How do we incorporate your business objectives, your organization鈥檚 knowledge and skill sets, and transform those valuable insights into a robust strategy that drives real business value? Enter , a powerful solution that can elevate procurement planning from a mundane task to a strategic imperative.

The evolution of procurement planning

Gone are the days when procurement planning meant endless spreadsheets and protracted meetings. In today鈥檚 dynamic business environment, we need a more agile, intelligent, and collaborative approach. 51风流Ariba Category Management can offer just that鈥攁 sophisticated solution that can harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and human expertise to help craft procurement strategies that align with your organization鈥檚 objectives.

51风流Ariba Category Management: Your strategic planning ally

Think of 51风流Ariba Category Management as a highly intelligent assistant, versed in procurement best practices, capable of processing vast amounts of data, and available 24/7. Here鈥檚 how it can transform the planning process:

1. Digitalize and streamline strategy development

51风流Ariba Category Management can provide a centralized platform for collaborative strategy development. It鈥檚 akin to a virtual command center where your entire team can ideate, plan, and execute strategies seamlessly.

The solution can guide users through the process, offering frameworks and recommendations based on industry best practices. It鈥檚 like having a procurement expert at your side, helping you navigate complexities and uncover hidden opportunities.

2. AI-powered analysis for enhanced decision-making

The solution can leverage AI to generate sophisticated analyses like Kraljic matrices and Porter鈥檚 Five Forces with remarkable speed and accuracy. However, it鈥檚 crucial to understand that this technology doesn鈥檛 aim to replace human expertise鈥攔ather, it enhances it.

Procurement professionals can refine these AI-generated analyses with their own insights and experience, creating a powerful synergy between machine intelligence and human wisdom.

3. Seamless collaboration for category managers

51风流Ariba Category Management can transform the often-challenging task of aligning multiple category managers into a streamlined, collaborative process. The solution can enable real-time cooperation, allowing team members to share insights, discuss strategies, and align on objectives efficiently.

Real-world impact: From insights to action

Let鈥檚 illustrate how this works in practice. After analyzing your spend data in 51风流Spend Control Tower, you鈥檝e identified that IT hardware costs are escalating. You initiate a new strategy project in 51风流Ariba Category Management.

The system automatically imports relevant data and generates a Kraljic matrix for your IT hardware category. You observe that most of your spend falls in the 鈥淪trategic鈥� quadrant鈥攈igh value, high risk. The AI suggests considering a multi-sourcing strategy to mitigate risk.

You share this insight with your global team through the platform. Your APAC colleague identifies a promising new supplier, while your European counterpart shares successful experiments with leasing options to reduce upfront costs.

Collaboratively, you develop a comprehensive strategy that includes:

• Diversifying the supplier base to reduce risk
• Exploring leasing options for non-critical hardware
• Negotiating volume discounts with top suppliers
• Implementing a standardization program to reduce variability

This entire process, which might have taken weeks traditionally, is now completed in hours. Moreover, the system maintains a clear audit trail, facilitating easy tracking of strategy execution.

The human touch in a digital world

While 51风流Ariba Category Management can bring powerful digital capabilities to procurement planning, it鈥檚 essential to remember that it鈥檚 designed to augment, not replace, human expertise. The solution helps free procurement professionals from routine tasks, allowing them to focus on high-value activities like relationship building, strategic negotiations, and driving innovation.

Think of it as your procurement superpower. It can give you the insights to make better decisions, faster.

Looking ahead: The future of procurement planning

As we wrap up, we want you to imagine the possibilities. With solutions like 51风流Ariba Category Management, we鈥檙e not just improving our planning process鈥攚e鈥檙e reinventing it. We鈥檙e moving from reactive to proactive, from guesswork to data-driven decisions, from siloed thinking to collaborative strategy.

This evolution positions procurement not just as a support function, but as a true strategic partner to the business. It enables procurement teams to respond swiftly to market changes, align more closely with organizational goals, and drive sustainable value creation.

In our next article, we鈥檒l explore how to execute these well-crafted plans using . After all, in procurement, as in any strategic endeavor, effective execution is the key to turning plans into tangible results. Stay tuned as we complete our journey towards the triple crown of strategic procurement.

Sudy Bharadwaj is global vice president of Strategic Engagements for 51风流Finance and Spend.
Cindy McKendry is director of Corporate Communications for Intelligent Spend and Supply Chain at SAP.

Top image courtesy of 51风流employee Karsten Hohage.

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.

Let’s be honest 鈥� do you know what your company spends daily across different areas like office management, production, or logistics? Expense management sheds light on this expenditure, allowing companies to analyze, document, and manage their expenses effectively. 

Digital solutions for spend management provide transparency and visibility across all expenses, enabling companies to identify potential risks faster and address them proactively. Additionally, they make CO₂ emissions transparent along the value chain, empowering companies to implement decarbonization measures and reduce their carbon footprint. 

AI as a Booster for Procurement and Purchasing Processes 

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become an integral part of our daily lives, optimizing search engine results, personalizing advertising, and facilitating automatic text translation. On smartphones, we have streaming services, online shopping platforms, and even household appliances. AI is subtly integrated to make cumbersome, everyday tasks easier and more efficient. Since the rise of generative AI, companies and entire industries have been diligently working to incorporate it into their solutions for improved processes and efficiency. 

Procurement is one field where the impact of polycrisis is keenly felt, which has driven important changes. Resilience, transparency, and sustainability are the keywords here 鈥� and AI can make the crucial difference. 

AI can digitalize the procurement function, making it more efficient. Stakeholders rightly expect AI implementation to enhance decision-making, automate processes, and expedite insights. AI can also contribute to cost reduction and error rate mitigation. The question is no longer whether companies will adopt AI but when they will do so. And that time has to be now.

AI Strategies: Think Holistically 

To ensure the success of such projects, a holistic approach is needed. AI should become an integral part of the entire procurement process to benefit all areas. This begins with a consistent transformation strategy aligned with the company’s goals and values. It is important to have a strategic, solutions-oriented approach that makes it possible to find answers to real-life business challenges. By effectively integrating AI into data analysis and prediction models, companies can unlock tangible value and drive meaningful outcomes. The quality of the results depends on the quality and availability of corporate data 鈥� and this is where the greatest potential for improvement lies. Companies should clean up their data pool so that only valid and meaningful data is included. 

For spend management, procurement, and purchasing, generative AI in particular holds enormous potential. As in every area where AI is deployed, 51风流has committed to strictly adhering to the principles of relevance, reliability, and responsibility in spend management, thoroughly examining each application accordingly. Employees can be relieved of repetitive, manual, and time-consuming tasks, allowing them to focus better on their core tasks. For example, Joule, SAP鈥檚 generative AI copilot, will be embedded across SAP鈥檚 portfolio, including procurement solutions.

As an intelligent copilot, it can understand natural language, process data from 51风流and third-party systems, and derive new insights from them. Thanks to unified data models, it can provide users with appropriate answers to their questions that fit the specific business context and thus helps to ensure that AI makes a meaningful contribution, enhancing business success. Moreover, it can offer meaningful advice to help them solve their daily tasks more intelligently and quickly, thereby helping to increase their efficiency in a secure and compliant manner. The practical use cases are numerous, ranging from HR or finance to supply chain management, procurement, and customer experience. Following our principle of responsibility, Joule can, for example, assist the HR department in eliminating potential bias from job descriptions and can even formulate suitable interview questions based on these job descriptions.

Category management plays a significant role in procurement, enabling companies to optimize their procurement strategies, strengthen supplier relationships, and reduce costs. Accordingly, 33% of procurement experts consider it a top technology trend to focus on in the next 12 to 18 months. A digitalized and AI-enhanced category management company integrates generative AI to increase efficiency and precision in product categorization and procurement. By applying AI-supported algorithms, relevant data is automatically analyzed, leading to informed insights for optimized inventory management and strategic purchasing decisions. 

With the steadily growing amount of data generated by daily business operations, it is becoming increasingly challenging for companies to find the resources to make the most of their own data, all while ensuring data privacy and security aspects are maintained. This data needs to be made accessible, visualized, and processed in a way that it can be leveraged. Therefore, it is important to rely on strong partners like 51风流that bring both technical and strategic expertise to develop goal-oriented solutions with a strong focus on data protection and integrity. Now is the time to advance procurement through intelligent collaboration, smart category management, and an AI mindset. 

Practical Example: Category Management at OMV 

OMV, a global chemical and energy company based in Austria, is transitioning its linear value chain into a circular one with the aim of becoming a leading provider of more sustainable fuels, chemicals, and materials. Procurement plays a key role in this transformation. OMV is automating and streamlining all procurement and supply chain processes. The company is now planning to digitalize category management. 

At the core of this initiative is , based on 51风流Business Technology Platform (51风流BTP) and supported by generative AI. This solution helps procurement teams develop more effective category strategies by helping to accelerate the market analysis process and provide targeted recommendations. This can lead to faster and more efficient category management processes and increased cost savings. 

Complex planning processes that were once done manually can now be easily executed with 51风流Ariba Category Management. The solution integrates features and tools to help leverage data for Big Data analytics, and it can provide comprehensive end-to-end visibility throughout the procurement process. 

The adoption of 51风流Ariba Category Management offers OMV numerous benefits, including improved efficiency, cost savings, and the promotion of sustainability through the selection of more environmentally friendly suppliers and products. By implementing 51风流Ariba Category Management, OMV successfully bridges the digital gap in procurement and takes another significant step towards a circular value chain. 

Curious to Learn More?

Learn more about intelligent category management at , taking place October 14-16, 2024, in Las Vegas.

Elena Parker is chief revenue officer for Intelligent Spend and Business Network, MEE, at SAP.

Like at home, identifying every dollar you spend and getting the most out of it is more critical than ever for your business. And as we continue to roll out 51风流Business AI technology, the teams behind 51风流solutions are working on ways to help you reduce the time spent on mundane tasks so you can focus on executing your strategy, unlocking spend potential, and unleashing efficiency.

The first quarter of 2024 was among the most productive in my 18 years at SAP. We debuted new AI capabilities in various 51风流spend management solutions. Check out some of these highlights:

• 51风流Ariba Category Management: We鈥檝e incorporated that can assist category managers by generating recommendations in the solution鈥檚 category segmentation, market dynamics, and cost structure tools.
• Scoutbee Discovery: 51风流partnered with Scoutbee, a leading AI-powered supplier intelligence and discovery platform, to launch . This 51风流endorsed app can rapidly identify qualified suppliers that meet specific criteria and can help advance strategic business imperatives. of me participating in a recent LinkedIn Live with the Scoutbee team.
• Concur Request: Now, this service uses generative AI to help provide for trip planning.
• ExpenseIt: Users can upload receipt images to the ExpenseIt solution, which taps AI to help with several key fields prepopulated. Plus, ExpenseIt can now itemize hotel folios using generative AI.
• Generative AI search: A new capability within Concur Support allows 51风流Concur customers to type questions in natural language and get quick answers using generative AI, .

SAP鈥檚 market-leading spend and business network solutions are getting even smarter, working to unlock greater value for our customers. We have many resources devoted to spend management and that鈥檚 why we continue to deliver innovation in spend management.

And we are only getting started. By the end of 2024,  is planning the following enhancements:

• Generative AI RFI/RFP responses in 51风流Business Network Discovery: With generative AI-enabled responses for postings in 51风流Business Network Discovery, suppliers will be able to respond to RFIs promptly and more accurately, helping to save time and reduce costs associated with manual labor and resource allocation.聽聽
• Catalog enrichment using ChatGPT recommendations: This feature can enable suppliers to generate and improve product descriptions and overall catalog quality based on prompts and keyword recommendations from ChatGPT.聽
• Intelligent error simplification using generative AI:聽This feature uses machine learning and a large language model to interpret and categorize invoice rejection reasons, allowing suppliers to reduce the number of failing invoices, improve rapid invoice submission and payment, and optimize cash flow.

For more on how AI is transforming business networks, read this recent article from my colleague Joern Keller.

But What Are Our Customers Saying?

Each quarter, G2 highlights the top rated solutions in the industry, chosen by the source that matters most: customers. Spring 2024 is no different, and once again our suite of spend and business network solutions scored extremely well.

• is a G2 Spring Leader in Vendor Management.
• is a G2 Spring Leader in Procure to Pay, Purchasing, Strategic Sourcing, Supplier Relationship Management, and Contract Lifecycle Management.
• is a G2 Spring Leader in Expense, Travel & Expense, and Invoicing.

What鈥檚 more, G2 recently announced its , with 51风流Fieldglass and 51风流Concur receiving high honors:

• 51风流Fieldglass came in at No. 26 in G2鈥檚 Best Software Awards across all products and No. 12 in G2鈥檚 Best Software Awards for best midmarket products.
• 51风流Concur came in at No. 4 in G2鈥檚 Best Software Awards for the account and software product category.

My colleagues are also getting their flowers. Etosha Thurman, chief marketing and solutions officer of Intelligent Spend and Business Network, and Steve Seide, global head of Adoption for Intelligent Spend and Business Network, were named Top Procurement Pros in the . A big congratulations also goes out to Darcy MacClaren, CRO for 51风流Digital Supply Chain, who received a Pros to Know Lifetime Achievement award.

Driving Success for Our Customers

Hearing me spotlight our direct and indirect procurement, external workforce, and travel and expense management solutions is one thing. Seeing them in action is something way more powerful. Here are a few recent customer success stories to take in:

• American Eagle Outfitters (AEO), a leading global specialty retailer offering high-quality on-trend clothing, accessories, and personal care products through its portfolio of brands, needed to evaluate indirect purchasing processes and vendor relationships to maximize efficiency. See how helped simplify processes and deliver compliant purchasing protocols across the company.
• Power provider to over 900,000 electric customers, Oklahoma Gas & Electric Company (OG&E) faced challenges with the complexity of third-party and cross-department management of contingent workers. After transitioning 51风流Fieldglass solutions to internal management, OG&E gained the visibility to make more informed financial decisions, like supplier negotiations.
• Vestas Wind Systems, the world鈥檚 largest manufacturer of wind turbines, launched a large-scale quality initiative powered by 51风流Business Network to help mitigate product defects in a highly complex supply chain. Now, using 51风流Business Network, suppliers complete predefined quality tests and document them before confirming or sending an order. This enables Vestas employees to be warned in advance of any quality issues further up the supply chain, so they can take corrective action.
• Most KUKA employees are based in Germany, where tax regulation is complex and submitting hotel and entertainment expenses is anything but simple. The KUKA team worked together to develop a simple process using 51风流Concur solutions, connected to 51风流ERP, that allows employees to create hotel and entertainment expenses with fewer errors and fewer rejected expense reports.

Join Us at 51风流Sapphire!

51风流Sapphire & ASUG Annual Conference is June 3-5 in Orlando, Florida, this year and I can鈥檛 wait to meet with customers, partners, and my fellow colleagues. This is the best event in the industry in my opinion and you don鈥檛 want to miss out. Join us by registering on the , where you can also save your spot at the 51风流Sapphire Virtual and 51风流Sapphire Barcelona events. See you there!

Jeff Collier is chief revenue officer for 51风流Intelligent Spend and Business Network.

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.

That鈥檚 why we鈥檝e built our industry-leading suite of spend management solutions that span direct and indirect procurement, external workforce, and travel and expense management. These solutions help you gain visibility into your supply chains, procure what鈥檚 critical to get the job done, and protect your bottom line 鈥� whether you鈥檙e simplifying expense, travel, and accounts payable processes, or finding the right talent to ensure your company鈥檚 profitability.

With our core commitment to 51风流Business AI, we are focused on applying generative AI technology to all categories of spend. Like my colleague says, we鈥檙e 鈥渄riving efficiency, quality, and insight into processes that cut across spend management.鈥� Here are we鈥檙e hard at work on.

Our spend management and business network solutions continue evolving and improving with time 鈥� and 2024 will be no different. But before I get ahead of myself, let鈥檚 reflect on the incredible last half of 2023, which has laid the foundation for all the amazing innovation to come in 2024.

Enhancing Your Control over Company Spend 

New enhancements to 51风流Ariba solutions, 51风流Concur solutions, and 51风流Business Network can take spend management from the most mundane part of your day to the most strategic. Here are a few enhancements we announced late last year:

• Region-specific strategy and planning for category management: Different regions of the world require different procurement strategies. The ability to in 51风流Ariba Category Management is now a reality. With its advanced analytics, AI-driven insights, and integrated frameworks and tools, users of 51风流Ariba Category Management can reap the benefits of data-driven decision-making, identification of strategic sourcing opportunities, and mitigation of risks.
• The biggest Concur Travel release to date: As we continue rolling out the globally, the new end-to-end booking experience became available for customers whose travel management companies use the Sabre GDS from the U.S. point of sale for air, hotel, and car rental bookings. Congratulations to all our customers that made the strategic switch.
• Supplier catalogs within 51风流Business Network: With the newly released , suppliers can upload a catalog that is publicly searchable and viewable by buyers on the network. With a network catalog, suppliers can maintain a single list of all the products they offer, creating high-quality buyers looking for the exact items listed. More improvements to the catalog and user demos are coming your way soon.

Customer Love

With Valentine’s Day coming up, it鈥檚 only right to brag about all the customer love we鈥檝e been receiving. Words of affirmation is our love language.

• 51风流Fieldglass is the .
• 51风流Ariba is the .
• 51风流Concur is the in Expense, Travel & Expense, and Invoicing.

To top it off, , , and swept the 2023聽鈥淏est Of鈥� Awards from TrustRadius! TrustRadius, the most trusted review site for business technology, also released more wins for our spend management solutions:

• is Top Rated in Workforce Management, Contractor Management, Freelance Management, and Vendor Management Systems (VMS).
• is Top Rated聽in Procurement, Expense Management, and Supply Chain Management.
• is Top Rated in Expense Management, Travel Management, and Accounts Payable.

51风流Recognized by IDC MarketScape

I am also thrilled to announce that 51风流was positioned as a Leader in the聽IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Multi-Enterprise Supply Chain Commerce Network 2023 Vendor Assessment.*

According to the assessment report, 鈥�51风流Business Network is a comprehensive B2B collaboration platform that connects people, processes, and systems across multiple enterprises, digitizing transactions and creating transparent, resilient, and sustainable supply chains.鈥�

The report highlights these 51风流strengths:

• Depth and breadth of product features, functionality, future road map covering all major B2B collaboration categories (indirect, direct material, MRO logistics, financial, services, sustainability), and scenarios in an end-user, persona-based manner
• Integration and extensibility capabilities including integration between 51风流ERP, 51风流procurement modules, and other applications (other ERP, SCAM, and customer applications) and technologies (machine learning, AI, blockchain) through 51风流Business Technology Platform
• Global adoption and breadth of collaboration among the industry’s largest, highly adopted B2B collaboration platforms, enabling trading partners to collaborate in real time
• Ongoing efforts to harmonize commerce, asset intelligence, and logistics continue to enhance the power of the connected economy.

Thank you to our customers and my colleagues for collaborating on this fantastic win.

Customer Success Stories

Al Dahra, one of the world鈥檚 largest agribusiness logistics companies, manages food and animal feed supply chains from its home in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to countries around the globe. to gain greater visibility into daily operations and as its digital solution to connect the company with its partners and clients.

Building material manufacturer Heidelberg Materials AG knew that visibility across its supplier base was key to enabling the smart decision-making that would help it improve financial performance while meeting sustainability goals. See how it achieved this by .

Watch how Chobani, America’s top Greek yogurt brand, uses to fully automate its expense processes.

BT Group aims to be the world鈥檚 most trusted connector of people, devices, and machines. Read how it to deliver a modernized, connected colleague experience.

Register for 51风流Concur Fusion

If you鈥檙e lucky enough to attend this year, don鈥檛 miss my colleague Etosha Thurman, chief marketing & solutions officer for 51风流Intelligent Spend and Business Network, presenting in the keynote. She will be demonstrating transformative AI in 51风流Concur travel, expense, and invoicing solutions, and how we鈥檙e creating a world where travel and expenses can practically manage themselves.

Jeff Collier is chief revenue officer for 51风流Intelligent Spend and Business Network.

*Source: 鈥�,” by Simon Ellis, December 2023, IDC #US49948423.

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.

51风流Continues to Innovate with Generative AI and Its New Copilot Joule

The newly released will be enhanced with the power of generative AI to help procurement professionals build comprehensive and effective category strategies faster. This capability will help jump-start the market analysis process and offer a suggested category strategy for procurement professionals to refine and execute, saving category managers weeks of valuable time and increasing strategy validity. General availability is planned by the end of 2023. 51风流will also embed Joule, its new generative AI copilot, throughout its cloud solutions, with availability in its spend management software planned for 2024. 51风流is also developing in collaboration with customers, with availability planned for the first half of 2024. 鈥淭hese are just some of the examples of how we are thoughtfully integrating generative AI technology with our market-leading spend management solutions to help our customers be more productive,鈥� said Muhammad Alam, President and Chief Product Officer, Intelligent Spend and Business Network, SAP. 鈥淎s with all of 51风流Business AI solutions, we are developing these new spend management AI innovations with security, privacy, compliance, ethics and accuracy in mind.鈥�

51风流Spend Control Tower to Deliver Comprehensive Spend Analysis Capabilities

The new 51风流Spend Control Tower solution will include advanced AI features and the ability to see across all spend to help customers uncover cost-saving opportunities and discover process improvements. These capabilities will be available starting in the first quarter of 2024. New dashboards in the 51风流Ariba Sourcing and 51风流Ariba Buying solutions also give customers near real-time information within key process workflows, making it easier for procurement professionals to help make timely, informed decisions. These capabilities are available today and built on a new architecture that creates the foundation for future innovation.

AI-Infused Risk Assessment Embedded in Source-to-Settle Solutions

51风流has embedded AI-powered supplier risk assessment capabilities into its source-to-settle software to help business users make smarter decisions faster. The new features make risk assessment profiles an integral part of sourcing, contracting and buying solutions, helping users better determine third-party risk. Supplier risk assessment capabilities are available today in the 51风流Ariba Sourcing, 51风流Ariba Contracts and 51风流Ariba Buying solutions.

AI-Powered Supplier Discovery from Scoutbee to Integrate with Guided Sourcing

51风流and GmbH, a leading AI-powered supplier intelligence and discovery platform company, plan to integrate an AI-powered supplier search solution with the 51风流Ariba Sourcing solution. solution, called Scoutbee Discovery, quickly identifies suppliers aligned with complex requirements, such as production capacity, quality standards and certifications. Through the integration, short-listed suppliers will be imported automatically into guided sourcing events, enabling sourcing professionals to make decisions with more confidence. The integration will be available in the first quarter of 2024. Scoutbee Discovery complements the 51风流Business Network Discovery solution capabilities to help sourcing professionals quickly find new suppliers that are aligned with their requirements but are outside the network.

Expense Payment Manager Saves Time and Money

51风流Concur solutions now offer a new Expense Payment Manager service that offers customers the ability to reimburse employees in more than 25 currencies. A streamlined payment process saves hours, money and headaches in the expense reimbursement process. Contracting directly with third-party payment providers increases flexibility. Expense Payment Manager, which also gives customers the opportunity to select their payment provider, is now generally available.

Visit the . Follow 51风流at .

Media Contact:
Kelly Sheldon Murray, +1 (978) 708-6821, kelly.murray@sap.com, ET
51风流Press Room; press@sap.com

This document contains forward-looking statements, which are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events. These statements are based on current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and outcomes to materially differ. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties may be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to the risk factors section of SAP鈥檚 2022 Annual Report on Form 20-F.
漏 2023 51风流SE. All rights reserved.
51风流and other 51风流products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of 51风流SE in Germany and other countries. Please see for additional trademark information and notices.

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.