Spend management company Coupa has acquired
fraud-detection company Deep Relevance, which uses artificial intelligence-based
behavior analytics to help companies identify inflated expense claims,
duplicate expenses, personal expenses, fake vendors, fraudulent invoices,
conflicts of interest and more, according to Coupa. Deep Relevance evaluates
individual and companywide expense data, as well as receipt data, to create a "fraud
profile" and a behavioral risk analysis score for individuals. The company
also alerts companies about questionable transactions, prioritizing them by
dollar amounts. Coupa already partners with AppZen,
a T&E expense auditing company that also uses AI to analyze expense reports
and receipts to identify fraud. It also scours the Internet to verify that merchants
and meal companions that appear on clients' expense reports are real. AppZen,
too, applies an index score to indicate a traveler's tendency to violate policy
intentionally. AppZen CEO Anant Kale said its partnership with Coupa would
continue.