa and have a task performed, when you get right down to it the tasks they are performing are rudimentary.

Artificial intelligence is not new but, suddenly, everyone seems to be talking about it. We have hit an inflection point with computing power and data that is finally allowing for commercial applications of this technology, and that's what all the excitement is about. It's only going to get faster and better from here on out. Along with talk about the new possibilities, there is also a lot of fear about people possibly losing their job to a robot, or even becoming irrelevant. Despite the wow factor of being able to shout a command at Siri or Alexa and have a task performed, when you get right down to it the tasks they are performing are rudimentary.

Welcome to the Coupa Software Fourth Quarter and FY '17 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Miss Cynthia Hiponia. This is Cynthia Hiponia, Coupa Investor Relations and I'm pleased to welcome you to Coupa Software's fourth quarter earnings conference call. The primary purpose of today's call is to provide you with information regarding our FY '17 fourth quarter performance, in addition to our financial outlook for our FY '18 first quarter and full year. Just a reminder that our remarks today include forward-looking statements about our guidance and future results of operations, business strategies and plans, market size, products, competitive position and potential growth opportunities. Our actual results may be materially different. Forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are described in our earnings release and our Form 10-Q filed with the SEC on December 9, 2016. These forward-looking statements are based on our beliefs and assumptions today and we disclaim any obligation to update any forward-looking statement. If this call is replayed after today, the information presented during this call may not contain current or accurate information. During the call, we'll also present both GAAP and non GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP measures is included in today's earnings release which you could find on our Investor Relations website. A link to the replay of this call will also be available there and if you prefer to access the replay via phone you can find that information in the earnings release as well. Unless otherwise stated, gross comparisons made on this call are against the same period of the prior year. On behalf of my colleagues at Coupa, I'd like to start by thanking our customers. We thank them for their enthusiasm and embracing our game-changing value as a service approach. Together, we're doing things never before done in our industry in terms of time to value, teamwork, agility and the attainment of measurable results. I'd also like to thank our fast growing list of global Partners, who work with us and our customers hand in hand with the relentless customer success orientation. And last but certainly not least, I'd like to thank all our investors for their continued support as we continue to develop our business.

Coupa Software provides real-time analytics for pricing, assortment, demand and competitive metrics in the retail sector. The firm has had a big six months -- in October the firm launched a successful IPO, which saw its shares more than double on its first day of trading. Analysts at the time said the strength of the IPO underscored investors' appetite for technology. On its own, Coupa has already made its first big acquisition -- Spend360, a U.K. firm that provides digital data management solutions, including data analytics, using machine learning and artificial intelligence, for corporate finance and procurement teams. Many think this will be the first of a few upcoming acquisitions as Coupa adjusts to existence in the public markets and pushes forward on its path to profitability (as of its IPO, Coupa still wasn't quite there yet).