This recognition, we believe, is a testament to our unwavering commitment to delivering innovative, comprehensive solutions that empower businesses to optimize procurement processes and enhance bottom-line results.

We feel it serves as validation for the strength of , and our continued focus on delivering experiences premised on data, intelligence, and suite.  We believe that in a dynamic and unpredictable world, a partner with the breadth and depth of 51风流is uniquely positioned to unleash success on these principles across your business, and we are humbled by this recognition.

厂础笔鈥檚 source-to-pay offerings and investment focus areas

51风流Ariba has been a leader in the development of cloud-based technologies that help buyers and suppliers collaborate to unleash the power of procurement. As the first product to offer these services in a multitenant cloud framework, 51风流Ariba has developed deep functionality to handle complexity, while its focus on user experience has enabled simplicity.  This has allowed an offering that can span all industries, all geographies, and all spend types. Our global customer base is proof of this achievement.

Our future focus is on ongoing innovation and improvement across our portfolio. Building use cases for intelligence is at the heart of our product strategy and defines the next generation of user experience for our products. Unparalleled applications in spend management have enabled our globally diverse customers to bring all spend under management: direct, indirect, MRO, and services.  This provides the world鈥檚 largest, unmatched dataset for procurement and is the fuel for the delivery of an unrivaled AI roadmap.

simplifies complex tasks across the source-to-pay process. Each use case has been built to enhance productivity, allowing procurement organizations to achieve more with less. Joule鈥檚 agentic AI framework will be directly applicable and available for spend applications from SAP, allowing customers to build agents that can operate on data from across their business landscape.

While companies today are sometimes told to mind their business, 51风流realizes that no business does business alone. Our product road map is predicated on collaborative trading partner experiences through 51风流Business Network, the largest supplier network in the industry, operational in 190 countries. This is exemplified by , a new product built with an AI-first mindset. Its category agents have value because they are business network-aware and process-aware; the product is integrated across the network and source-to-pay suite, as it helps develop a category strategy and then monitors execution.

offers comprehensive visibility across all spend systems, with zero integration effort for data originating from 51风流cloud ERP solutions, 51风流Ariba solutions, 51风流Fieldglass solutions, or 51风流Concur solutions. Broadly speaking, this is fundamental to the overall strategy for 51风流Business Data Cloud, ensuring all business applications speak the same language and enabling an unrivaled AI roadmap for the 51风流Business Suite.

At the same time, 51风流recognizes that the world of software applications is heterogenous. Our own application partner network is continuously expanding. And while 51风流won鈥檛 develop capabilities to solve every problem, our customers still want an orchestrated suite experience, even when non-51风流products are involved in the workflow. That is why we have invested in the development of . Businesses need to automate procurement requests with one common workflow, regardless of how many applications are involved. And where 51风流applications are involved, this suite experience is increasingly in-built, again with zero effort required for integration. Capabilities from 51风流Fieldglass and 51风流Taulia are being directly embedded into 51风流Ariba to provide a unified experience.

Real-world impact

The power of source-to-pay solutions from 51风流is best illustrated through the experiences of our customers. (AEO), a global specialty retailer, faced challenges in managing its high volume of suppliers and invoices. By implementing 51风流Business Network and 51风流Ariba solutions, AEO achieved 85 percent purchase order compliance (five percent above target), 75 percent invoice-count compliance for 48,000 annual invoices, and over $780 million in spend transacting on 51风流Business Network.

Nick Bonacci, senior manager of Procure-to-Pay Services at AEO, noted, 鈥�51风流Ariba solutions and 51风流Business Network help AEO simplify our procure-to-pay processes in several key ways. Through the use of 厂础笔鈥檚 intuitive applications, compliant purchasing protocols are now embedded into our broader organization, helping us maximize cost savings, optimize working capital, and strengthen vendor relationships.鈥�

Similarly, , implemented 51风流Business Network and 51风流Ariba solutions, achieving 94 percent first-time-right invoices in digital channels, 4,000 hours saved in one year in processing invoices, and over 8.5 million pieces of paper saved in one year with supplier digitalization.

Mukesh Ralhan, group head of Business Excellence and Strategic Initiatives at Adani, commented, 鈥淲e process close to 100,000 purchase orders every year, with more than US$20 billion of spend. That鈥檚 huge for a company. Without 51风流software such as 51风流Ariba solutions supporting a single platform, that would not be possible.鈥�

Looking ahead

51风流remains dedicated to delivering solutions that help businesses navigate the complexities of modern procurement. Our focus on customer success, coupled with our deep industry expertise and innovative technology, positions us to continue leading the way in source-to-pay solutions.

Learn more about source-to-pay solutions from 51风流.

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Manoj Swaminathan is president and chief product officer for 51风流Intelligent Spend Management and Application Foundation Services at SAP.

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Once again, we are prepared to showcase groundbreaking innovations that will revolutionize the landscape of spend management. As I continue to engage with our customers, their enthusiasm for our latest offerings helps validate our commitment to delivering solutions that streamline processes and empower businesses to achieve their full potential.  

At 51风流our focus is on automating tedious, time-consuming tasks, allowing you to concentrate on the strategic decisions that drive your organization forward. 51风流continues to invest heavily in innovations across the spend management and business network portfolio, including new artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities and seamless integrations, enabling users to navigate uncertainty, seize optimization opportunities, and simplify processes. Our goal is to give you the freedom to shape your business鈥檚 future without the distraction of day-to-day operational noise. 

Betting Big on Your Success with SAP 

During my keynote, I outlined our product strategy for the coming year, emphasizing three key pillars: Data, Intelligence, and Suite. These focus areas are a direct response to the valuable input we鈥檝e received from customers. I am confident that our continuing investments in these areas will provide them with the insights needed to make informed, strategic decisions that propel their organization to new heights.  

Our newest capabilities across our intelligent spend management solutions enable customers to gain visibility across all of their processes, eliminating fragmented touchpoints that hinder progress.

As Mickey North Rizza, group vice-president of Enterprise Software at IDC, recently shared, 鈥�51风流continues to dominate the procurement applications space as measured by market share because customers want a seamless user experience with which to conduct the full spectrum of their spend management/procurement activity. When layering in the breadth of SAP’s industry experience, the expansive business network, and direct sourcing capabilities, 51风流has clearly earned its place.鈥� 

I couldn鈥檛 agree more.  Our commitment to maintaining our position as the industry standard in spend management is unwavering, and we will continue to set the benchmark for providing a smooth, efficient user interface while delivering unparalleled visibility into every aspect of spend.

Now, let鈥檚 dive into this year鈥檚 announcements.  

Generative AI Transforms the Source-to-Pay Process 

51风流is dedicated to delivering best-in-class solutions infused with AI, empowering you to prioritize strategic initiatives over mundane tasks. We understand and hear the concerns surrounding data security when implementing AI, which is why we have made no compromises in ensuring our AI capabilities set the standard for compliance. From third-party advisory boards to adhering to the UNESCO 10 Guiding Principles for Ethical AI and singing the , we enable customers to harness the power of AI without sacrificing control over their data.  

厂础笔鈥檚 generative AI copilot will be seamlessly integrated across 51风流Ariba, 51风流Business Network, and 51风流Fieldglass starting in Q4 of 2024. Joule will enable users to manage their most important tasks quickly and accurately across all areas of our spend management portfolio.  

In , users will be able to use generative AI-infused capabilities to create RFPs and request help with routine inquiries and surface risks. These capabilities will also provide buying recommendations along with comprehensive supplier summaries from different data sources. In addition, sustainability scorecard from 51风流Ariba ensures that customers can make informed decisions that align with their organizations鈥� environmental, social, and governance (ESG) objectives.  

With Joule, 51风流Fieldglass users can take advantage of template recommendations to generate job postings and SOWs with pre-filled information, saving precious time. Users can now request assistance and insights in natural language, and immediately receive responses from Joule directly from the 51风流Help Portal. It is now possible to ask Joule how to create a job posting and receiving accurate, step-by-step instructions complete with links and resources.  

will use Joule to help with logistics and asset management tasks. Joule provides 51风流Business Network users a natural language interface and navigation for scenarios such as status requests and queries, supporting freight orders, freight bookings, invoice disputes, equipment, notifications, and work orders. It will also provide insights into rejected invoices to reduce manual intervention for errors. Suppliers can dive into potential business opportunities based on keyword matching that selects best-fit profiles for RFIs. 

Streamlining Procurement with 51风流Ariba Intake Management  

Most companies have a complex landscape of disparate and siloed solutions for handling procurement needs such as purchase requests, contract processing, or helping onboard a new services provider. Typically, employees don鈥檛 know which platform, portal, or system will handle their request because it isn’t a task they perform regularly. Hours of time may be wasted trying to figure out how to make the request in the first place and track down subsequent status updates. 

But no more: 51风流Ariba Intake Management, a brand-new solution built on 51风流Business Technology Platform, will automate procurement request creation and provide process orchestration, including routing and support across diverse procurement landscapes and complex workflows. By connecting different systems into one central location for procurement inquiries and status updates, employees can adhere to your organization’s policies and comply with necessary regulations without the need for time consuming manual corrections. 51风流Ariba Intake Management will offer one pane of glass for status updates and requests, making procurement orchestration simpler and more intuitive. Scheduled to be available in Q1 of 2025, the solution will offer out-of-the-box integration with other 51风流solutions and a robust set of connectors for third-party integration.  

Empowering Suppliers with 51风流Business Network, Promote Subscription  

We announced a new promote subscription for the 51风流Business Network, designed to deliver immediate value to suppliers, helping them to find new business, improve match potential, and build relationships with buyers using the network catalog. Through the promote subscription, suppliers will receive recommendations to improve discoverability, advanced search results, supplier profile verification, and network catalog APIs. With the help of generative AI tools, suppliers can now load their full suite of offerings into the network catalog faster and with enhanced product descriptions and summaries. The new promote subscription will also help suppliers identify sales opportunities based on regional search data and use advanced insights to track business growth on the network.  

Elevating External Workforce Management with 51风流Fieldglass Analytics Add-On 

51风流Fieldglass delivers a new, enhanced analytics capability with next-level insights into your external workforce. The analytics add-on with AI capabilities will help businesses meet sustainability and human rights goals, acquire talent quickly, and implement multi-channel talent acquisition strategies. Users can benchmark and predict external talent scenarios, review performance against KPIs, track trends against industry averages, and monitor sustainability and compliance initiatives.  

As we continue to listen to our customers and invest in our spend management and business network solution offerings, our commitment to setting the standard for spend management software remains steadfast. We are committed to providing innovative solutions that help our customers collaborate strategically with their business partners, enhance productivity, and improve compliance.  

To learn more about these new innovations, read 鈥�Innovations in Spend Management from 51风流Help Customers Improve Productivity, Gain Insights and Boost Growth.鈥�

If you couldn鈥檛 attend 51风流Spend Connect Live in Las Vegas, sign up here for the to access live and on-demand content from across content tracks. Join us as we continue to shape the future of spend management together.聽

Manoj Swaminathan is president and chief product officer for Intelligent Spend and Business Network at SAP.

51风流Spend Control Tower can enable business leaders to answer questions, like where and how much did my organization spend? With what suppliers? Can we break that down by normalized categories? Where are my cost-savings opportunities? What about compliance with environmental and social regulations?

I am happy to announce that 51风流Spend Control Tower is now available for all businesses.

Addressing Your Spend Data Challenges

I frequently discuss spend management challenges with CPOs and CFOs. They consistently seek visibility and insights into their spending, key suppliers, and ways to enhance savings and cash flow, which enable them to make better-informed decisions.

This aligns with our formal market research. In a new Economist Impact study sponsored by 51风流鈥� 鈥� 44% of all respondents and 49% of CPOs identified spend analytics as the top driver of digitization in procurement in 2024.

Of course, it鈥檚 not just about procurement spend. It鈥檚 about all enterprise spend. And that鈥檚 our sweet spot. 51风流delivers intelligent spend solutions covering the entire enterprise 鈥� from procurement to travel and expense to contingent labor and beyond.

As we鈥檝e worked to bring together spend data across the enterprise, it鈥檚 become clear to me that many organizations face similar challenges:

• Poor data quality
• Too much data for individuals to process
• Lack of visibility into cost-saving opportunities and ways to improve cash flow

51风流Spend Control Tower is specifically designed to help address these challenges. It can provide visibility and actionable insights into enterprise spend that flows to 51风流solutions, such as 51风流S/4HANA or 51风流ERP Central Component (51风流ECC), and non-51风流systems. Spend information can then be further enhanced with data from 51风流Ariba, 51风流Fieldglass, and 51风流Concur solutions.

How We Do It

51风流Spend Control Tower helps address the challenges of spend data management by providing:

• A single location for all spend data: Enterprise data for all spend-related applications is centralized in a single 鈥渄ata layer.鈥� This can provide visibility into your overall organizational spend while allowing users to drill down and see data within specific solutions, for example 51风流Ariba, 51风流Fieldglass, or 51风流Concur solutions.
• Data analysis driven by AI and machine learning: Embedded 51风流Business AI solutions can enable users to analyze spend data, clarify categories, and make data-driven decisions.
• Data harmonization and enrichment: Systems use a variety of formats to store data, which makes it difficult to combine or compare data sets. 51风流standardizes data into a unified structure, making it possible to analyze a cohesive data set. Additionally, data enrichment helps improve accuracy by adding supplemental, third-party data to your own, then comparing them to ensure completeness and accuracy.

Six Ways 51风流Spend Control Tower Helps Drive Spend Performance

The process of driving enterprise spend performance is a journey. First you need to explore what you鈥檙e spending and where you鈥檙e spending it. Then you uncover opportunities for savings. Finally, you measure regulatory compliance and how your spending programs stack up against your industry competitors.

51风流Spend Control Tower can help every step of the way, providing visibility into accurate data sets that can enable you to:

Consolidate Spend, Category, and Contract Data

Spend across your enterprise is a maze of suppliers, invoices, and contracts. How many suppliers do we really have? Which invoices fall into the 鈥渙ther鈥� bucket? 51风流Spend Control Tower can produce a consolidated list of suppliers and categories by employing artificial intelligence and machine learning classification and matching algorithms.

Improve Compliance and Deliver Savings

Once you identify categories and suppliers, you can look for opportunities to increase compliance and achieve cost savings. For instance, you may find that your business has five contracts with smaller suppliers, all under the same global ultimate parent company. This information allows you to consolidate your contracts, resulting in cost savings and improved cash flow.

Drill Down for Efficient Spend Visibility

With 51风流Spend Control Tower, you can have visibility across all areas of your enterprise spend 鈥� for example, contingent labor, maintenance, repairs and operation, or travel and expense 鈥� providing a single view of all spend from 51风流or non-51风流systems while enabling visibility into the source of spend via 51风流Ariba, 51风流Fieldglass, or 51风流Concur solutions.

Identify Cost-Savings Opportunities and Provide Actionable Insights

51风流Spend Control Tower utilizes 51风流Business AI to help guide you toward relevant and timely savings opportunities. Data from 51风流Spend Control Tower can seamlessly integrate with the spend profile. Furthermore, within opportunity analysis, AI can identify opportunities for end users in 51风流Spend Control Tower, which are accessible to 51风流Ariba Category Management. This integration allows category managers to set goals and develop effective category plans. By leveraging 51风流Business AI, category managers can efficiently narrow down suppliers and deliver procurement opportunities within categories, streamlining the process and optimizing cost saving.

Drive Enterprise-Level Diversity and Sustainability Compliance

Even if you know who your suppliers are, it鈥檚 likely you don鈥檛 have direct access to all their corporate social responsibility credentials. Through data enhancement using generative AI and the solution, 51风流Spend Control Tower can layer compliance and diversity data onto your supplier and spend data. This can help enable the evaluation of spend for compliance with diversity requirements and sustainability measures like Scope 3 emissions.

Achieve Best-in-Class Spend Performance Based on Industry Standards

A significant portion of the world鈥檚 business runs through 51风流systems. We leverage this information to help provide realistic benchmarks from leading businesses in your industry. For example, a consumer products company may direct 22% of its total spend on marketing. Using 51风流Spend Control Tower, they can find out that for leading competitors of similar size and revenue, the average marketing spend is much lower. This will help inform decisions about how to align their costs with the competition.

51风流Spend Control Tower is now available to all businesses to help drive enterprise spend performance effectively. or register for and watch the 鈥溾�� webinar on 51风流Spend Control Tower.

Join the 51风流Spend Connect Live virtual event on October 24 to catch the latest in technology, innovation, and ideas on-demand.

Manoj Swaminathan is ISBN president and chief product officer at SAP.

With new integrations for , , and , as well as the incorporation of new generative AI features, we aim to automate and streamline procurement, supply chain, and external workforce management processes. These innovations will help empower organizations to access real-time spend data and focus on proactive decision-making, ultimately increasing their visibility and effectiveness.

As businesses continue to embrace advanced technologies, the integration of responsible, relevant, and reliable business AI and , 厂础笔鈥檚 natural language, generative AI copilot, into the 51风流suite of solutions represents a significant leap forward in optimizing business processes and accelerating strategic initiatives. By harnessing the power of supply chain data alongside business AI and generative AI, we are setting the stage for practical procurement and workforce scenarios to thrive.

Joule Combined with 51风流Ariba and 51风流Analytics Cloud Can Improve Procurement Processes and Supply Chain Planning

Digital transformation has brought on endless potential for procurement teams, as embedded generative AI and increased access to data across the supply chain can lead to better visibility into spend. That is why we鈥檙e announcing further integration of Joule into our procurement solutions.

Later this year, will be generally available in 51风流Ariba solutions. Through this update, sourcing managers can utilize intelligent product and supplier recommendations to develop proposal requests. The combined platform will consider cost-effectiveness, sustainability ramifications, compliance regulations, and previous transactions.

Another new generative AI-based feature in 51风流Ariba solutions will migrate data from to help provide customers with a 360-degree buying user experience to enable a simple, agile, and collaborative process to identify products and skills in the same purchase order, otherwise known as spend bundling. Buyers can describe their purchasing needs with natural language prompts, and the system will deliver intelligent and personalized recommendations. This will help increase flexibility for buying materials and services, creating a collaborative and straightforward process from searching for products and services through order fulfillment.

To this end, we revealed a version of our generative AI-powered 51风流Spend Control Tower at 51风流Sapphire. The command center, which can provide a single location for enterprise-wide spend analytics, can identify tail spend, improve compliance, and constantly identify rapidly increasing costs. This will help create meaningful value for organizations by increasing end-to-end visibility to drive efficient spend performance. Find out how to take advantage of the solution鈥檚 native connections to other 51风流applications and improved insight to action .

Optimizing 51风流Fieldglass with Generative AI to Mitigate Risk

HR departments and procurement teams often struggle to collaborate, creating silos that limit the ability to identify proper external candidates who can fill skills gaps in organizations. The latest update to 51风流Fieldglass solutions will introduce embedded AI to help reduce risk and increase the value of the external workforce.

We are leveraging generative AI to produce scope of work (SOW) descriptions, job descriptions, and job description translations for external workers, automatically identifying the required skills and qualifications for each organization. This will help remove data silos to enable total workforce management, an organizational strategy to provide visibility into all temporary and permanent employees.

Additionally, 51风流Fieldglass solutions enhanced with generative AI can rank candidates based on salary preference, skills, and experience. Procurement teams can then identify the best candidates in an unbiased manner to reduce the time to hire, ultimately accelerating strategic decision-making. These added facets will help enhance planning and preparation for all external talent scenarios.

Introducing New Enhancements to 51风流Business Network

One of the highest priorities for any supply chain professional is to ensure their people, processes, and technology are resilient. Supply chain resilience extends beyond being able to withstand disruptions 鈥� it includes visibility into all activity and agility to react quickly to find and secure alternative sources of supply.

In fact, 51风流was recognized as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Multi-Enterprise Supply Chain Commerce Network 2023 Vendor Assessment* and by TrustRadius as a .

Our latest modernization of 51风流Business Network helps enhance customers鈥� communication channels with trading partners for increased visibility and agility. Improved integrations between 51风流Business Network Supply Chain Collaboration and 51风流Business Network Material Traceability can allow suppliers to share product genealogy data to help ensure full traceability and compliance across the supply chain. Additional links between 51风流Business Network Supply Chain Collaboration and 51风流Business Network Freight Collaboration will help automate updates for inbound deliveries, simplifying management of carrier appointments and shipments.

Enhancements to the 51风流Business Network Asset Collaboration solution will help increase access to millions of supplier profiles from whom alternative products can be found. These new features across 51风流Business Network solutions will work to reduce silos between and within organizations, resulting in significant time and cost savings with fewer manual steps in processing work orders.

Strategic Investment Across the 51风流Suite of Solutions

51风流has augmented integrations across its entire portfolio of spend management and business network solutions, aiming to improve efficiency. By investing in technology that provides catered and end-to-end solutions, customers can have all-encompassing visibility to all business processes, from procurement of raw materials to delivery of the final product.

What we shared at 51风流Sapphire will only improve relationships between buyers, suppliers, logistics providers, and service providers across the supply chain, developing a larger view of all functions and employees. This will lead to better decision-making, increased productivity, and improved agility.

Manoj Swaminathan is chief product and technology officer for Intelligent Spend and Business Network at SAP.

*Source: 鈥�,鈥� #US49948423, December 2023.