Afternoon Coffee: Coupa targets visibility, risk, agility; Kodak gets federal loan — to aid drug production in U.S.; Meatpackers and social distancing

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Coupa announced its latest product developments, with the business spend management provider focusing on spend visibility, supply chain risk and business agility. The source-to-pay suite vendor said the enhancements are especially useful for responding to the coronavirus disruption.

The BSM provider detailed the three areas as:

• Increasing spend visibility and cost containment, which includes big data powered prescriptions, automated spend controls and democratized shipment tracking (a service for small and medium-size suppliers like larger firms get).
• Mitigating supply chain risk, which includes continuous supplier performance monitoring, prevent sourcing & payment fraud, and unified risk processes.
• Building agility as change arises, which includes greater payment flexibility via Coupa Pay, unified spend views and centralized dashboards.

Raja Hammoud, Coupa’s executive vice president of products, said in a press release that “now more than ever, these businesses need real-time visibility into their spend, the ability to mitigate their supply chain risk and cautiously manage their cash flow.”

Kodak to get into drug supply business, gets $765 million U.S. loan

It used to be a giant in the world of photography, but now Kodak is shifting gears and getting into production of drug ingredients using a loan provided under the Defense Production Act.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Eastman Kodak Co. has won a $765 million government loan under the Defense Production Act, the first of its kind. The purpose is to help expedite domestic production of drugs that can treat a variety of medical conditions and loosen the U.S. reliance on foreign sources.

U.S. meatpackers, coronavirus and social distancing in production lines

Some of the U.S. biggest meatpackers have revealed anti-coronavirus measures like staggered working shifts and increased sanitation but have no answers on social distancing of workers in their plants.

The responses of Tyson Foods Inc., JBS USA, Cargill Inc. and Smithfield Foods Inc. were released by Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker recently. The answers to questions posed by the senators were part of an investigation into measures undertaken to avoid the spread of the coronavirus in the meat industry. In many of these plants, workers were often in elbow-to-elbow conditions.

The letters amount to some of the most extensive explanations to date about how the meat producers responded to the crisis.