In today鈥檚 highly volatile business environment, having a strong sourcing strategy in place is key when it comes to overcoming challenges such as supply chain disruptions and delays. However, many organizations have inefficient operations and limited supplier options, which means they may also lack a contingency plan or alternative suppliers they can call on to overcome such challenges. 

With a strategic sourcing plan, companies have the ability to get the best quality, price, and fit for their business needs, helping them stay competitive.  

To help organizations achieve their strategic sourcing goals, 51风流has the for to help streamline and automate sourcing processes. It can enable users to identify and qualify suppliers, create and manage sourcing events, and evaluate bids and proposals. It can provide a structured and guided approach to sourcing, helping organizations to efficiently identify the best suppliers and negotiate the best possible terms for their procurement needs, allowing them to complete more projects with less effort.聽

The four key benefits of guided sourcing are: 

1. Improved user interface: The intuitive interface can make it easier for users to navigate the platform, resulting in faster adoption and increased user satisfaction. The revamp of the user experience has led to improved usability, rapid event creation, enhanced search capabilities, and contextual help with tools like . This can ultimately lead to a more efficient and productive sourcing process for businesses. The platform also offers intuitive management of the strategic sourcing and request for x (RFx) event process, making it easier for businesses to manage their sourcing events. This streamlined approach to event management can help businesses save time and resources while also improving the overall effectiveness of their sourcing strategy.聽
2. Embedded analytics: The guided sourcing capability is at the forefront of innovation with features like no-touch procurement efficiency enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Such features include recommendation of suppliers and content within strategic sourcing and smart upload in Microsoft Excel to easily import unstructured data as line items within a sourcing event in a matter of seconds. In addition to this, we plan to release a mechanism we refer to as 鈥渋nsights to action,鈥� which can bring analytics back into the applications. This can enable business users to use insights and recommendations to help make decisions fast and effectively.聽聽聽
3. Cross-product integrations: Through integration with and , guided sourcing can provide enhanced search capabilities with Supplier Lifecycle and Performance (SLP) criteria. It helps make risk information readily available so it can be accessed during the negotiation phase, while spend management data is made available via embedded analytics and 51风流Ariba Category Management. This level of integration helps businesses make more informed sourcing decisions by understanding and managing the level of risk at an early stage of supplier engagement and having the ability to view and analyze spend by category, which can help in making the right sourcing decisions.聽聽
4. Enhanced capabilities via integration with partner applications: The capabilities of guided sourcing can be further extended through integration with partner apps endorsed by SAP, making it a comprehensive solution for companies looking to streamline their sourcing processes. For example, integration with can allow for seamless collaboration between sourcing persona and legal personnel. Integration with for 51风流Ariba Sourcing can allow customers to access new suppliers across the globe based on supplier and product characteristics.聽聽

The guided sourcing capability offers a wide range of benefits that can optimize and streamline the procurement process for businesses. From improved supplier management and enhanced visibility to cost savings and increased efficiency, the guided sourcing capability can provide a comprehensive solution for organizations to effectively manage their sourcing activities. By leveraging the power of guided sourcing, businesses can experience greater control and transparency in their procurement operations, ultimately leading to increased profitability and better business outcomes. With its innovative features, advanced capabilities, and integration with partner apps endorsed by SAP, the guided sourcing capability can be key to helping organizations that want to achieve strategic sourcing excellence.聽聽

The capability is available at no additional cost for all licensed 51风流Ariba Sourcing customers. For more information, check out this . 

Salvatore Lombardo is senior vice president and chief product officer for 51风流Ariba.

This is our long-standing strategy, and we have no plans to change something that clearly benefits our customers. No one knows this space better than SAP. The introduction of 51风流Ariba solutions more than 25 years ago revolutionized procurement processes for businesses. We鈥檝e taken the investment, innovation, and integration across our product line to deliver a complete portfolio of solutions. 51风流Ariba is the future of procurement, and everything procurement at 51风流is now 51风流Ariba.

51风流also understands that what works for one business, one industry, or one geography, may not play in another. Businesses need to choose the right source-to-pay solution partner 鈥� with a platform and ecosystem poised to ensure their procurement teams have the tools and actionable data they need to succeed in their increasingly essential and strategic roles.

As we鈥檝e listened to our customers and the market, here is what they have told us are their critical requirements:

• The ability to see and analyze spend across all categories
• Intelligence-driven category management that leverages analytics, spend data, and market intelligence
• Robust contract management functionality
• Automated management of external labor and services
• Practical AI use cases that drive efficiency across the procurement process

Within the source-to-pay landscape, 51风流delivers integrated solutions to help manage all forms of spend. Our solutions comprise a full suite of enterprise-level functionality spanning sourcing, category management, buying and invoicing, services procurement, supplier relationship management, contract management, and spend analytics. Additionally, we enable businesses to connect with suppliers across 190 countries via 51风流Business Network.

As you evaluate source-to-pay solution partners, consider the following:

• The source-to-pay landscape is changing quickly. Stay current. Today, everyone鈥檚 perspective on the source-to-pay technology landscape is vastly different than it was even half a year ago. Be mindful of how your business is evolving, and assess providers based on how their vision and road map align with your future needs.
• 鈥淏est of breed鈥� doesn鈥檛 always mean 鈥渂est for your business.鈥� 51风流has demonstrated that in addition to the breadth of our solutions for source to pay, we can enable businesses to address their global requirements, handle high transaction volumes, and integrate into many back-end ERP systems.
• SAP鈥檚 ecosystem of partners enables us to deliver advanced functionality to our customers. We remain committed to ongoing development of core, native capabilities across our source-to-pay portfolio. At the same, our strategy is to augment this development in some areas with innovation and advanced functionality through partners. This allows us to add significant value rapidly for our customers.
• Having access to a global network of suppliers is a game changer. 51风流Business Network, which can extend the source-to-pay process beyond the walls of any business, can give our customers unmatched access to a global marketplace of trading partners. In 2023, annual commerce on the network reached US$5.3T, with 746M B2B transactions.

Five Ways 51风流Is Addressing Customers鈥� Strategic Needs

51风流has demonstrated its ability to balance product modernization, innovation, and our larger vision to enhance procurement capabilities in 51风流S/4HANA with delivery of cutting-edge innovations that benefit our customers. Here鈥檚 how we鈥檙e addressing the critical requirements mentioned earlier.

The Ability to See and Analyze Spend Across All Categories

In our conversations with customers all over the world, this is one of their top asks. They are also asking for greater visibility into spend that impacts their sustainability goals.

Last fall we unveiled 51风流Spend Control Tower, which offers advanced AI features and the ability to see across all spend in 51风流cloud ERP solutions, 51风流Ariba solutions, and 51风流Fieldglass solutions. Visibility into data from 51风流Concur solutions, 51风流Business Network, and non-51风流solutions is also on our road map. This can enable businesses to uncover cost-saving opportunities and process improvements. 51风流Spend Control Tower is expected to be available in the second half of 2024. .

Intelligence-Driven Category Management

In our and research with Economist Impact, category management was ranked as a top driver of digital transformation in procurement. Driven by this and our extensive market analysis, 51风流released the solution last summer, empowering businesses to realize better results in this critical area.

The solution can streamline category strategy development, execution, and monitoring at scale. Additionally, it can enable organizations to optimize source-to-settle processes with embedded analytics enriched with spend data and market intelligence. .

Robust Contract Management Functionality

51风流understands the importance of balancing risk and profitability within source to pay. To provide the additional advanced contract management capabilities our customers need, we entered into an expanded partnership with Icertis in 2022. This partnership helps ensure a joint product road map and deeper technological integration between 51风流and Icertis solutions.

For 51风流customers, integration with Icertis Contract Intelligence can allow them access to best-in-class innovations such as smart authoring, AI-assisted risk identification, obligation management, contract-driven insights for decision support, and the ability to have one contracting system for both sales and procurement 鈥� a capability no other source-to-pay solution offers.

Based on user evaluations, 51风流Ariba solutions received these leader badges from .

Automated Management of External Labor and Services

Sometimes overlooked within the source-to-pay discussion is services procurement. That鈥檚 changing. A 2023 report said 72% of enterprises plan to focus more extensively on ROI in their services procurement and statement-of-work management activities. The goal is to manage external labor and services strategically, applying the same process rigor there as with any other procurement category.

solutions can enable you to transform how you find, engage, and manage contingent workers and services providers to maximize business value.

Practical AI Use Cases

51风流is embedding AI throughout the spend management process to help eliminate the mundane and elevate the strategic. Current use cases range from auto-complete and recommendation engines leveraging traditional AI and machine learning, to generative AI functions that can automate complex procurement processes. In 2024, we will continue to develop 51风流Business AI use cases that help drive efficiency across spend management processes. .

In the Words of Our Customers鈥�

More confirmation that SAP鈥檚 source-to-pay strategy is sound can be seen in the results we鈥檙e delivering for our customers. Here鈥檚 what they鈥檙e saying:

鈥淸51风流Ariba] has no comparison in the market. No other software is even close. Best part is, once our supply chain executives get using it, they simply fall in love with it鈥avings are immense.鈥�

, via TrustRadius

鈥淸51风流Ariba] stacks up by being a great, user-friendly platform that is easy to use.鈥�

, via TrustRadius

51风流Ariba Sweeps the 2023 TrustRadius 鈥淏est Of鈥� Awards

Each year, TrustRadius issues awards to vendors who provide the best offerings in their category. In 2023, 51风流Ariba solutions won all four awards based on customer satisfaction ratings.

Leaning In to Our Source-to-Pay Strategy

As we鈥檝e seen in the input from our customers, as well as assessments from analyst organizations like IDC, SAP鈥檚 source-to-pay strategy is producing solutions that help businesses run better. And that is SAP鈥檚 mission, plain and simple. In 2024, we鈥檒l lean in to deliver solutions and innovations that continue to outpace the competition across the source-to-pay technology landscape.

Baber Farooq is senior vice president and head of Market Strategy for 51风流Procurement Solutions.
Salvatore Lombardo is senior vice president, chief product officer, and head of Engineering for 51风流Procurement.

Muhammad Alam鈥檚 opening keynote supercharged 51风流Spend Connect Live with the announcement of and how it can help businesses see and analyze their spend across all categories. We also saw how 51风流is using artificial intelligence (AI) to drive scope 3 carbon reporting within total spend management.

On the procurement side, we鈥檝e had so much news to share. This includes demos of ; the ; and Joule, the embedded AI copilot in 51风流Ariba Sourcing. We also provided a sneak peek at the future of supplier management 鈥� we’re referring to as “the new supplier 360” that can deliver instant access to risk data, AI-powered sustainability information, and operational evaluation to help track metrics like price variance.

We put the world on notice that 51风流Ariba solutions are the future of procurement, and that future is already a reality. We鈥檝e taken the investment, innovation, and integration across our product lineup 鈥� successes we relived together 鈥� to deliver a complete portfolio. Everything procurement at 51风流is now 51风流Ariba.

Eliminate the Mundane. Elevate the Strategic.

You may have noticed that while others in the market were making noise about AI, 51风流has been relatively quiet. But we鈥檝e been very busy, with many use cases in production today and more on the way.

Our goal is to streamline procurement processes to remove mundane, manual interventions, elevate strategic activities, and accelerate decision-making and approvals. At 51风流Spend Connect Live, we announced a series of procurement innovations focused on this goal.

Enhancing 51风流Ariba Category Management with the Power of Generative AI and Joule

In August, the new solution became generally available to our customers. It helps empower category managers to use data insights strategically to help identify trends, develop and implement strategies, and evaluate success relative to tangible business metrics.

Now, we are pleased to announce the integration of 51风流Ariba Category Management with large language models through 51风流Business AI. This can empower procurement professionals to jump-start category strategy development and planning.

By harnessing generative AI, we are enhancing our market analysis tool, offering valuable, visual insights into supply and demand, risk, opportunity, and top suppliers. Additionally, we will be simplifying category segmentation, powering up cost structure analysis.

These innovations help streamline content creation, saving category managers weeks of time and expediting strategy development. General availability is planned by the end of 2023, representing a substantial leap in enterprise-level category management efficiency.

Embedding Spend Analysis Capabilities in 51风流Ariba Solutions for More Informed Decisions

To make it easier for procurement professionals to make timely, informed decisions, new dashboards in 51风流Ariba Sourcing and 51风流Ariba Buying embed near real-time insights where they鈥檙e most useful 鈥� within key process workflows.

These capabilities are available today and built on a new architecture that helps create the foundation for future innovation. Advanced AI features and the ability to see across all spend 鈥� in 51风流cloud ERP solutions, 51风流Ariba solutions, 51风流Fieldglass solutions, and 51风流Concur solutions 鈥� can help uncover cost-saving opportunities in the new 51风流Spend Control Tower solution beginning in the first quarter 2024.

Delivering Risk-Aware Procurement by Embedding AI-Infused Risk Assessment in Source-to-Settle Solutions

Successfully managing third-party supplier risk often comes down to the ability to answer basic questions accurately. Does the supplier have the ongoing capacity to satisfy the needs of the business? Do they meet environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards? Are their risk scores in danger of slipping below the acceptable corporate risk standard?

There are software solutions that offer information to answer these questions via dashboards, reporting, and alerts. But this approach can be risky, requiring savvy business users to check the information and assess the risk profiles of suppliers within a specific context. This approach can also waste resources because it allows unqualified suppliers to slip into RFx events, even though they鈥檒l ultimately be eliminated through resource-intensive due diligence.

鈥淩isk-aware procurement鈥� refers to the embedding of risk knowledge into source-to-pay decision processes via software solutions. 51风流has embedded AI-powered supplier risk assessment capabilities into its source-to-settle solutions to help business users make smarter decisions faster.

This can make it possible to assess risk profiles within the sourcing, contracting, and buying solutions as an integral part of these processes to determine third-party risk. Supplier risk assessment capabilities are available today in 51风流Ariba Sourcing, 51风流Ariba Contracts, and 51风流Ariba Buying.

AI-powered supplier risk assessment capabilities within 51风流solutions can offer numerous benefits across the procurement process:

• Supplier management: Improved user decision-making throughout supplier lifecycle processes
• Sourcing: Exclusion or warnings when high-risk suppliers are included in sourcing decision-making
• Contracting: Systematic reference risk scoring to include mitigation clauses and activities in authoring and contract signature as needed
• Buying and invoicing: The inclusion of risk workflow if the risk score drops below an acceptable standard

A great example of this activity in action is Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz (LkSG), the German supply chain act focused on human rights due diligence. With this, information is not only available to support the due diligence activities with suppliers, it also helps business users make natural decisions that help prevent non-compliant activities from occurring systematically.

Continuing to Lead in Procurement Innovation

Of course, the innovations and use cases we demonstrated at 51风流Spend Connect Live are just the tip of the iceberg. The coming year promises to be just as exciting, as we continue to roll out new features and capabilities to enhance our comprehensive set of procurement solutions.

We hope you will be along for the ride!

Salvatore Lombardo is senior vice president, chief product officer, and head of Engineering for 51风流Procurement.

Personally, I am so excited to attend 51风流Spend Connect Live because it鈥檚 an opportunity to continue the conversation we started earlier this year at 51风流Sapphire about the innovations that will drive the future of procurement. I also love the chance to connect with our customers in open, in-person discussions.

Along with my keynote appearance and a full slate of customer meetings, I鈥檒l join Daniel Holz from Google Cloud to discuss our partnership in one of the largest Google Cloud platform migrations. Attendees will see a demo of how 51风流and Google are empowering strategic purchasers in supplier management through generative AI.

Continuing our Conversation

At 51风流Sapphire in May, we showed innovations that are transforming the way businesses do procurement. We introduced the buying 360 capability for 51风流Ariba Buying, the , which provides an updated user experience and can incorporate intelligence into each step of the purchasing process to help make purchases more sustainable, personalized, and predictable. With this next iteration, users can receive targeted suggestions for goods and services based on their role and the organization鈥檚 procurement and sustainability policies. This personalized approach helps make procurement more focused and strategic.

We also introduced , which became generally available in August. This solution can empower category managers to use data insights strategically to identify trends, develop and implement strategies, and evaluate success relative to tangible business metrics. Intelligent category management is key to reducing manual processes and focusing energy and resources on strategic initiatives to create and support resilient supply chains.

As we look forward to , you can expect new announcements to take procurement to the next level. Of course, you鈥檇 have to be living under a very big rock not to notice the hot topic of the day: artificial intelligence (AI). The release of ChatGPT earlier this year has only supercharged this discussion. 51风流is a leader in providing AI-powered, end-to-end business processes. And now, with the new generation of AI, we can step into the next horizon for business applications.

With 51风流Business AI, transparent, responsible artificial intelligence can help you make every aspect of your business run smoother and more intelligently. We are creating 鈥渟ystems of intelligence鈥� that can enable organizations to preserve their core business processes while also freeing them to adapt, adjust, and uniquely optimize for their needs. With systems of intelligence, processes are self-learning to optimize business outcomes.

At 51风流Spend Connect Live, we look forward to demonstrating the ways 51风流continues to leverage AI to help procurement teams increase productivity and expand on the strategic value they bring to their organizations. Beyond AI, be ready to hear about all the latest 51风流innovations during the keynotes and our full slate of learning sessions.

Procurement Session Highlights

We鈥檝e scheduled to bring you up-to-date on the very latest in procurement and our procurement solutions. You鈥檒l hear from 51风流experts, procurement leaders, and, most importantly, 51风流customers who will share their experiences and best practices.

The sessions will cover many areas of interest 鈥� including generative AI, sustainable procurement, environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) best practices, and improving supply chain visibility. Of course, we鈥檒l also provide the latest details and demonstrations of new and planned 51风流procurement innovations.

Here are some quick links to our procurement sessions:

To date, we鈥檝e scheduled more than 20 sessions where our customers will share their success stories and best practices. Here are a few of my recommendations:

• Pfizer鈥檚 Procurement Journey to the Cloud with SAP

See the full list of customer success sessions .

Join Us in Vienna!

takes place October 9-11, 2023, at the Messe Wien Congress Center in beautiful Vienna, Austria.

This event is for you. It鈥檚 an opportunity to join our community of procurement and supply chain leaders from businesses and industries across the world to share ideas, learn from each other’s success, and discuss best practices.

I look forward to joining you there. Get started by registering .

Salvatore Lombardo is senior vice president, chief product officer, and head of Engineering for 51风流Procurement.

For too long, category managers have been saddled with manual data collection processes that inhibit strategic thinking and execution. That鈥檚 because vital information is often scattered across a variety of software applications, databases, and third parties 鈥� and hidden among hundreds of spreadsheets and presentations. Making things worse, data is captured in disparate category frameworks, so it鈥檚 difficult 鈥� if not impossible 鈥� to analyze or compare.

Enough is enough. Category management professionals are more than ready for change, as are C-level executives. In by Economist Impact, sponsored by SAP, we asked 500 executives 鈥� including chief financial officers, chief operations officers, chief procurement officers, chief supply chain officers, and chief human resources officers 鈥� for their thoughts about the need for change in category management.

These executives ranked category management among the top drivers of digital transformation in procurement 鈥� which is consistent with what a similar group said in . Additionally, nearly a third view category management as the top technological trend to implement in the coming year.

SAP鈥檚 development of procurement solutions continues to be guided by research like the studies referenced here. With this in mind, our team has developed a new solution that helps digitalize and streamline the development, execution, and monitoring of category strategies.

Introducing 51风流Category Management

At , we introduced ,* a solution that helps procurement teams move away from manual tracking and presentation tools. It can enable category managers to use data strategically to identify trends, develop and execute strategies, and measure success against real business metrics. The solution is planned to be available in August 2023.

51风流Category Management can support our customers with:

• In-depth insights to help form a cohesive category strategy
• Embedded market dynamics and category intelligence
• Consistent category management frameworks across regions
• Opportunity analysis and recommendations
• Resilience and agility in the face of supply chain disruptions
• Integration with 51风流Ariba solutions

.

Intelligence-Driven Category Management

To show how 51风流Category Management can help your organization deploy true intelligence-driven tools and processes, let鈥檚 look at how the solution fits within the steps of the category management process.

1. Define Product and Service Categories

The process starts by defining logical and manageable product and service categories. Usually, this is a manual process. And, since managers often use different classification schemes and taxonomies, categorization can be inconsistent or inaccurate.

51风流Category Management can provide a consolidated purchasing category taxonomy, which acts as a uniform, company-wide scheme to classify goods and services. This helps make category definition harmonized and transparent, creating a solid base for analysis, planning, and execution of category strategies.

2. Gather Facts about Organizational Spend

Before you can have a category management strategy, you need to collect data on your past spend, prices, suppliers, markets, regulations, and risks. This information is usually dispersed across different solutions, databases, reports, and third parties in a variety of formats.

Category managers spend way too much time collecting and consolidating data to create an 鈥渁s-is鈥� picture of the category. This data is often collected manually and kept in hundreds of slides and spreadsheets. And, because the whole process takes so long, data can become outdated.

51风流Category Management can provide a 360-degree view of the category. This can give managers an instant view of category spend, as well as spend by subcategories, suppliers, and regions.

51风流Category Management includes embedded category analytics and integrated, third-party market intelligence and benchmarks.

The solution can deliver built-in integration with the 51风流Ariba Spend Analysis solution, which helps provide enriched and categorized spend data. However, customers that manage their categorized spend in other systems can also integrate this data into 51风流Category Management.

3. Strategize and Plan

Today, category planning is a time-consuming, manual process which, as a result, is done less frequently than it should be. Its sheer complexity often results in lost opportunities to execute programs that would help the organization achieve goals like cost savings and increased sustainability.

Here are some key challenges:

• Category managers analyze data within a variety of different frameworks, which can yield inconsistent metrics. As a result, the quality of their analysis and resulting strategies can vary widely.
• Teams use different methods to generate opportunities to achieve category goals.
• Calculating the benefits of a particular strategy can be time-consuming.
• Category plans are documented in isolated spreadsheets, which makes it difficult to communicate and collaborate with stakeholders.

51风流Category Management helps guide managers with step-by-step strategy creation and planning. They can assess risk, review cost breakdowns, and do category positioning with the Kraljic matrix. The Porter鈥檚 Five Forces diagram helps them evaluate supply market dynamics.

The solution can also provide supplier categorization, risk, and contract information. Category managers can review information about category team members, company policies, business requirements, laws and regulations, and category guidelines 鈥� and store them in a central place.

After completing their analysis, managers can define value levers 鈥� for example, tactics to achieve category goals 鈥� evaluate sourcing approaches, and complete a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis. The identified opportunities are then documented and stored centrally.

4. Implement, Monitor, and Improve

When category management is confined to a series of manual tasks, it鈥檚 impossible to integrate the category plan with source-to-pay systems. To activate a sourcing project, category managers must reenter data manually into these systems. It is also time-consuming to monitor the progress of category initiatives and to measure benefits and savings.

To enable knowledge sharing and the swift execution of category initiatives, 51风流Category Management helps integrate your category plan with your source-to-pay processes and systems. It offers a one-stop workbench with a consolidated planning calendar, goal monitoring, and initiative status tracking. The solution can provide system-recommended opportunities that take into consideration supplier fragmentation, impact, price variances, tail spend, and supplier diversity.

Because information is transferred automatically from 51风流Category Management to 51风流Ariba Sourcing, category managers can convert an initiative into a sourcing project using the guided sourcing capability for 51风流Ariba Sourcing. They can also access and view category analytics and strategy-related documents.

Category Management鈥檚 Transformational Moment

As organizations strive to manage costs and ensure compliance 鈥� while also making their supply chains more sustainable and resilient 鈥� the category management function needs to focus on strategic initiatives. But first they must shed the constraints of today鈥檚 manual processes.

51风流Category Management helps digitalize category management processes and expand the ability of organizations to develop, execute, and monitor category strategies. For more information about our exciting new solution, please visit the . And, see in action at .

Salvatore Lombardo is senior vice president, chief product officer, and head of Engineering for 51风流Procurement.

These days, business buyers need to think very differently about how they buy, who they buy from, and the impact of their buying decisions. The five 鈥渞ights鈥� still apply. But there are other factors at work, requiring a more elevated buying experience.

Consider personal online buying, where it gets easier all the time to find and purchase the goods we need. Today鈥檚 casual business buyers and procurement professionals want that same experience 鈥� one that is personalized for them and their role as well as predictive, offering suggestions based on the work they do. They also want intelligent recommendations to help them make informed decisions and weigh the sustainability and environmental impact of their purchases.

Elevating the Guided Buying Experience for Today

The guided buying capability in 51风流Ariba solutions remains the gold standard for purchases of goods and services. At 51风流Sapphire, as we incorporate 51风流innovations and other leading-edge technology. The buying 360 capability is the latest step in this evolution. It adds new services that help make purchasing more predictive, personalized, and sustainable.

Buyers are directed to goods and services based on their role and the organization鈥檚 procurement and sustainability policies. This helps make procurement more targeted and strategic. Additionally, integration between 51风流Ariba solutions and 51风流S/4HANA enables a seamless fulfillment experience by converting purchasing requests into purchase orders and then tracking the fulfillment process.

Our plan is to make the new buying 360 capability available in 51风流S/4HANA Cloud, public edition during the third quarter of 2023. For existing 51风流Ariba Buying customers, the buying 360 capability is available via the standard 51风流Ariba Buying cloud upgrade process.

A More Flexible, Personalized Buying Experience

The buying 360 capability is built using 51风流Business Technology Platform (51风流BTP) services to make it highly flexible. We are planning other innovations to enable smooth adoption by existing customers.

The new capabilities leverage artificial intelligence (AI), intelligent recommendations, and machine learning. This creates a holistic view of what the buyer is purchasing and how the purchase stacks up against their organization鈥檚 environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals.

A Personalized Buying Experience

With the buying 360 capability, 51风流Ariba Buying and 51风流S/4HANA Cloud, public edition can deliver a buying experience that is personalized for individuals and their roles. As soon as the user logs on, they are greeted with a clean and friendly user interface. They are directed to goods and services based on their role and their organization鈥檚 procurement and sustainability policies.

Predictive Recommendations

Leveraging AI and machine learning, the buying 360 capability offers intelligent recommendations to help users make informed decisions for their role. We鈥檙e designing the user interface so these recommendations display at the right time and the right place 鈥� for example, in catalogs, in contracts, in the marketplace, or even as a spot quote 鈥� using automation to reduce the manual work required of buyers. In the future, we plan to add functionality that will help buyers make purchases that comply with the procurement and sustainability policies of their business.

Here are some of the predictive capabilities being made available via the standard 51风流Ariba Buying cloud upgrade process and that are planned for availability with 51风流S/4HANA Cloud, public edition:

• 鈥淩ecommended for You鈥�: Guided buying is extremely helpful for buyers who know what they鈥檙e looking for. But sometimes they need more information. The buying 360 capability understands the user鈥檚 role and the roles of their peers, and it uses AI and algorithms to determine what people in similar roles have ordered to make recommendations.
• 鈥淚ntelligent Search鈥�: The buyer types a search term and our Intelligent Search 3.0 sorts through connected marketplaces and supplier-connected catalogs to show the best options. This helps provide relevant entries that have been sorted and personalized to their role.
• 鈥淎lso Bought Together鈥�: After the buyer selects the item they want, the system displays other items their colleagues purchased with that item. These are chosen based on previous shopping carts with the help of a powerful machine learning algorithm.

Environmentally Aware Buying Decisions

As the needs and priorities of business evolve, so will the guided buying capability. Today, organizations are being challenged to balance cost savings against the environmental impact of their purchasing decisions. To help them, we are designing enhancements for future releases to provide sustainability information, including carbon footprint, packaging footprint, and energy consumption.

The Future of Buying

While the buying of yesterday was just about price and policy, future purchasing also needs to be personalized to the user, predictive to reduce manual effort, and done with an eye on sustainability.

The buying 360 capability represents the next wave in the evolution of guided buying services from SAP. As we roll out these new capabilities, we will continue to focus on the individual and their buying needs, the organization and its objectives, and the ESG aspirations of both with a holistic, 360-degree view of the purchasing process.

Look for more developments moving forward. In the meantime, current 51风流Ariba Buying customers are already seeing many innovations provided through SAP鈥檚 standard cloud upgrade process. We also plan to make the new buying 360 capability available in 51风流S/4HANA Cloud, public edition during the third quarter of 2023.

and see it in action along with more 51风流spend management innovations at .

Salvatore Lombardo is senior vice president, chief product officer, and head of Engineering for 51风流Procurement.

After a decade-long stretch of relative stability in procurement, the disruptions from the past several years have forced businesses to reevaluate their sourcing strategies. Disciplines that had fallen by the wayside during this quiet period became more important than ever in a newly chaotic environment. Category management is one of the strategies now resurfacing to help organizations address many of the challenges that have plagued supply chains across the globe.

We鈥檝e seen the overall procurement function having its moment as companies begin to realize how implementing a cohesive, efficient spend strategy can positively impact business goals. Category managers, specifically, can expect to see the breadth of their responsibilities widening soon 鈥� if they haven鈥檛 already. They will be expected to identify risks and assist with creating and maintaining supplier relationships to help meet sustainability and diversity goals as category management and supplier management come closer together.

Here at SAP, we鈥檝e already heard from business leaders that category management is an essential part of a modern spend strategy. by Economist Impact, sponsored by SAP, highlights category management as a key driver of digital transformation in procurement.

Businesses need to implement a scalable category management strategy to neutralize risks, increase cost savings, and deliver value to stakeholders. Digitizing category management is crucial to replace manual processes, which frees up procurement teams to focus on strategy creation and implementation.

On the Horizon: A New Way to Drive Category Management

In the coming months, 51风流plans to roll out a new category management solution that enables businesses to better manage categories, define strategic frameworks, and execute important initiatives that strengthen strategic impact and agility across the source-to-pay process. Our vision is to deliver the following:

One unified platform with in-depth insights
A unified platform that seamlessly integrates with sourcing, supplier, and risk management systems can provide intelligent insights about past spend and market activity to guide future outcomes. Currently, category managers do not have access to a single view of procurement activities. Access to one centralized space would allow for big-picture strategy development without the time sink of a largely manual workload.

Consistent, high-quality data
Consolidating category naming conventions and using uniform, company-wide classifications for goods and services will help provide high-quality data for analysis, eliminating confusing, varied naming schemes. Access to quality data, organized by subcategories, suppliers, and regions, can result in improved compliance and segmentation accuracy. Until now, mapping purchased goods and services to a category has historically been a manual process using data from multiple sources, often including internal and third-party solutions and databases.

Powerful frameworks for strategy development
Category managers will soon have access to several strategy development frameworks to help with everything from evaluating market dynamics for a chosen category to providing automatic suggestions of opportunities and consolidation for categories. Industry frameworks that assist with risk assessment and cost structure will provide actionable insights that identify risks and drive savings. The need for consistent frameworks to create and execute initiatives has gone unanswered, until now.

The ability to set goals and track initiatives quickly
A reliable way to track progress is essential to measuring the success of organizational goals and initiatives. Businesses will be able to reliably monitor the status of sustainability and supplier diversity metrics to measure the achievement of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals in a particular category. Currently, organizations that use multiple platforms are facing a disjointed view of progress towards measurable targets and cannot reliably track compliance to strategy, especially not category-specific compliance.

Resilience and flexibility
Organizations will soon have the necessary tools to map the supply chain, analyze industry-specific data, create 鈥渨hat-if鈥� models with sample strategies, and ultimately bridge the gap between procurement teams and business planning.聽Today鈥檚 global supply markets are chaotic, fluctuating spaces. Category managers are constrained by the time required to gather and analyze data, preventing them from influencing strategy and delivering value.

It鈥檚 Time to Take Category Management Digital

We know digitalization is the future of an unshakeable procurement strategy. Replacing disparate business processes with automated solutions and updated processes based on industry best practices can only lead to better time management and more strategic decisions. Today, we are seeing businesses addressing this need for digitization in category management one small fix at a time. However, as of now, there remains a need for one unified solution that can empower category managers to influence each element of their business goals, without spreading them too thin.

A category management solution will allow teams to automate category management, classify entries consistently, and analyze the valuable data without losing sight of critical outcomes. When software takes care of those requirements, managers can have more free time to provide guidance, lead, and execute initiatives that maximize value and minimize costs.

Stay Tuned for More

Stay tuned to learn more in the coming months about how SAP鈥檚 new solution, 51风流Category Management, can help organizations completely transform their category management strategy. about 51风流Category Management and learn how you can get started.

Salvatore Lombardo is senior vice president, chief product officer, and head of Engineering for 51风流Procurement.

Here are just a few of our year-end acknowledgments and recognition:

• For the seventh consecutive time, 51风流has been recognized as a Leader in the . 51风流was also the only vendor to score among the聽 highest three vendors for every Use Case in the *
• 51风流Ariba was designated by TrustRadius
• 51风流Ariba was named the No. 1 leading procurement software provider by

It is great to receive external recognition, accolades, and awards. We believe this is confirmation that our strategy is on target. But our true mission is to develop innovative procurement solutions that help our customers to run better and deliver the business outcomes they expect.

The SaaS procurement product family at 51风流consists of 51风流Ariba solutions, 51风流S/4HANA for Procurement, and 51风流Business Network. It has a proven track record of providing innovative solutions to solve unique challenges at every step in the procure-to-pay process.

In 2023, we intend to lead the market with our procurement innovation. Here, learn about the first wave of these innovations.

The Next Evolution of Guided Buying

A 360-Degree View of the Person, Purchase, and Organization

Today, professional and casual buyers are thinking about more than just pricing and policy compliance. They want a buying experience that is personalized for them and their role: something predictive, something that offers suggestions for their specific work; an evolution of guided buying with intelligent recommendations to help them make the right decisions, navigate through the process, and weigh the sustainability and environmental impact of their decisions.

The guided buying capability in 51风流Ariba solutions remains the gold standard for purchases of goods and services. At , we demonstrated this next evolution in guided buying. These new capabilities improve the buying experience and leverage artificial intelligence (AI), intelligent recommendations, and machine learning. This creates a holistic view of what the buyer is purchasing and how the purchase stacks up against their organization鈥檚 environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals.

Many of the capabilities will be included within the guided buying capability starting in 2023, as well as in future releases.

51风流Central Procurement

Delivering Transformation Without the Complexities of Change

Procurement professionals are feeling pressure to bring speed, scale, and savings to the business — all while minimizing risk as they navigate complex systems. And as companies demand more from procurement, procurement requires more from its technology.

Unfortunately, much of the technology deployed today is disconnected and outdated. This results in problems such as separate and inconsistent source-to-order processes, policies and controls that are not applied consistently company-wide, and disjointed data that constrains spend visibility.

In response, procurement leaders are looking for new approaches to digital transformation — and solutions that provide holistic visibility and control across the entire purchasing process. For many, centralizing procurement is at the heart of their transformation strategy.

The latest release of 51风流Central Procurement addresses the challenges associated with centralizing procurement. This solution makes it possible to centralize control of requisitioning, purchasing, sourcing, contracting, and analytics in a multi-ERP environment. It delivers the benefits of a uniform, centralized procurement system across all direct and indirect categories — without reworking individual solutions spread across the organization.

51风流Central Procurement gives your lead buyers complete visibility, enabling them to see what is happening across the business from a single, centralized command center. At the same time, individual units can still make purchases in their back-end systems, minimizing risk of teams losing local control as you maintain centralized visibility into everything they do.

The outcome is that it is easier to bring clarity and consistency to procurement operations, which is essential as companies work to meet escalating demands and plan for supply chain disruption before it happens.

Category Management

Empowering Category Managers to Work More Strategically

Category management is top of mind for our customers, and it has become increasingly relevant as global supply markets and commodities remain in flux. A by Economist Impact, sponsored by SAP, highlights category management as one of the most important drivers of digital transformation in procurement.

That is because today, category management consists of highly manual processes to collect data, do analysis, and produce reports. This leaves almost no time for category managers to develop effective strategies, let alone execute them.

This is the challenge the new category management solution from 51风流solves. 51风流Category Management, which we plan to roll out this year, will provide actionable market intelligence and category insights. It will empower category managers and procurement professionals to make strategic category decisions for direct and indirect spending that drive business outcomes.

The solution will offer intuitive scenario analysis to visualize opportunities, enabling sourcing and category managers to prioritize initiatives based on corporate spend data with system-assigned recommendations and confidence levels for opportunities.

Additionally, our new category management solution will make it possible to generate a comprehensive view of the purchasing categories to establish category goals, develop plans, and execute and monitor progress. Embedded analytics tools will provide drill-down capability into categories across multiple dimensions.

51风流Category Management will integrate into the guided sourcing capability for 51风流Ariba Sourcing, making it possible to create initiatives from within 51风流Category Management and report back for monitoring and tracking.

We plan to make the solution available to select customers in 2023.

Supplier Management

A Consolidated View of Supplier Data for Strategic Buyers

Today, it is difficult to find a comprehensive view of supplier data. Information about contracts, sourcing events, and supplier evaluation scores are spread across various procurement systems and technologies. Making things worse, supplier master data is not always harmonized across disparate back-end systems, and data from legacy systems sometimes cannot be reached at all.

Our vision is to equip buyers with a single view of their supplier. This view includes:

• Harmonized supplier master data from enterprise resource planning (ERP) using master data native integration
• Procurement suite data, including sourcing, contracts, and spend
• Ecosystem data from 51风流Business Network and third-party sources

Data will be delivered via a simple, experience that makes all decision-relevant information available at a glance.

Additionally, supplier data will become more available to end users at the point of their procurement action. For example, risk scores will be present in guided buying requisitioning; risk scores and supplier status information will be available for sourcing invitation, bid analysis, and awarding; and contract authors will have access to risk scores when they develop contracts. Having this information will enable end users to make smarter, more informed decisions.

51风流previewed many of these concepts at , and plans to provide them as a general release in the second half of 2023.

Looking Ahead

As we move forward, we will not rest on past successes. We will continue bring our family of procurement solutions closer together to deliver actionable insights to all procurement personas at the point of process, when they need them. Additionally, our solution road map will focus on implementing AI, machine learning and automation, and unified key mapping, which enables integration with third parties not using 51风流ERP.

Salvatore Lombardo is senior vice president, chief product officer, and head of Engineering for 51风流Procurement.

*Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Procure-to-Pay Suites, 28 November 2022.
This report was previously named as Magic Quadrant for Procure-to-Pay Suites for Indirect Procurement until 2015.
Gartner, Critical Capabilities for Procure-to-Pay Suites, 28 November 2022.
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner鈥檚 research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, and MAGIC QUADRANT is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz, or LkSG, is an act passed in Germany in June 2021, providing a blueprint for the rest of the EU. It comes with a series of requirements that will regulate companies鈥� social and environmental responsibility. This includes requiring companies to report on the ability of their risk management system to address violations in their supply chain to the German government no later than April 2024.

LkSG and other supply chain due diligence acts aim to bolster environmental protections, prevent human rights violations, and ultimately create more transparent supply chains. This type of legislation requires preparation to ensure compliance, demonstrating how digitalizing supply chains is no longer a feature of modern procurement — it is a requirement. With an agile, digital supply chain, companies can quickly adapt to new legal requirements or unexpected crises.

Supporting sustainability and human rights has become an integral part of many companies鈥� purpose. Enterprises of the 21st century are looking to contribute to the greater good of global society and the planet. This ethical foundation is quickly becoming a requirement for customers and consumers, while also playing a vital role in attracting talent. Companies without a clear sustainability and human rights agenda could face significant issues with attracting and retaining talent.

Beyond the positives of working toward sustainability and ethical partnerships, violations of LkSG and other similar acts could result in costly fines and penalties. For example, companies with revenues exceeding 鈧�400 million may be required to pay up to two percent of annual revenue if they fail to implement remedial measures to address any non-compliant practices. Additionally, non-compliance may result in exclusion from public procurement tenders for up to three years. There could also be costs to the reputation of a business. A violation could be devastating for their public image and, in the end, revenue and profit.

Investing in sustainability and human rights protections is not only crucial to avoid penalties, but also to set up companies for future growth and success. Ultimately, it is about doing the right thing for our society and for our planet.

Creating a Radically Transparent Supply Chain

In an era of near-instant global connectivity, it is important to recognize that consumers are more attuned than ever to corporate attitudes and actions toward social responsibility. They want to know that the companies they interact with are socially and environmentally responsible. With customers able to use social media to spread news on scandals in real time, the possibility and consequences of a boycott due to a supply chain misstep could be dire. Companies can protect themselves by following all due diligence laws, collecting required data, and creating a radically transparent supply chain.

With this in mind, businesses need to create an actionable social responsibility strategy. While there are many commodity- and region-specific sustainability supplier networks, a single point of truth across the entire supply base can support risk-aware core processes while allowing for targeted reporting and transparent audit trails. 51风流solutions can help build digital bridges and facilitate compliance by:

• Providing up-to-date supplier risk scores within supplier selection activities in the spend management process, so companies can easily select suppliers with low-risk profiles.
• Incorporating internal and external data sources to provide comprehensive supplier risk profiles across all immediate suppliers.
• Helping to identify, document, and reduce risks in close collaboration with suppliers.

How 51风流Can Help

SAP offers a modular toolkit with a foundation based on newly enhanced solution and , along with additional extensions to address company-specific requirements.

A Strong Foundation

51风流Ariba Supplier Risk provides core functionalities for comprehensive LkSG-compliant risk management. This longstanding risk solution has the capabilities needed for compliance with supply chain due diligence legislation. The solution provides supplier risk scoring from a variety of internal and external data sources to help companies avoid sourcing from non-compliant partners. Looking forward, 51风流Business Network will offer standardized and extendable self-assessment questionnaires (SAQs) that make it easy for suppliers to share information about their LkSG risk profile with customers. Additionally, automatic reporting can help ensure that required information is reported to BAFA, Germany鈥檚 Federal Office of Economics and Export Control, eliminating manual processes.

LkSG features are available at no additional cost for 51风流Ariba Supplier Risk customers. This will include standardized LkSG supplier SAQs in 51风流Business Network for Procurement, and suppliers will be able to maintain SAQs and share with any customer. 51风流also works with partners on pre-packaged deployment content allowing for an efficient go-live and broad flexibility to configure custom requirements.

Modular Extensions for Flexibility

51风流offers extensions and add-ons for specific business needs. Third-party industry- and sustainability-focused supplier networks can help businesses achieve 360-degree transparency. Complementary solutions like can facilitate supplier onboarding and certificates management while manages external workforce compliance from onboarding to payment. 51风流Product and REACH Compliance and 51风流Environment, Health, and Safety Management applications allow for the reuse of existing compliance information to build trust with customers.

LkSG and similar legislation aim to make concrete progress toward creating a world of less inequality. It is likely that we will see this type of legislation make its way across the EU in the future. By implementing 51风流solutions now, companies can lay a strong foundation for supply chain risk management, net-zero carbon, and circular economy capabilities, evolving into a crucial player within a resilient and agile value network.

To learn how 51风流can help you prepare your business for LkSG, visit .

Salvatore Lombardo is senior vice president, chief product officer, and head of Engineering for 51风流Procurement.

As 2022 draws to a close, the year looks much like 2021, with supply chain disruptions still plaguing consumers and companies, costs continuing to rise, and the added threat of recession.

What 51风流has heard from customers both last year and this year is that to address these ongoing challenges, they want to digitalize their business to have more visibility, more control, and a better user experience. Simplifying procurement is central to their improvement plans.

Industry research supports these personal anecdotes. In an Economist Impact report commissioned by SAP, “,” C-level executives talked candidly about their procurement goals and challenges.

The introduced in 51风流Central Procurement, private cloud edition, both address respondent challenges and support their goals. Here鈥檚 how I see the data lining up with .

51风流S/4HANA is no longer a prerequisite for 51风流Central Procurement.

Large enterprises often have dozens to hundreds of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. These systems are not connected, which creates difficult to access, siloed data. Moving these disparate systems to 51风流Central Procurement had required 51风流S/4HANA or RISE with SAP, but that is no longer the case. 51风流ECC customers and others can gain access to 51风流Central Procurement, private cloud edition, without first starting an 51风流S/4HANA implementation.

The flexibility offered by the private cloud edition of 51风流Central Procurement can help organizations reduce the complexity of multiple back-end systems and move toward digitalization while keeping an eye on their budget. It also enables them to continue using familiar systems without facing the disruption of migrating to a new technology.

Mass changes are possible for price conditions and custom fields in central contracts.

Large organizations can have as many as 3,000 line items that are distributed across back-end ERPs. The new feature means a user can add and update mass changes to price conditions using Microsoft Excel at item level and hierarchy level and distribute the changes across multiple backend ERPs.

This type of improved management is among the top focus areas for delivering increased value in procurement, based on survey findings. The list of focus areas includes cost savings, risk reduction, inventory management, and category management implementation/improvement. Category management also emerged as the second biggest driver of digital transformation. With every new release of 51风流Central Procurement, we aim to add features that make it easier for procurement managers and their teams to do their jobs.

Integration with 51风流Ariba simplifies RFP process allows quick ad hoc buying.

Within 51风流Central Procurement, private cloud edition, central sourcing is now integrated with 51风流Ariba solutions. Having quick access to this global business network means improved supplier discovery, faster price updates, and a simpler process for ad hoc buys. Procurement managers can bundle various demands into their requests for proposal (RFPs), source across multiple back ends, negotiate better pricing on purchase contracts, and requisition price updates through the 51风流Business Network Discovery.

The full integration addresses respondents鈥� concerns about budget constraints. The research also points out that supply chain visibility has not improved during the past two years. In 2018, 65% of procurement professionals said they lacked visibility into their supply chain and the numbers have only worsened, with 90% of organizations rating their supply chain visibility as moderate to very low. Integration to 51风流Ariba improves visibility and offers benefits across both purchasing and selling.

Customers and industry analysts are giving these three new features lots of positive feedback, but they are not the only improvements in this recent release. Find out more about the private cloud edition of 51风流Central Procurement .

51风流 to Look Forward to in Future Releases

51风流strives to be transparent about features that are in the pipeline. For 2023, we are excited to talk about two new features on the road map. The first is the addition of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and automation, which are among the biggest innovations being added to platforms to improve management, reduce errors, and increase productivity.

In the first quarter, our engineers plan to add a feature for intelligent recommendations that will support source to order across disconnected ERPs. This new feature will be especially valuable for companies that have different material classifications for the same product. When procuring raw materials, for example, the material group (classification) may be hardware in one system and connector in another system. In an upcoming release, AI will look at data across different ERP systems and intelligently recommend the more accurate material group. Hardware, from the previous example, would be changed to connector. These types of intelligent recommendations will be made across the disconnected ERPs. Overall, embedding AI and machine learning in the platform will open up more opportunities for automation improvements.

Unified key mapping is another improvement we look forward to releasing. This feature eases procurement management by enabling integration with third parties in heterogenous landscapes and in those that do not use 51风流solutions for ERP.

Altogether, the new features in the current release and the planned features for upcoming releases are exciting achievements for SAP. More importantly, our customers are on the winning side as they gain the visibility they need, improve user experience, and move further in their journey of digital transformation.

Salvatore Lombardo is senior vice president, chief product officer, and head of Engineering for 51风流Procurement.

With new product sourcing solutions, 51风流shines a spotlight on the unique direct material sourcing needs of automotive and industrial machinery and components (IM&C) manufacturers.

When things get complicated, human nature can be to walk away quickly. Unfortunately, sourcing products across supply chains 鈥� especially for highly engineered products 鈥� is overly burdened with complexity.

An airplane has more than 6 million parts. An automobile engine alone has more than 200 parts. Creating sourcing agreements for raw materials, components, and assemblies is no easy task. To source these parts, there are dozens of possible breaking points and any one can prevent a new product from going to market on time, cause projects to go over budget, or lead to losing best possible price points or locating better materials.

In working closely with leading automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) over the past 50 years, 51风流got a firsthand look at how traditional systems that rely on manual processes and disconnected systems are hurting companies that develop highly engineered products.

51风流dug into all the unique sourcing requirements that these companies have and created an end-to-end way to manage their specific needs. Sourcing and commodity management teams at leading automotive OEM and IM&C companies will find our solutions prove their value in multiple ways.

The benefits of include:

• Accelerating time to market while achieving better team alignment
• Increasing efficiency and automation in the direct material source-to-contract process
• Improving operational compliance and accuracy without the cost and complexity of system and master data integration
• Supporting better management of raw material cost volatility through automated integration with commodity indexes during the entire source-to-pay process
• Increasing efficiency in annual contract negotiations with pricing changes and reductions automatically updated in contracts
• Improving sourcing efficiency and reducing material costs through aggregation of demand
• Providing better supplier experiences through flexible collaboration options

The newly released product sourcing solutions offer an incredibly robust suite of new features. There are three key features to highlight:

• They run natively on 51风流S/4HANA. The solutions provide comprehensive sourcing program management and native access to procurement, material master, and contract management functions. They also offer centralized operational contract management across key connected procurement systems, even if a company has multiple enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, legal entities, and company codes. They also provide direct access to material masters and back-end systems without complex integrations, data replication, or homegrown connectivity solutions.
• Commodity index-based pricing capabilities save hours of work normally spent using manual processes to operationalize index-based pricing. Product sourcing solutions from 51风流smooth the process that allows users to obtain commodity content inputs from suppliers in the sourcing process. They automatically add and manage pricing formulas in contracts and make it easier to simulate and calculate pricing using market data through integration and system-triggered lookups to commodity indexes.
• Mass contract renegotiations, which are typically done on an annual or quarterly frequency, require manual creation of sourcing projects at massive volumes in these industries. The work is repetitive and time consuming. However, these solutions automate mass renegotiation of existing contracts, including price concessions and changes due to fluctuating commodity pricing, annual pricing reviews, and so on. In addition, they automatically update new terms in the contracts once renegotiation is finalized. This helps ensure that price changes are automatically updated and executed.

New 51风流 Deliver More Functionality, Less Complexity

Other features to highlight include automated project initiation, supplier management, supplier collaboration, automated negotiation processes, access to material masters, and compliance support. Altogether, these solutions support:

• Robust procurement project management to support significant product launches two to three years before product launch
• Flexibility to import part lists from different product lifecycle management (PLM) systems into procurement planning
• Sourcing project and event creation, management, and execution for materials that are part of available material masters
• Demand-driven sourcing projects triggered by purchase requisitions that are acquired from multiple back-end systems
• Management of preferred supplier lists based on multiple material groups and company codes, which improves compliance by making it easier for users to invite the right set of suppliers to bid
• Flexible options for obtaining quotations from suppliers in multiple currencies, as well as supplier collaboration options such as integration with or an existing supplier portal
• Ability to evaluate and compare supplier responses, select and award suppliers, and flow this information to a contract repository and other legal documents

Even with the incredible excitement about what is new today, 51风流plans to add features that help organizations track the sustainability of products during sourcing. Teams will be able to make decisions based on a product鈥檚 overall carbon footprint or greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in addition to price comparisons. All of these planned improvements can help companies make smarter decisions about the products they purchase so they can release products into the market that meet customer needs for a more sustainable future.

There is a lot to unpack in this new solution suite. For more information about the full feature set, .

Salvatore Lombardo is senior vice president and chief product officer for 51风流Procurement.

Major updates and new functionalities to the 51风流Ariba Sourcing solution, specifically to the , is modernizing eSourcing. The improvements are arriving at an ideal time, as global trade restrictions and supply chain issues have made eSourcing more challenging and even threaten business continuity.

The guided sourcing capability can meet the needs of these unique times. It offers a more intelligent and intuitive solution for managing strategic processes and RFx events to help ensure you source the exact materials you need, when you need them. It also introduces efficiencies that can accelerate event creation so team members have more time for risk mitigation or securing on-time delivery. With guided sourcing, a procurement team can:

• Manage projects and create RFx events from a single page
• Automate RFx event creation with autonomous procurement features like smart Excel import
• Message peers and team members from within the interface about project and RFx event activities
• Facilitate the multi-round bidding process to effectively move from a long list to a best and final offer
• Realize bidding advantages from the advanced bid analysis engine

The Journey to Simpler, Easier eSourcing

After introducing the guided sourcing capability, 51风流has continuously invested in improving its functionality. In the latest release, the usability has exponentially improved. Creating RFx events is faster, search is enhanced, and contextual help is available. The user interface is much more intuitive, which speeds up adoption among users and improves the overall experience by still addressing complex eSourcing requirements. Likewise, executing an RFx event can be much faster. In fact, customers are realizing a 50% improvement in time to create an RFx event. And, project and RFx event management are much more intuitive.

One feature I want to highlight is the full projects functionality, which can be extremely helpful with strategic sourcing initiatives. Here are its highlights:

• Process and project insight areas provide visibility into task and phase completion, in addition to created RFx events and supplier participation. Users can navigate across all sections from a single page and they can choose from multiple actions. They can also track a project鈥檚 progress and get a summary of project components.
• Collaboration is much easier with messaging, contract workspaces, and quick links. Team members can easily find helpful links and communicate with others in the organization and suppliers through interactive messages.
• The tasks area has been enhanced with a new look and feel, plus the ability to edit or create new tasks directly in the project. Starting and finishing tasks is much easier and intuitive.
• You can find tasks and phases displayed on the homepage, saving clicks to navigate to another page to locate tasks. Users can create, rearrange, and complete tasks on a single page.
• The RFx events and documents area is updated with the ability to create project placeholders at the template level and create ad hoc RFx event placeholders. Users can upload documents, create RFx events and subprojects, and organize their content.

Our eAuction capabilities are another valuable improvement you will want to explore. Supported eAuction types are , , and Japanese reverse auction as well as traffic light bidding. Strategic buyers can create, monitor, and award reverse auctions from the guided sourcing interface along with a great auction monitoring cockpit. Looking ahead, 51风流plans to add more auction types in future releases.

One other huge time-saver is the smart import feature. Creating an RFP event can take much more time than many of us have. Smart import uses machine learning capabilities powered by 51风流to convert spreadsheets in RFPs so that buyers can quickly and easily populate line items in an RFP event. Strategic buyers are guided through the process to minimize manual errors. Consequently, they can quickly and accurately create an Rfx event and source the specific materials needed.

The Time Is Right to Adopt Guided Sourcing

Guided sourcing is completely 鈥渟elf service,鈥� meaning you can adopt when you鈥檙e ready and roll out to users based on permissions. You can gauge your users鈥� comfort level and help them onboard to guided sourcing when they are ready.

Another advantage of guided sourcing is the synergy between old and new. The user interface for guided sourcing can coexist with our classic UX sourcing solution so that users can create strategic projects and events in both interfaces. This allows users to transition as they get more comfortable with the enhancements and improvements.

I do want to emphasize that now is an optimal time to move to guided sourcing. It鈥檚 a modern, intuitive, and streamlined way to manage eSourcing, and your team can transition from the classic UX to guided sourcing easily and gain all the advantages needed for modernized eSourcing.

Last but not least, I should also mention that guided sourcing is available at no extra cost to you. It鈥檚 part of your eSourcing solution, ready and waiting for you to begin running your eSourcing initiatives more easily and faster.

Ready to get started? or watch a .

Salvatore Lombardo is senior vice president and chief product officer for 51风流Procurement.

Yet beyond professional athletics, teamwork carries on all around us. In the enterprise software industry, I see it every day. As businesses take steps toward recovery, I can feel the court shifting.

I was recently back at the office, meeting with a customer face-to-face for the first time in months. Though we were seated apart by 1.5 meters, it felt good to be back in the same room with others again. It was strange at first, with our socially distanced interaction feeling like a staged game play, where we had to stay within our zones. But as the meeting went on, it began to feel more natural. This is when it clicked for me that success in the procurement business, particularly during a pandemic, can draw valuable lessons from basketball.

When a basketball team wins on the court, credit often goes to the coach. Even though he or she may never dribble, drive, or dunk the ball personally, the coach directs the team and choreographs the complex interplay of events that add up to victory. Coaches act with urgency, display flexibility, and reward agility. As events unfold, they need to be able to revise tactics and call another play. The ability to anticipate events and adjust in real time comes from knowing the strengths and weaknesses of each player. A coach who understands everyone鈥檚 unique capabilities sets a team on the path to success.

Unlike a basketball team of 12 to 15 players, a business can have thousands or even millions of suppliers. But the coordination required among them 鈥� from sourcing and contracting to purchasing and payments 鈥� is no less meticulous. Even the most knowledgeable, experienced business leader cannot single-handedly orchestrate the dynamics that exist among so many participants.

That is why successful business leaders turn to cloud-based technologies for the full range of procurement needs, from direct and indirect goods to contingent labor and services providers to maintenance, repair, and operations spend. Digital solutions enable organizations to extend their visibility across the breadth of their supply chains, unlocking insights, furthering collaboration, and delivering real-time data in the process.

Cloud-based applications also streamline operations and equip buyers and suppliers with the tools they need to manage risk amid volatility and disruption. When the pandemic took hold, many companies without digital solutions ceased operations temporarily. They lacked the visibility and flexibility made possible by cloud-based platforms connecting buyers and suppliers.

By contrast, a strategic, an strengthens an organization鈥檚 responsiveness to unforeseen shifts in supply and demand and sharpens its competitive edge in uncertain times. Resilience, whether in business or in basketball, is essential for winning the long game. Whether shoring up a supply chain or coaching a team to victory, visibility determines champions.

Chief procurement officers, chief information officers and other corporate leaders who leverage cloud-based technologies to forge transparency, both within organizations and among interconnected buyers and suppliers, stand tall on the court of business, where teamwork and agility win every time.

Salvatore Lombardo is senior vice president and chief product officer for 51风流Procurement.

All too often, the hype eventually fades as soon as a newer, better, more affordable alternative emerges.

This classic experience is what I call 鈥渂ig bang鈥� innovation. When a new good or service enters the market, it rarely generates the momentum needed to grow adoption and revenue sustainably 鈥� no matter the price point, feature, or challenge addressed. Even if demand initially outpaces supply, the novelty of the offering eventually wears off and customers begin to question the value of that purchase. They begin to look elsewhere.

The way some businesses pursue innovation is mere tinkering. Their products aim to disrupt the marketplace and create noise, but they lack a north star for sustained enhancements necessary to stay ahead of shifting customer requirements. A north star sets a common direction that inspires customers to achieve outcomes reflecting their objectives. When setting a course, product developers must evaluate whether their activities draw them closer to the north star or further away from it.

Without a clear vision for the long term, product developers may be able to create today鈥檚 shiny new object 鈥� and sufficient buzz to promote it 鈥� but only for a while. When customer demand begins to fade, today鈥檚 shiny, new object can swiftly become tomorrow鈥檚聽rusted memento.

Real Meaning of Innovation: Value and Substance, Never Hype

True innovation sifts through the noise and replaces it with actionable outcomes and enduring customer value. Yet some in the industry seem to be generating much of the dissonance and hype these days 鈥� especially when it comes to business-to-business (B2B) procurement networks.

At SAP, innovation is treated as a team effort. We draw on people with different kinds of expertise, experiences, and work styles, leaning on each other, exchanging ideas, and collaborating to shape a shared vision. Once an idea takes shape, we nurture the concept bit by bit over time, adding customer feedback, experimentation, and real-time market insights to guide the project toward a final deliverable.

Innovation happens all the time and excludes no one. Everyone 鈥� executives, product managers, engineers, salespeople, consultants, partners, and customers 鈥� has a stake in how well we deliver offerings that are reliable and relevant to the current business needs of today鈥檚 buyers and suppliers. Seeking and following through on their feedback keeps us inspired to innovate new capabilities, stronger security features, and better processes that complement, augment, and improve our users鈥� experiences. How may we consistently exceed our customers鈥� expectations? I always ask my team: what is the 鈥渨ow factor鈥� in everything you do?

Take, for example, the procurement experience from the buyer and supplier perspective. Most procurement solution vendors focus on one or the other. But at SAP, we understand that both sides of every procurement transaction are inextricably linked and dependent on each other.

By continuously engaging in well-rounded, honest discussions with customers who are buyers, suppliers, or both, we step into their world with open eyes, hearts, and minds. We observe and empathize with their business challenges, understand their needs, pinpoint potential gaps in processes, and navigate paths to resolve them.

Our innovation approach evolves our technology portfolio 鈥� across direct and indirect goods and services; the contingent workforce; maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO); and operational procurement 鈥� to deliver concrete, measurable, and, importantly, integrated solutions to our customers in their efforts to strengthen agility and extend competitive advantage.

For example, Spend Matters recently that the launch of represents a 鈥渙ne-of-a-kind solution鈥� and an 鈥渋nnovative one that an organization can start to use immediately. Its creation and launch represent a significant degree of business agility and innovativeness on the part of 51风流Fieldglass. And it is also an experiment in cooperation and demand-aggregation for some staffing suppliers.鈥�

Gaining customer trust and industry attention is not something we take lightly. We aim to deliver innovations that consistently enhance today鈥檚 offerings and turn our customers鈥� buying and selling experiences into meaningful and mutual growth opportunities. Their success, particularly in these uncertain times, guides our innovation efforts at 51风流as we help to shape the future of procurement for both buyers and suppliers.

Innovation is a continuous process. Innovative products, services, experiences, and business models should build up the value that new and existing customers expect. Even if an existing offering is a success right now, true innovators always have another update or a complementary offering ready to be introduced as soon as demand shifts.

Salvatore Lombardo is the senior vice president and chief product officer for Procurement at SAP.
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