I鈥檓 pleased to announce that next鈥慻en 51风流Ariba is now available, marking the next phase in SAP鈥檚 journey to reimagine source鈥憈o鈥憄ay for the age of AI. This milestone represents the transition from announcement to execution, bringing a fundamentally rebuilt platform into customers鈥� hands.

This milestone comes alongside strong industry recognition. 51风流has been named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner庐 Magic Quadrant™ for Source鈥憈o鈥慞ay Suites, an acknowledgment that aligns with the delivery of next-gen 51风流Ariba and our continued focus on platform modernization and AI鈥慸riven innovation at enterprise scale.

Why rebuilding the foundation matters

As procurement leaders know, AI鈥檚 potential is widely recognized, but its impact has often been uneven. Confidence is high, yet results depend on more than algorithms alone. AI only delivers value when it is supported by the right data, processes, and platform architecture. That belief shaped our decision to rebuild 51风流Ariba from the ground up.

Independent analyst firm as 鈥渁 complete reengineering of the largest and most entrenched source鈥憈o鈥憄ay platform in the world,鈥� emphasizing that this move goes far beyond adding AI features to legacy systems. Instead, it establishes the architectural foundation required for AI to operate reliably and at scale.

This aligns with what we consistently hear from customers that sustainable impact requires modernization at the core.

An AI鈥憂ative source-to-pay platform built on 51风流Business Technology Platform

Next鈥慻en 51风流Ariba is built on (51风流BTP), providing a unified, real鈥憈ime data foundation across the source鈥憈o鈥憄ay lifecycle. This shift enables tighter integration with , improved extensibility, and faster innovation delivery.

By moving to 51风流BTP, 51风流Ariba can support open APIs, cross鈥憇uite data consistency, and the responsiveness required for intelligent, AI鈥慸riven procurement operations鈥攃apabilities that are increasingly expected of leading source鈥憈o鈥憄ay platforms but are difficult to achieve on legacy architectures.

Current next鈥慻en capabilities will continue to be delivered incrementally throughout 2026 and into 2027, giving customers flexibility to adopt innovation at a pace that aligns with their business priorities.

Embedded intelligence with Joule: moving from insight to action

A defining element of next鈥慻en 51风流Ariba is the deep integration of directly into procurement workflows. Rather than treating AI as an optional add鈥憃n, next鈥慻en 51风流Ariba can embed intelligence where work happens鈥攕upporting faster, more informed decisions while reducing friction across everyday processes.

Early capabilities include:

• A Bid Analysis Agent, which can automatically evaluate complex bid scenarios, including total cost considerations
• AI-assisted contract support to help automate routine inquiries, generate summaries, and provide instant access to contract details

These capabilities reflect a broader shift from systems that require constant manual input to platforms that actively support outcomes.

A more unified, intuitive procurement experience

Next鈥慻en 51风流Ariba also addresses long鈥憇tanding fragmentation across the source鈥憈o鈥憄ay lifecycle.

Key improvements include:

• 51风流Ariba Intake Management, now globally available, providing a single entry point for procurement requests
• A simplified 51风流Fiori鈥慴ased user experience, delivered through a central launchpad
• A modernized contract lifecycle, supported through integration with Icertis Contract Intelligence

Together, these improvements are designed to make procurement easier to engage with while working to ensure processes remain connected, compliant, and intelligent behind the scenes.

What this means for customers

For existing 51风流Ariba customers, next鈥慻en 51风流Ariba provides choice and continuity. Customers can:

• Transition to next鈥慻en 51风流Ariba on a voluntary basis.
• Access next鈥慻en capabilities without commercial implications.
• Run current and next鈥慻en environments in parallel during an active transition, reducing risk and disruption.

51风流is providing tools, services, and advance timelines to support a managed transition, allowing organizations to move forward with confidence rather than urgency.

The foundation for what comes next

Next鈥慻en 51风流Ariba is not an endpoint, it is the foundation for the future of procurement.

With an AI鈥憂ative architecture, embedded agentic intelligence, and a unified user experience, this new generation of 51风流Ariba helps organizations move beyond transactional efficiency toward smarter decisions, greater resilience, and measurable business outcomes.

As Ardent Partners observed, this rebuild has the potential to act as a catalyst鈥攏ot just for 51风流Ariba customers, but for the broader procurement technology landscape. By combining scale, data, and AI in a fundamentally new way, next鈥慻en 51风流Ariba is helping define what modern source鈥憈o鈥憄ay platforms can deliver.

With the solution now available, we look forward to partnering with customers as they move from vision to value. Together, we can shape the future of intelligent procurement.

Baber Farooq is senior vice president of Product Marketing for 51风流Ariba and 51风流Fieldglass.

As we dive into 2025, 51风流is already making waves in the spend management arena. Building on last year’s momentum, we are constantly innovating our market-leading solutions so you can reduce costs, mitigate risks, improve collaboration, and make sure every spend decision is aligned with your business strategy to help drive your business forward.

Q4 Breakthroughs: Highlighting Our Latest Innovations

It was an honor to collaborate with so many of you last year. When your business is at its best, so is ours, and this mutual partnership is what fuels our commitment to innovation. In Q4, our solutions鈥�51风流Ariba, 51风流Business Network, 51风流Concur, and 51风流Fieldglass鈥攎ade significant strides, particularly in 51风流Business AI. Here are just a few highlights:

• : Now generally available, this solution can provide a single source of truth for all payment and supplier data, enhanced with AI-enabled spend classifications and supplier insights. It helps streamline spend processes, cut procurement costs, manage supplier risks, and track sustainability goals.
• Generative AI in 51风流Business Network Discovery: We鈥檝e introduced generative AI capabilities to help accelerate supplier search and improve network catalog product descriptions and summaries with .
• AI flight recommendations in Concur Travel: This new feature can suggest policy-compliant flight options based on user preferences, loyalty programs, available inventory, and other factors.
• Joule, SAP鈥檚 AI copilot, got cozy in 51风流Fieldglass solutions this past quarter with the introduction of , including:
  • Interactive guidance for creating and scheduling new reports through natural conversation, helping to navigate report creation, searches, and data insights
  • Quick answers to issues or questions with concise and easy-to-digest summaries of relevant information and helpful links to learn more
  • AI-assisted job posting and statement of work template selection, recommending the most relevant one and pre-filling data fields to save you time

These innovations align perfectly with the findings. The study highlights data and analytics reporting as the top priority for procurement transformation, a need we鈥檙e addressing head-on with our AI-enhanced solutions.

New Customer Stories and Honors

We built our solutions to elevate spend management from the most mundane part of your day to the most strategic. But don鈥檛 just take my word for it. Discover how companies like , , , and leverage 51风流solutions for better control and business resilience.

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And if customer stories aren鈥檛 enough, how about customer reviews?

Every quarter, G2 publishes Grid^庐 and Index Reports that rate products based on feedback collected from the user community, along with data compiled from various online platforms and social media networks. In December, G2 announced its Winter 2025 Reports, with 51风流spend management solutions topping the leaderboards:

• : Leader in Procure to Pay, Strategic Sourcing, and Supplier Relationship Management
• : Supply Chain Business Networks
• : Leader in Expense, Travel & Expense, and Invoicing
• : Leader in Vendor Management

In the , 51风流moved up to sixth place on G2鈥檚 top 10 companies list. In the Winter 2025 G2 Reports alone, 51风流Ariba, 51风流Business Network, 51风流Concur, and 51风流Fieldglass won 107 awards across multiple categories. Only 4% of software and services on G2 receive a Leader badge, making this recognition truly special!

Media and Analyst Accolades

Our innovations continue to garner industry recognition. Here are a few key highlights:

• won the  in the Procurement/ERP Software category from Supply & Demand Chain Executive.
• 51风流Ariba was inducted into Spend Matters鈥� for being listed on its “50 Providers to Know” list for 10 years or more.
• Over the holidays, 51风流was named a Leader in the .* The report is based on IDC MarketScape鈥檚 comprehensive assessment of 51风流and feedback from our customers. Explore the findings and why 51风流was recognized in this article from my colleague Baber Farooq.
• 51风流Concur received the , which bases its Top Rated awards solely on customer feedback. Over 1,500 verified praised 51风流Concur for its positive user experience, clear budget visibility, mobile receipt capture, time-saving features during usage and reimbursement processes, seamless integration with productivity tools, and the convenience of its mobile app.

See you at 51风流Concur Fusion

We鈥檙e thrilled to announce that the 51风流Concur Fusion event is back in 2025 and will be held in beautiful Seattle, Washington. As the premier travel and expense event, 51风流Concur Fusion offers over 200 learning opportunities, access to experts and consultants, and hands-on training to help you unlock the full potential of your 51风流Concur solutions. It鈥檚 an experience you can鈥檛 miss.

Looking Ahead

As we move further into 2025, we remain committed to delivering innovation that addresses your most pressing business needs. We鈥檙e excited about the possibilities that lie ahead and look forward to partnering with you to drive your business forward. Whether it鈥檚 through our AI-enhanced solutions, our comprehensive spend management suite, or events like 51风流Concur Fusion, we鈥檙e here to support your success every step of the way.

Thank you for your continued trust and partnership. Here鈥檚 to a transformative and successful 2025!

*IDC MarketScape: Worldwide SaaS and Cloud-Enabled Direct Spend 2024 Vendor Assessment, #US52734424e, December 2024

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

Looking ahead to 2025, several key trends are poised to reshape the landscape, promising both challenges and opportunities for forward-thinking organizations. To gain insight into what lies ahead, we鈥檝e reached out to Intelligent Spend and Business Network executives at 51风流for their predictions.

The AI-Powered Procurement Revolution

Etosha Thurman, chief marketing officer for Intelligent Spend and Business Network at SAP, envisions a future where artificial intelligence (AI) takes center stage in procurement:

鈥淚n 2025, AI and cloud-based solutions will position procurement at the heart of data-driven decision-making, enabling real-time insights and freeing teams to focus on high-impact initiatives. The future belongs to procurement professionals who blend strategic thinking with relationship management and a combination of functional and technological expertise. These skills will be crucial in fostering cross-functional collaboration and advancing corporate goals, from supply assurance to compliance to sustainability. In the digital age, spend management expertise extends to not just supporting, but also steering the business.鈥�

This prediction underscores the critical role that AI will play in transforming procurement from a support function to a strategic driver of business value.

Streamlining Processes Through Orchestration

Manoj Swaminathan, president and chief product officer for Intelligent Spend and Business Network at SAP, highlights the growing importance of process orchestration:

鈥淭he technology landscape is rapidly evolving, and organizations are grappling with a heterogeneous mix of solutions. Many companies now employ multiple systems to meet their end-to-end business needs, leading to siloed processes and confused employees. Procurement, in particular, often suffers from fragmented systems handling everything from purchase requests to supplier onboarding, creating inefficiencies and frustration.

To address this challenge, we鈥檙e seeing a shift toward process orchestration 鈥� a centralized approach that connects disparate systems, streamlining procurement inquiries and status updates. Our newest solution, 51风流Ariba Intake Management, can tackle this head-on by automating request creation and providing a single point of entry so that organizations can empower employees to adhere to policies and regulations without the burden of manual corrections. This approach can not only save valuable time and resources but also drive user adoption and increase compliance and efficiency, positioning companies to thrive in an increasingly competitive landscape.鈥�

The Rise of a New Generation of Procurement Leaders

Jeff Collier, chief revenue officer for Intelligent Spend and Business Network at SAP, predicts a significant shift in procurement leadership:

鈥淚n 2025, a shift will occur in the procurement landscape as a wave of fresh faces step into the chief procurement officer role. AI-driven procurement strategies, ever-evolving requirements, and changing demographics have created the perfect storm for new leaders to emerge. As the industry stands on the precipice of transformation, organizations must prioritize nurturing existing talent, upskilling their workforce, and attracting bright young professionals to the procurement function. The stage is set for junior procurement leaders, who have proven their mettle during the challenging COVID-19 years, to rise to the occasion, particularly those who can showcase tangible achievements in sustainability, AI integration, or risk management. Brace yourselves for a year marked by new names, fresh perspectives, and a reshaped procurement industry in 2025.鈥�

The Power of AI Across Business Networks

Val Blatt, chief revenue officer for 51风流Business Network, offers insights into how AI will transform business networks:

鈥淚n the near term, AI is already making waves by optimizing process efficiency and information sharing within and across companies in a supply chain. As we move into 2025 and beyond, we鈥檒l see AI do more to synthesize intelligence and efficiency across areas like risk, demand, and inventory planning, as well as manufacturing and delivery. This evolution becomes even more relevant because no business does business alone, and AI can synthesize and be predictive across company boundaries. We鈥檒l see AI decision support evolve into decision-making 鈥� and, ultimately, automated process execution. These advancements will occur as the need for AI to sense and predict situations with proposed planning recommendations grows, spanning across related functional areas and processes that involve trading partners in a supply chain.

In its Network Adoption Research Study* sponsored by SAP, IDC found that 鈥淒igital Champions鈥� who use modern, cloud-based tools like AI, analytics, and business networks have grown over 140% in revenue and profit performance indices from 2016 to 2021. As AI capabilities expand to sense, predict, and execute across organizational boundaries, businesses will gain next-level efficiency, visibility, and compliance. This will enable them to maintain a resilient supply chain that delivers on customer promises, especially in times of disruption, by leveraging the collective intelligence of their entire business network.鈥�

The Evolution of Travel and Expense Management

Christopher Juneau, SVP and head of 51风流Concur Product Marketing, Intelligent Spend and Business Network Marketing & Solutions, (T&E):

鈥淎s leaders strive to position their company for growth in 2025, they will still attempt to maintain employee spending at 2024 levels. Inflation drove higher spending beginning in 2023, resulting in fewer trips in 2024. As inflation slows, many leaders are likely to expect that their T&E budget 鈥� even if flat year over year 鈥� will go further in 2025.

Meanwhile, finance teams and travel managers will adjust their T&E policies to account for AI as more tasks and processes become automated. Will managers need to approve every expense report? Will they need to review them at all? How can policies and rules be modified so that travelers spend as little time in T&E tools as possible? These are some of the questions they will start to ask in 2025.

Investments in technology innovation and security infrastructure will be top priorities. The risks associated with security and privacy incidents will only continue to grow, which means companies are looking for technologies that deliver greater value to customers with lower risk. It is really a balancing act to move fast without disregarding the very important aspects of security and privacy when architecting solutions 鈥� internally and for customers.鈥�

Looking Ahead

As we look to 2025, it鈥檚 clear that the world of spend management and supply chain is on the brink of transformative change. The convergence of AI, sustainability imperatives, and interconnected business ecosystems will reshape how organizations operate and compete.

At SAP, we鈥檙e not just observing these trends 鈥� we鈥檙e actively shaping them, working to ensure our customers are well-equipped to navigate the complexities of tomorrow鈥檚 business landscape.

For a deeper dive into the future of procurement, be sure to check out . We will also be hosting a global webinar on these findings on February 4, 2025 titled 鈥�.鈥� This is an excellent opportunity to gain comprehensive insights and stay ahead of the curve. We encourage you to read the report and sign up for the webinar to learn more about the exciting developments shaping the industry.

The future may be uncertain, but one thing is clear: those who embrace these emerging trends and technologies will be best positioned to thrive in the dynamic world of 2025 and beyond. As we continue to design and deliver spend management and business network solutions that drive efficiency, leverage AI responsibly, and create greater visibility for businesses of all sizes, we look forward to partnering with our customers on this exciting journey of transformation and growth.

Cindy McKendry is a director for Intelligent Spend and Business Network Corporate Communications at SAP.

*Source: 鈥淚DC Network Adoption Research Study eBook: Driving Best-in-Class Supply Chain Collaboration with a Business Network,鈥� #US5084723, August 2023, page 18

With more change on the horizon, it is vital to keep these bets in mind to prepare for potential challenges head-on. Over the past year, we鈥檝e witnessed how spend management professionals who stay confident and bet big achieve remarkable results. In fact, according to the , C-suite confidence in the procurement function has increased by 14% in just one year, with 84% of executives now agreeing that procurement is essential for organizational strategy.

As we gear up for 2025 and beyond, let鈥檚 explore these five bets that will solidify spend management’s role as an indispensable part of an organization.

Bet #1: Strategic Collaboration

The first bet that spend management professionals should place is on strategic collaboration. As procurement becomes increasingly integrated with other critical business functions, it is up to procurement professionals to lead these collaborative efforts. Your colleagues are looking to you to take the initiative and ensure that procurement is involved in strategic initiatives that keep your organization agile in the face of uncertainty.

Whether you are partnering with HR to or implementing a in partnership with supply chain, 51风流is here to support you. Our solutions are designed with collaboration at the forefront, working to minimize miscommunication and simplify business processes so you can focus on what truly matters.

Bet #2: Effortless Compliance

The mere mention of compliance can evoke stress and worry in anyone who has ever worked in spend management. Ensuring every detail is accounted for can be nerve-racking, especially when considering local regulations and sustainability goals. At SAP, we believe that compliance should not just be simple; it should be truly effortless.

For example, can enable employees to select in-policy vendors from the start. with 51风流Business Network helps you understand and comply with evolving tax regulations. From complex tax requirements to travel policies, 51风流can help you eliminate these points of concern before they cause issues.

Bet #3: Seamless Integration

While intraorganizational strategic collaboration is key for an efficient operating model, your software must also be seamlessly integrated to make the most of our connected solutions. Fragmented processes and tools won鈥檛 get you where you need to go, which is why 51风流is committed to a suite-first strategy that aims to reduce the number of systems used to manage spend.

Whether you are an all-51风流customer or use third-party technology, we can offer a seamless experience regardless of where you are in your 51风流journey. From , your single source of truth for all spend data, to that can streamline all your procurement processes, our out-of-the-box solutions help deliver powerful business outcomes across the entire spend management process.

Bet #4: Increased Productivity

The next bet to place is on increased productivity. In recent years, we have seen firsthand how productivity gaps can be detrimental to an organization. Add in unexpected geopolitical and economic events, and you have a recipe for disaster. As the procurement landscape evolves, it is imperative to upskill your workforce to meet evolving demands.

SAP鈥檚 newest innovations, like , can help automate mundane tasks, freeing up bandwidth for making strategic decisions that really count. And increased productivity is not just reserved for key decision-makers 鈥� it benefits every employee at every level.

Bet #5: Informed Decision-Making

Finally, spend management professionals should bet big on informed decision-making. More than ever, it is essential to make choices quickly and confidently, knowing that your decisions are supported by data. That鈥檚 where 51风流comes in 鈥� solutions like and can deliver the best recommendations for you, helping to take the guesswork out of decisions amid timeline pressure.

With data-informed reports and suggestions, you can be confident that your choices are backed by best-in-class insights. 51风流helps reduce complexity and can deliver only the insights needed to make the best choices for your business.

New Ways to Streamline Critical Business Processes

To learn more about the innovations shared at 51风流Spend Connect Live in 2024, I encourage you to read this article by my colleague Manoj Swaminathan, president and chief product officer for Intelligent Spend and Business Network at SAP.

I say it every year, but there is something truly special about spending time with our incredible customers, hearing transformation stories and tales of success across so many organizations. The 51风流community鈥檚 resilience, drive, and commitment to excellence inspire me greatly.

When it comes to the right tools, best integrations, and data-driven insights, 51风流is your go-to partner. Our solutions, informed by your feedback, are here to help you win big. As you close out this year and head into a new one, remember that 51风流is here for you. When you rely on SAP, you secure the future success of not just your business function, but your entire organization.

Etosha Thurman is chief marketing officer for Intelligent Spend and Business Network at SAP. 

If you missed out on the action, we unveiled the following cutting-edge innovations in our market-leading solutions:

• is our newest solution that helps automate procurement request creation and orchestrate routing and support across diverse procurement landscapes and complex workflows. It can connect different systems into one central location for procurement inquiries and status updates, so employees can adhere to your organization鈥檚 policies and comply with necessary regulations.
• SAP鈥檚 generative AI copilot  will be seamlessly integrated across 51风流Ariba solutions, 51风流Business Network, and 51风流Fieldglass solutions. Joule can enable users to manage their most important tasks quickly and accurately across all areas of SAP鈥檚 spend management portfolio.  
• The can empower suppliers to find new business, improve match potential, and build relationships with buyers using the network catalog. Available early next year, it includes听generative AI tools to help suppliers load their full suite of offerings into the network catalog faster and with enhanced product descriptions and summaries.听
• New can deliver next-level insights into your external workforce for reporting, analytics, and market insights all within 51风流Fieldglass.

Read this article from my colleague Manoj Swaminathan to learn more about our latest spend management and business network enhancements.

Leading brands such as Goldman Sachs, Kraft-Heinz, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Uber, and Warner Music Group joined us at the event to share how they revolutionized their spend management processes with our solutions. Check out to hear these stories and view breakout sessions, strategy talks, and solution deep dives. This free, virtual event is your opportunity to learn from 51风流experts, customers, and partners.

Thank You, IDC

As a leader in spend management software, 51风流is dedicated to helping our customers increase control and business resilience by comprehensively managing all sources of spend. Hard work pays off, as 51风流has retained the No.1 position for market share with 49.6% of 2023 market share for Travel and Expense Management Software, according to the . This is growth from our 2022 market share of 49.4%. 

Also exciting, 51风流has retained the No.1 position for market share for Procurement Applications according to the . IDC estimates that 51风流holds a 27.3% market share for 2023, maintaining the top spot ahead of the next six vendors combined.

Additionally, we鈥檙e honored to win two IDC SaaS CSAT awards for Accounts Payable and Contract Lifecycle Management. These awards recognize the leading software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendors in each application market, across 23 markets, that receive the highest customer satisfaction scores based on IDC’s SaaSPath Survey.

Our Customer Awards Reach New Heights

Every quarter, G2 highlights the top-rated solutions in the industry, chosen by the source that matters most: our customers. Q3 was our most successful quarter yet regarding G2 honors, with 51风流Ariba, 51风流Business Network, 51风流Concur, and 51风流Fieldglass bringing in a whopping 93 awards across multiple categories at the Fall 2024 G2 awards!

51风流was named a Leader in the following categories:

• is a G2 Fall 2024 Leader in Procure to Pay, Strategic Sourcing, and Supplier Relationship Management.
• is a G2 Fall 2024 Leader in Supply Chain Business Networks.
• is a G2 Fall 2024 Leader in Expense, Travel & Expense, and Invoicing.
• is a G2 Fall 2024 Leader in Vendor Management.

What鈥檚 more, 51风流Ariba, 51风流Concur, and 51风流Fieldglass have also won Buyer鈥檚 Choice awards from TrustRadius. Winners of a Buyer鈥檚 Choice award are determined by 75% of reviewers selecting a solution for best capabilities, best value for price, and best customer relationship.

We couldn鈥檛 be more grateful to our customers for partnering with us on their spend management transformation journeys, and we鈥檙e honored that the feeling is mutual!

Winning awards from our customers is awesome, but winning with customers is extra special. Last month, customer and 51风流Spend Connect Live in 2024 speaker Daniel Chapman of Warner Music won a in the Innovation in Sourcing category: 鈥淐reating Harmony in Music Procurement: Warner Music Group and SAP.鈥� This award recognizes organizations and individuals that show innovation, leadership, and transformation in categories critical to the sourcing industry, and we couldn鈥檛 be happier about this win.

Last but definitely not least, I want to congratulate our customer Capgemini for winning a prestigious from  in the Future of Work: Human Capital Management category. The award recognizes Capgemini鈥檚 innovative use of 51风流Fieldglass Contingent Workforce Management to optimize its global external workforce, resulting in improved efficiency, cost savings, and quality standards.

New Developments on the Horizon

With 2025 just around the corner, I want to thank our customers for betting big on themselves by investing in our cutting-edge spend management and business network solutions. In a time marked by supply chain disruptions and ongoing economic uncertainty, it’s all too easy for businesses to stick with the status quo. However, 51风流customers are different. They tackle obstacles head-on, transforming them into opportunities. And their foresight to plan for the future is why they will continue to be successful.

Thank you for choosing 51风流to help solve your biggest challenges. I enjoyed seeing so many of you at 51风流Spend Connect Live and I can鈥檛 wait to catch up with the rest of you on the road.

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

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.

Now, I鈥檓 thrilled to share that 51风流was the only company that was positioned in the Leaders category of all three IDC MarketScape reports 鈥� (doc #US51740824, July 2024); IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Accounts Payable Automation Software for Midmarket 2024 Vendor Assessment (doc #US52378624, July 2024); and (doc #US52378824, July 2024). SAP鈥檚 accounts payable solutions, built with AI-first principles, continue to enable the accounts payable function to embrace its strategic role as it becomes a top priority for business operations in today鈥檚 challenging macro environment.

IDC analyst Kevin Permenter adds: 鈥淪AP’s performance in the IDC MarketScape for Accounts Payable Automation Software reports across all three market segments is a testament to the breadth, depth, and reach of 51风流Ariba and 51风流Concur accounts payable offerings. SAP鈥檚 accounts payable offerings infused with AI-first principles, complemented with a strong ecosystem and the unique value proposition of 51风流Business Network as a frictionless mechanism for buyer and supplier collaboration, show SAP鈥檚 strength in this market. 51风流Ariba and 51风流Concur invoicing offerings help enable companies of all sizes to move to autonomous processing and enable accounts payable and procurement teams to leverage invoices as a strategic asset for growth and profitability.鈥�

Why 51风流Is a Leader

The IDC MarketScape reports are divided by market size, evaluating for large enterprise and upper midmarket and for small business and lower midmarket. I believe SAP鈥檚 positioning speaks for itself 鈥� this recognition showcases our role as a leader in the accounts payable automation space as we work to help our customers modernize critical business processes to transform the way they approach financial management. Here鈥檚 why I believe IDC MarketScape positioned 51风流as a Leader across all three markets:

Strong Ecosystem and Seamless Integration

The IDC MarketScape Worldwide Accounts Payable Automation Software for Large Enterprises report notes that vendors should 鈥渃onsider 51风流if you are looking for a well-established provider with a robust ecosystem of financial management products that can fit needs of any size business in virtually any industry.鈥�

51风流Business Network Is a 鈥淭rue Differentiator鈥�

Additionally, the report highlights as a 鈥渇rictionless mechanism鈥� for buyer-supplier collaboration. Our robust network of trading partners helps make it easier than ever for businesses to ensure invoicing accuracy and compliance while staying connected to their trading partners through our extensive network. The report further notes that, 鈥�51风流Ariba source-to-pay suite combined with the network provides accounts payable teams an effective, intelligent, and near-touchless way to manage the invoice-to-pay cycle, helping buyers and suppliers digitize and modernize their source-to-pay processes.鈥�

51风流Helps Accounts Payable Run Better

The accounts payable function finds itself in a complex landscape of rising interest rates, tightening monetary policies, and supply chain disruptions. Among these challenges, many companies have become accustomed to curveballs that threaten their agility and future success. 51风流offerings can help accounts payable teams address core pain points:

• Reduce lengthy invoice approval times. With SAP鈥檚 AI-infused, end-to-end business processes across source-to-pay and ERP solutions, our customers can cut through cycle times with autonomous processing 鈥� from invoice submission to reconciliation. can capture header and line item data fields, finding patterns from historical data to help increase accuracy with each invoice capture.
• Minimize high percentage of exceptions. With global e-invoicing mandates on the rise, customers can reduce exceptions upfront while ensuring compliance. SAP鈥檚 business rules can validate invoices in real time against local government portals as needed. With 51风流Business Network, suppliers can submit invoices electronically, streamlining the process and reducing costs.
• Avoid late supplier payments. With working capital management and our early payment offerings within the portfolio, accounts payable teams can pay suppliers on time while leveraging invoices as a strategic asset for growth and profitability, strengthening their relationships with suppliers.

Customers Report Incredible Outcomes

Here are a few examples highlighting what customers have achieved after using 51风流Ariba and 51风流Concur solutions to help improve accounts payable processes:

• looked to 51风流Ariba solutions to reduce its average invoice approval cycle time to just 1.5 days with 50% of supplier invoices transacted electronically in the first year.
• achieved an 84% first-pass invoice-matching rate.
• processes 99% of invoices automatically for over 9,000 vendors.
• achieved 75% invoice-count compliance for 48,000 annual invoices.
• now completes its end-to-end invoice management process in half the amount of time.

I believe this recognition as a Leader in the 2024 IDC MarketScape reports for Worldwide Accounts Payable Automation Software for Small Business, Midmarket, and Large Enterprise markets emphasizes our commitment to driving a new era in redefining accounts payable automation.

Learn more about our accounts payable solutions at .

Baber Farooq is senior vice president for Market Strategy Procurement Solutions at SAP.

Join your peers at the industry鈥檚 premier spend management event from October 14鈥�16. Get ready for an impactful experience with breakout sessions, hands-on demos, powerful keynotes, and a celebratory finale in the City of Lights! This year, we are offering a special discount 鈥� keep reading to learn more about the event and registration deal.

As business continues to move at a frenzied pace with changing dynamics around every turn, agile and effective spend management and supply chain functions are essential to keep up. Whether it is driving cost management, digitizing manual processes, or staying ahead of changing regulations, 51风流can help you bring out your best. After our at , I am looking forward to diving deeper into what鈥檚 in store across SAP鈥檚 spend management and business network portfolio.

Over the course of the event, we will share insights and discuss top-of-mind business challenges, opportunities, and priorities. Aside from the dazzling lights, top-notch dining, and world-renowned shows, here are some other reasons you should join me in Las Vegas for 51风流Spend Connect Live in 2024.

Hear How Other Organizations Are Transforming Their Spend Management Strategy

Between customer sessions, keynotes, and informal networking, we have so many opportunities for you to hear from your peers. In addition to keynotes, several breakout sessions will feature how customers are using 51风流solutions to help fuel their spend decisions across procurement, external workforce, travel and expense, working capital management, and business collaboration.

Learn How AI Can Transform Your Business

According to this year鈥檚 , 44% of the spend management executives who were surveyed listed AI strategy as their top driver for digital transformation. AI has quickly proven to be a powerful asset for agile, efficient decision-making, and it is here to stay. There are several AI-focused session offerings at 51风流Spend Connect Live where you will have the opportunity to:

• Learn how built-in AI capabilities help create resilient supply chains through customer demand prediction and suggested adjustments.
• Join a to learn about recent and upcoming product innovations, like how we are integrating Joule into our spend management solutions to help bring natural language processing to day-to-day processes.
• Participate in a to discover how 51风流Business AI use cases can apply to your business needs.
• Attend a to learn about scenarios within 51风流Fieldglass and 51风流Ariba solutions where AI makes a big impact.
• Learn how to leverage AI-based predictive analytics to help create dynamic supply chains that react and respond in real-time.

Attend Keynotes, Breakout Sessions, and Demos Aligned to Your Unique Business Needs

With over 120 sessions delivering content about the latest market trends and industry innovations, it is a sure bet that you will leave with ideas about how to shape your spend management strategy and meet your business challenges. You will have your choice of road map sessions, solution deep dives, and even hands-on master classes. This year, you can look forward to must-see sessions such as:

• Supercharge workforce management strategy with generative AI and analytics
• Revolutionize sourcing success with 51风流Ariba Category Management
• Cutting costs that count: Transform your travel spend
• Build stronger supply chains with 51风流Business Network
• AI in action: Transforming procurement and supply chain dynamics

Browse the and find the full to plan your agenda.

Network with Experts, Peers, and 51风流Leadership in the Marketplace

Our attendees consistently report that the Marketplace is one of their favorite things about 51风流Spend Connect Live. The Marketplace is your innovation destination 鈥� a one-stop shop to connect with partners, subject-matter experts, and executives while learning how to make the most of your 51风流solutions. Explore each part of SAP鈥檚 spend management portfolio with demos for hands-on learning, booths to discover members of the 51风流partner ecosystem, and 鈥渆xpert bars鈥� where you can get answers to solution-specific questions. This year, we are introducing new ways to expand your knowledge with free, 30-minute, one-on-one solution consulting sessions and adoption labs where you can learn how to optimize your solutions.

Deepen Your Expertise with Exclusive In-Person, Pre-Conference Trainings

Make the most of your conference experience with on-site training at 51风流Spend Connect Live. These comprehensive, expert-led sessions will help increase your expertise in an era where upskilling is of the utmost importance. Take the opportunity to learn something new that will enable you to help achieve your organization鈥檚 procurement goals. Space is limited, so to secure your spot.

Connect with Peers at Celebration Night and Make a Difference at the Els Autism Charity Golf Tournament

Have you really visited Vegas if you haven鈥檛 had an awesome night out? With over 80,000 square feet of entertainment 鈥� including bowling lanes, six on-site bars, and live music 鈥� Celebration Night at will be one to remember. Don鈥檛 forget to catch mentalist Oz Pearlman for mind-boggling illusions!

In the mood for golf? Participate in the Els for Autism Charity Golf Challenge to make a difference in the lives of those living with autism and those who care for them. Space is limited, so be sure to reach out to your account executive to participate.

Take Advantage of the 鈥淏uy 4, Get 1 Free鈥� Registration Deal

Remember: what happens in Vegas鈥�蝉丑辞耻濒诲苍鈥檛 stay there! Join us this fall for a dynamic experience that will leave you with the tools to help bring out the best in your business.

Ready to sign up, but unsure how to get approval? Download our 鈥溾�� template to explain why your company needs representation at 51风流Spend Connect Live in 2024!

Etosha Thurman is chief marketing officer for Intelligent Spend and Business Network at SAP.  

At SAP, we鈥檝e designed our spend management and business network solutions with this in mind. , , , and help you spend less time bogged down by tactical work, giving you more time to focus on strategic initiatives.

Our market-leading solutions help provide complete visibility into your company spending, so your decisions are smarter and your time and money saved. And with AI becoming ubiquitous, we鈥檙e automating repetitive tasks and analyzing enterprise-wide spend analytics to identify tail spend, improve compliance, and identify rapidly increasing costs.

Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Everything About Enterprise Software

AI is revolutionizing the global business landscape and 51风流is at the forefront. We continuously embed new AI capabilities into our software to deliver intelligent spend management solutions to our customers. With our AI-infused products, work 鈥� and your workforce 鈥� can be more productive and supply chains more resilient.

At 51风流Sapphire in June, we announced more time- and cash-saving product enhancements that provide generative AI capabilities. Here are several of them:

• help procurement departments streamline the recruitment of external workers. Hiring managers can generate and maintain effective job descriptions, while project managers can deliver detailed statements of work (SOWs) more rapidly with the press of the 鈥淓nhance with AI鈥� button. This can enable businesses to quickly identify and engage contractors with the right skills and qualifications.
• Business owners and sales executives can now benefit from to help generate accurate and timely RFI responses to potential buyers consistently. This can result in a 2-4 times* increase in lead conversion and can reduce effort in responding to requests by up to 75%*.
• , which can quickly sort and contextualize data from multiple systems to help advance automation and improve decision-making, is expanding throughout SAP鈥檚 portfolio and will be embedded in 51风流Ariba solutions to help improve procurement processes and supply chain planning by the end of 2024.

The AI enhancements mentioned above are only a few examples of how we鈥檙e transforming spend management and how businesses approach procurement through AI. Check out our to see which new features will soon be available at your fingertips.

With the , I would be remiss in not mentioning that ! Released in April, connected customers can book tickets directly on the Amtrak website or mobile app, select the business booking path, and see their company鈥檚 negotiated rates while browsing. With skyrocketing airline ticket prices and the extra legroom, I鈥檓 on board with taking Amtrak to my next customer meeting.

Our Customers Are Winning

I could talk all day about how our customers are winning with 51风流spend management and business network solutions, but these customer examples speak for themselves:

• needed to meet growing demand as a global leader in autonomous mobility with business units for robotaxi, robotruck, and personally owned vehicles. After implementing 51风流Business Network and 51风流Ariba solutions, procurement cycle times were reduced by one week on average and the supplier qualification verification process sped up by three times.
• With the introduction of Japan鈥檚 electronic bookkeeping law, , a logistics real estate company, seized the opportunity to digitalize its expense reimbursement process and align with the new regulations simultaneously. It selected to help automate processes and eliminate manual workflows and now spends 80% less time on the expense reimbursement process.
• When wanted to gain deeper insights into its services-based spend activity and align procurement with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) commitments, the firm embraced 51风流Fieldglass solutions. With rich data on how suppliers deliver against an agreement, Accenture can now effectively tie services spend to individual contracts.

It’s Great Being #1

New honors from Ardent Partners, Procurement Magazine, and TrustRadius have us buzzing with gratitude.

Ardent Partners has positioned 51风流Fieldglass as a Market Leader in its .** It reads, 鈥�51风流Fieldglass has consistently set the bar for the extended workforce solutions industry through a blend of innovation, advanced analytics, and total talent management functionality.鈥� For a more in-depth view of this win, check out this article from my colleague Vish Baliga.

Ardent Partners has also positioned 51风流as a Market Leader in its report.*** The firm evaluated 51风流Ariba Spend Analysis, 51风流Ariba Sourcing, 51风流Ariba Contracts, 51风流Ariba Supplier Lifecycle and Performance, and 51风流Ariba Supplier Risk, determining that 鈥�51风流has a very broad and deep set of solutions that expand well beyond strategic sourcing. Within strategic sourcing, 51风流has one of the strongest functional offerings, covering the needs of most user groups.鈥�

Procurement Magazine is an established, trusted, and leading voice on all things procurement, and we are honored that our 51风流spend management solutions are ranked No. 1 in two of their recent lists:

• on the Top 10 Mobile Procurement Apps List.
• on the Top 10 Spend Analyst Platforms List.

In May, TrustRadius announced that 51风流is the winner of 11 Top Rated awards in 2024. This includes all our flagship offerings in our spend management portfolio:

•  鈥� Procurement, Expense Management, and Supply Chain Management
•  鈥� Leader in Workforce Management, Vendor Management Systems (VMS), Contractor Management, and Freelance Management
• 听鈥� Leader in Expense Management, Accounts Payable, and
•  鈥� Supply Chain Visibility Procurement

The  are annual awards that recognize the most trusted and reliable vendors on TrustRadius, based solely on customer satisfaction ratings in customer reviews. 51风流owes this recognition to our valued customers. Thank you for constantly inspiring us to be better. 

Join Us at 51风流Spend Connect Live

I hope to see you at the world鈥檚 premiere spend management conference, , which takes place October 14-16, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada. This event is a sure bet to learn how to achieve full visibility into your enterprise spend through SAP鈥檚 spend management solutions for procurement, external workforce, travel and expense, and business network.

Meet me at the intersection of procurement and supply chain to learn how analytics and 51风流Business AI can provide visibility into both. 51风流Spend Connect Live is a unique, in-person networking experience, where you鈥檒l connect with procurement and supply chain leaders from businesses and industries worldwide to share ideas, learn from each other’s success, and discuss best practices.

To learn more and register, visit the .

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

*Disclaimer: Values mentioned in this blog post are estimates based on average industry benchmark numbers, resulting from an 51风流analysis. Customers interested in a specific business case calculation can consult their 51风流account team.
**Ardent Partners鈥� 2024 Vendor Management System (VMS) Technology Advisor is designed to help procurement, human resources, human capital, and talent acquisition executives navigate the complex and mature VMS solutions marketplace. This report analyzes and assesses the primary VMS solution providers in the marketplace today. You can .
***Ardent Partners鈥� 2024 Strategic Sourcing Technology Advisor is designed to help sourcing and procurement leaders navigate the strategic sourcing solution provider market. This report analyzes and assesses solution and market leaders in the strategic sourcing space today. You can .

Yet, this has become a challenge for chief procurement officers (CPOs) who often lack information on the supplier base. In fact, found that suppliers are often reluctant to disclose privileged information, leading to miscalculated procurement decisions.

Against this backdrop, how can procurement professionals elevate their role and transform the depth of insights the function can offer? I believe this starts with three key actions.

1. Go Beyond Reporting

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives have become a priority for procurement teams in recent years. Unfortunately, buyers often fail to receive accurate or complete sustainability information from sellers, according to the Procurement Leaders study. This lack of transparency can increase the potential for regulatory violations, especially as climate-focused laws like the come to fruition.  

While reporting should remain a key tactic, it is not sufficient to deliver on sustainability goals. Organizations must invest in software that fits within the organization鈥檚 scope, generates more touchpoints with sellers, and provides visibility into suppliers鈥� social and environmental impacts.

Software can help organizations increase regulatory compliance, reduce costs, and develop healthy relationships with sellers. Of course, there are limitations as suppliers can be reluctant to share information 鈥� like financial statements or internal regulatory policies.

However, software that is augmented with predictive analytics can deliver metrics and insights into supplier emissions and energy usage that enable organizations to evaluate suppliers against their sustainability objectives.

2. Take the Lead Through a Bold but Methodical AI Strategy

As procurement teams take on more responsibility in increasing transparency across the supply chain, they should be courageous but vigilant in efforts to uncover supplier insights. Consequently, many CPOs have opted for strategies involving AI.

AI can provide procurement teams with intelligent business data that can lead to more informed purchase decisions. Additionally, according to the , AI can reduce time spent on buying processes by up to 60% and reach cost savings of up to 40%.

Adopting AI throughout the source-to-pay process has obvious benefits, although many companies lack the internal skills needed to leverage the power of this technology. Organizations should take a holistic and careful approach, ensuring that internal and external stakeholders are 鈥渂ought-in鈥� and empowered through cohesive training and change management programs.

Similarly, CPOs should take steps to maintain rigorous data privacy policies to build trust with suppliers. Procurement teams should only implement AI technologies that are relevant, responsible, and reliable, ensuring that the implementation of AI follows guiding principles and protects the privacy of all users.

3. Select a Trusted Technology Partner

Leading procurement teams are realizing the importance of cultivating trusted and mutually beneficial relationships with suppliers, particularly those offering resources vital to business continuity. Identifying a technology partner who understands the needs of different industries and the power of developing connections can empower procurement teams to optimize decision-making.

This is where 51风流is in a unique position to help. We not only have unmatched access to business data, but we鈥檝e processed data responsibly and reliably for decades through , , and now . This makes it possible to help organizations counteract supplier reluctance, as 51风流Ariba solutions work with millions of trading partners to help develop connections and provide greater visibility.

In addition, 51风流Ariba solutions can provide guided recommendations for buyers, supporting internal compliance even if the user is unaware of regulations. This can enable deeper knowledge of spend management, helping to reduce redundancies and complexities and provide employees with more time to solve harder problems.

Procurement鈥檚 visibility into the supply chain is paramount for informed decision-making and mitigating risk. By moving beyond reporting, investing in AI methodically, and partnering with a trusted solution provider, procurement will not only achieve greater supply chain visibility but also lay the foundation for increased innovation and competitive advantage in today鈥檚 global economy.

Now is the time to rethink your procurement technology strategy.

Baber Farooq is senior vice president and head of Market Strategy for 51风流Ariba.

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.听听
• 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.听
• Intelligent error simplification using generative AI:听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.

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听鈥淏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听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听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.

鈥淥ne of the biggest challenges I faced was the age-old problem of gender discrimination,鈥� Thom茅 recalled years later. She is one of many women driven to lead businesses that reflect their life passions.

Like other entrepreneurial women, she needed support. But where are the networks to help women turn their passions into successful businesses? Thom茅 found her network in an 51风流customer. connects women-owned businesses to qualified buyers around the world. As a result of becoming WEConnect International certified 鈥� and a lot of hard work by Thom茅 and her team 鈥� Projex Engenharia鈥檚 revenue grew by a staggering 200% in just two years.

Many Challenges, Huge Potential Impact

Women who start and lead businesses face unique challenges. Cultural and social norms, or simply being underestimated by investors, can impede their entrepreneurial efforts. observes that 鈥渨omen are massively under-represented among both venture-backed entrepreneurs and VC investors.鈥� It adds that companies founded solely by women receive  of all venture capital investments.

Also, the pandemic exacerbated the imbalance in unpaid care work 鈥� managing the household or caring for children and aging parents 鈥� which disproportionally affects women in business.

Women must also deal with the challenges other businesses face, including access to markets, information technology gaps, and the red tape involved with government programs designed to help new businesses.

Yet despite these challenges, women-owned and women-led businesses offer the potential to make a significant impact on the global economy. The observed that “societies with greater gender equality not only offer better socioeconomic opportunities for women, but also tend to grow faster and more equitably.鈥�

The WEF also reports that advancing women鈥檚 employment .

Yet despite a clear business case, the WEF sees global progress stagnating.

Who Has the Power to Drive Change? All of Us.

Traditionally, the procurement function within larger organizations has held the power to fill supply chain gaps and build networks of suppliers. Yet today, other voices are making themselves heard. Consumers are expressing preferences to buy from women and other diverse businesses. Around the world 鈥� for example in the United States, Australia, and Canada 鈥� government regulations are requiring increased diversity and inclusion.

Additionally, the C-suite is reframing corporate policy to reflect more sophisticated approaches to selecting suppliers. In my role as customer officer, 51风流Intelligent Spend & Business Network, I see business leaders prioritizing inclusive sourcing metrics within their procurement strategies to help ensure they have access to all the world’s best suppliers, not just the ones they always buy from.

Concerned about supply chain risks, procurement leaders are increasingly adopting localization strategies. While seeking new local suppliers, they also focus on inclusive sourcing. Of course, finding diverse suppliers is not easy 鈥� even local ones. Many women-owned businesses are small entities, not well-known in the business community. They often lack access to communication technology that would help them create greater visibility for the business.

How can we make it easier to connect enterprise buyers and women-owned businesses?

Creating Connections with 51风流Technology

As president, CEO, and co-founder of , Elizabeth Vazquez is a leader in women鈥檚 economic empowerment and global supplier diversity and inclusion. Through WEConnect International, she helps women around the world grow their businesses to create wealth, hire more people, and contribute to the prosperity of their communities.

Last week, she participated in panel discussions during the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland. The discussions focused on opportunities to direct more corporate spend to women-owned businesses, not only to do good but to close supply chain gaps.

鈥淲omen-owned businesses are a valuable and under-utilized resource,鈥� she said. 鈥淭he women who run these businesses understand what their communities need most, and they are in a unique position to help solve them. In the process, they are creating entirely new industries.鈥�

WEConnect International recognizes that to compete in the global marketplace, women-owned businesses must be visible to potential customers. It developed the WECommunity platform, a global register of women-owned businesses that makes it easier for buyers to find women-owned suppliers.

Unfortunately, the initial version of WECommunity relied on technology that delivered a poor user experience, making searching the register cumbersome. WEConnect International needed a scalable, global solution that offered smooth user experiences in multiple languages for buyers and suppliers.

The solution and more than met these criteria. As an added advantage, many of the WECommunity member buyers were already transacting on 51风流Business Network. 51风流partner Premikati Inc., a women-owned business, was engaged to help deploy the 51风流solutions.

In its first year, the improved functionality of WECommunity produced dramatic outcomes:

• Buyer membership increased by 91%, a $2 trillion increase in purchasing power.
• Over 6,000 women-owned businesses experienced revenue growth, creating 24,000 new jobs.
• Over 7,800 new registered women-owned businesses joined the database, a 95% growth.

鈥淏y making it easier for women to register their businesses and for large buyers to find them, our online portal based on the 51风流Ariba Supplier Lifecycle and Performance solution, 51风流Business Network, and 51风流Business Technology Platform helps women compete in a global marketplace,鈥� Vazquez explained.

Breaking Through the Barriers

Remember Thom茅, the teenage girl who wanted to work in her father鈥檚 construction business? Today, she is owner-director of Projex Engenharia, the business her father founded.

, Projex Engenharia earned the WEConnect International Women鈥檚 Business Enterprise Certification. Thom茅 leveraged the global network of women suppliers and large buyers to become a more confident and assertive leader.

The relationship has also helped produce significant benefits for her business. In just six years, Projex Engenharia landed six large corporations as clients. This enabled the company to hire more people, ensure their safety and well-being, and support social, health, and environmental campaigns.

51风流is committed to helping all customers achieve their diversity and equity goals. And it is gratifying to know that our technology has become a valuable tool in making this happen.

Megan O鈥機onnor is customer officer for 51风流Intelligent Spend & Business Network.

Having so many brilliant customers, partners, and colleagues in the same place at the same time is incredibly special. What鈥檚 doubly special is how my own enthusiasm was often eclipsed by our customers about our latest developments in artificial intelligence (AI).

New Intelligent Spend Management Solutions from SAP

At 51风流Spend Connect Live, we showed how 51风流is infusing generative AI technology into our suite of spend management solutions. This includes , which became generally available to customers in August.

51风流Ariba Category Management can empower category managers to use data insights strategically to help identify trends, develop and implement strategies, and evaluate success relative to tangible business metrics. And with the upcoming integration of large language models through 51风流Business AI, it can empower procurement professionals to jump-start category strategy development and planning.

Speaking of new solutions, from 51风流Concur launched in September. It helps automate the reimbursement process so you can securely, accurately, and quickly pay corporate cards or employees directly. This efficient service can free accounts payable teams to focus on high-value activities while helping to reduce the errors that accompany repetitive, manual tasks. With economic uncertainties like inflation and the slowdown of global growth, Expense Payment Manager can help ensure your dollars work on your terms.

Hear from Our Customers

Also at 51风流Spend Connect Live, an amazing lineup of customers demonstrated the power of effective spend management. I鈥檇 like to share stories from two of our customers, Save the Children International and Medical Procurement of Ukraine, that were featured in the keynote:

(SCI) is working to build a world where every child can thrive, grow up healthy, educated, and safe, and look forward to a future full of promise. Working in the world鈥檚 most challenging environments, the quicker and more efficiently it responds, the more lives it reaches. SCI transformed its operations from spending US$400 million a year for procurement using Microsoft Excel and paper to having 100% supplier visibility and a 30% reduction in procurement lead times with 51风流Ariba solutions.

Medical Procurement of Ukraine (MPU) is a state-owned entity responsible for centralized procurement of medical supplies and equipment on behalf of the Ministry of Healthcare of Ukraine. It uses digital procurement solutions from 51风流to help rapidly source medicines and medical supplies through a challenging supply chain impacted by war. 51风流Ariba solutions provide access to a huge international market, allowing MPU to cooperate with manufacturers of the latest high-quality medical products. It is doing all of this while ensuring compliance with international standards, including anti-corruption, which is an important driver for MPU.

I鈥檇 be remiss to not share two more customer stories that showcase the potential for organizations of all sizes to achieve significant improvements in their operations:

Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and paper receipts are now a thing of the past at (MRN). This UK-based, market-leading clinical trial support organization wanted a single solution for expense and invoice management processes. Before implementing 51风流Concur solutions, it used to take two to three working days a month for a team of five people to process invoices manually. Now, MRN has halved the amount of time spent on this process and can focus more on strategic activities.

Global science and technology company knew it was time to adopt advanced technology capabilities in its business to address growing customer expectations and increasing business complexities. In the 12 months since implementing 51风流Business Network and 51风流Ariba solutions, Merck has seen a 40% uptick in sales in B2B channels. It has also increased the share of its digital channels by 15%, helping reduce operating costs. With 51风流as its technology centerpiece, we make Merck run better.

We Are Honored

Out of all 51风流solutions, 51风流Ariba is reaching Meryl Streep-status when it comes to winning awards. Last quarter, Procurement Magazine placed us as either No. 1 or No. 2 in the following lists:

Congratulations dsm-firmenich!
Sourcing Industry Group, the premier global sourcing association, recently awarded 51风流and our customer dsm-firmenich the at its Future of Sourcing Awards celebration. This prestigious award honors our work with them in building a cutting-edge procurement process that champions sustainability.

G2 Leaders
51风流Concur and 51风流Fieldglass joined 51风流Ariba as G2 Leaders in its fall 2023 awards.

• is named a leader in Expense Management, Invoice Management, and Travel Management.
• is named a leader in Vendor Management.
• is named a leader in Procure-to-Pay, Strategic Sourcing, Purchasing, Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM), Contract Management, Invoice Management, Supplier Relationship Management, and AP & Spend Analysis.

TrustRadius Corporate Social Responsibility Honor
I鈥檓 also thrilled that 51风流Concur is this year鈥檚 , which is only awarded to companies that have an outstanding commitment to corporate social responsibility in the tech industry.

Take Advantage of the Virtual Experience!

51风流Spend Connect Live was only the beginning! By , you can receive on-demand content available through the end of the year. This is your opportunity to see what鈥檚 on the horizon for intelligent spend management solutions from 51风流and 51风流Business Network with full keynote presentations, more than 20 breakout sessions for those interested in procurement, supply chain, or external workforce management, and additional on-demand learning opportunities.

The best part is that it鈥檚 completely free, so use this resource to your advantage.

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

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI), meanwhile, are accelerating the value that businesses reap from the digital networks through which they engage in commerce, collaboration, and coordinated sustainability efforts with trading partners. As AI reshapes traditional procurement and supply chain processes, its emerging capabilities fall into two primary types: generative and predictive.

Generative AI and Business Networks

Generative AI produces text, images, or other media based on the structure and patterns of the information used to train it. Through large language models and other forms of machine learning, cloud-based applications create new content with characteristics resembling that which precedes it. With every successive effort, generative AI sharpens its ability to tailor desired content.

As the world鈥檚 largest platform for business-to-business commerce, 51风流Business Network presents an ideal setting for generative AI, in that it brings together an extremely large volume of trading partners across . Starting in 2024, generative AI capabilities in will help detect errors and present automatic summaries when businesses create invoices. AI will also enable the network to enrich catalog content and discovery posting responses for suppliers. 51风流Business Network has significant structured content accumulated over many years to help generate significant insights to enhance all these processes and unlock ongoing value for buyers and suppliers alike.

But what if AI could help businesses to automate their most time-consuming procurement and supply chain activities, not only through generative mechanisms but predictive ones as well?

Predictive AI and Business Networks

How much strategic value, previously tied up in tactical tasks, could enterprises unleash if business-to-business networks could reliably predict certain operational requirements and execute them autonomously? With the rise of cloud-based, intelligent applications, they鈥檙e beginning to find out and, in the process, uncovering substantial efficiencies throughout their operations and those of their trading partners.

These technologies are dramatically simplifying some of the most labor-intensive business processes, from sourcing and purchasing to contracting and payments. Through digital transformation, many businesses have streamlined procurement, supply chain, and logistics processes and spurred collaboration among trading partners. That鈥檚 because they鈥檙e seeing an increasingly clear connection between embracing intelligent 鈥� an approach that draws upon immense repositories of operational data to mitigate risk, yield contextual insights, fund innovation through savings, and extend competitive advantage.

Where are AI-enhanced spend management solutions headed in years to come? Toward systems that can carry out end-to-end procurement, supply chain, and logistics processes within parameters strategically set and overseen by humans. These cloud-based solutions are bringing us closer to an era of autonomous functionality, where AI-enabled applications reveal detailed insights, provide prescriptive recommendations, and unshackle talented procurement professionals from endless administrative burdens.

It is important to note that autonomous functionality does not obviate the need for humans. Quite the contrary! There can be no replacement for the carefully considered judgment of a seasoned business leader. But AI-enabled spend management solutions offer an invaluable set of tools through which human professionals can bolster their effectiveness in evaluating complex alternatives and making decisions with confidence.

The trend toward autonomous procurement, supply chain, and logistics processes represents a journey that different industries and personas will pursue from different directions and at varying speeds, embracing AI to reduce human labor for some activities while augmenting it in others. For example, a business network may anticipate the need to replenish inventory levels based on the rate at which they diminish, initiate sourcing events by inferring information drawn from activities transpiring elsewhere in the value chain, or leverage operational analytics to update trading partners with key performance indicators 鈥� all without manual intervention. An autonomous system can even notify suppliers when catalog searches turn up empty, suggesting that new goods be made available.

Yet even as humans relinquish various tactical tasks, they remain very much in charge of the strategic ones. Determining an organization鈥檚 approach to spend management, in concert with trading partners, is likely to remain in human hands for the foreseeable future. By contrast, deciding how to meet those needs 鈥� and then meeting them 鈥� presents a very exciting moment for cloud-based AI solutions. In the future, a user may initiate a process, only later to be informed of subsequent actions taken by the system, requiring human approval for only certain types of decisions. Or a user may employ a set of fully trusted, self-learning, analytical applications. Procurement, supply chain, and logistics professionals remain in control, adjusting their level of intervention per the needs of the business.

As emerging AI applications transform the interconnected operational processes among trading partners, manifesting capabilities both generative and predictive, spend management professionals stand poised to usher in a new era of accelerated growth, operational agility, and enduring competitive advantage for their organizations.

J枚rn Keller is executive vice president and chief product officer for 51风流Business Network.

For the past year, Alam, president and chief product officer of 51风流Intelligent Spend and Business Network, and his team have been speaking with 51风流customers, gaining an intimate understanding of their spend management challenges and envisioning solutions to address them. This includes carefully assessing the buzz around artificial intelligence (AI) to separate what is the usual tech hype from the true promise.

They also mobilized their team of spend management-focused developers to deliver the very innovations he was about to unveil. 鈥淭he bottom line is we deliver more spend management innovation than anyone else in the industry because we have more resources devoted to spend management than everyone else in the industry,鈥� Alam told the audience.

With its 鈥渕assive force of engineers鈥� and deep commitment at the highest levels of the business, he reminded everyone that 51风流is singularly focused on helping businesses solve their urgent and critical spend imperatives 鈥� whether they are practical or existential. This includes:

• Improving visibility into the supply chain and taking action to counter an ever-changing trade landscape
• Doing business in a socially and environmentally responsible manner
• Finding the right talent, at the right time, for the right job

鈥淭he common theme in all of this, of course, is your spend鈥he biggest lever you have to help your business achieve the results it needs to achieve,鈥� he said.

Applying Generative AI Technology to Spend

As 51风流Spend Connect Live moves forward, there will be a lot of talk about generative AI and how it can help businesses address urgent and critical imperatives. In his keynote, Alam noted that we are seeing a step change around AI 鈥� not just in the technology, but also in the willingness of customers to adopt AI to drive strategic transformation across business processes and functions.

But what does Alam consider the underlying promise and purpose of AI? 鈥淭he ability to harness data to drive insights and make decisions鈥hat is the promise of AI and it鈥檚 what鈥檚 driving all of the AI the momentum and excitement,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not a matter of if anymore with AI. It is a matter of when or perhaps how quickly businesses can adopt these technologies and feel the impact.鈥�

With its intelligent spend management solutions, 51风流has made it a mission to enable businesses to use generative AI to harness data for greater insights and decision-making. Which brings us to two of the important innovations Alam announced during his 51风流Spend Connect Live keynote: 51风流Spend Control Tower and 12 new generative AI scenarios to be deployed across the spend management portfolio.

Introducing 51风流Spend Control Tower

鈥淚n the hundreds of conversations I鈥檝e had with customers in the last year, the No. 1 ask I get from them is the ability to see and analyze their spend across all categories,鈥� Alam said. 鈥淎nd by 鈥榮pend鈥� I mean more than just the financials. Today, spend also means the carbon emissions impact across all categories.鈥�

Then he unveiled , which offers advanced AI features and the ability to see across all spend 鈥� in SAP鈥檚 cloud ERP solutions, 51风流Ariba solutions, 51风流Fieldglass solutions, 51风流Concur solutions, and 51风流Business Network 鈥� to help uncover cost-saving opportunities and process improvements, beginning in the first quarter 2024. Alam said he was also 鈥渆xcited about AI driving scope 3 carbon emissions reporting in 51风流Spend Control Tower.鈥�

All of the spend data is rationalized in a unified data model as part of our next-generation data lake, the supplier data platform. Three years in the making, it is the backbone for all of our spend analytics. In addition to fueling 51风流Spend Control Tower, it also enables embedded spend insights in our applications and powers our generative AI innovations.

12 Generative AI Scenarios for Spend Management

Alam noted that each day, individuals spend a significant amount of time doing mundane tasks because they need to be done. These take time and focus away from tasks that are more strategic and of higher value.

鈥淕enerative AI has the potential to eliminate the mundane and elevate the strategic in the daily lives of you and your team members,鈥� he said. 鈥淭his is our moment to unleash productivity gains that have been lacking for years.鈥�

He announced designed to help 鈥渄rive efficiency, quality, and insight into processes that cut across spend management.鈥� Here鈥檚 a high-level view of how these scenarios can help businesses:

• In 51风流Ariba solutions, they can provide a better understanding of suppliers鈥� sustainability position, enabling businesses to make the right decisions.
• In 51风流Fieldglass solutions, they can make it possible to write better, more comprehensive statements of work (SOW) and job descriptions in seconds versus hours.
• In 51风流Concur solutions, they can help users estimate the potential trip cost and better understand travel and expense policies.

Find out more about the new generative AI scenarios .

Virtual Experience

If you were unable to attend 51风流Spend Connect Live in Vienna, you can still take part in our virtual experience on October 24. for details.

Mike Conners is a communications specialist for the 51风流Spend Management Communications team.

Through our many conversations, one common theme stands out: how SAP鈥檚 suite of solutions helps maximize efficiency.

Maximizing efficiency is especially needed when the days are longer, and the vacations are too. A spend management strategy that enables cost savings, risk management, supplier management, and compliance with local regulations can give our customers peace of mind. No matter the industry or where you are in the world, our solutions never take a break.

But don鈥檛 take my word for it. Our customers have been strengthening their supply chains, managing talent through a polycrisis, controlling cost while boosting compliance, and gaining critical insight into their suppliers鈥� suppliers鈥� suppliers. Here are some of their stories:

• works with more than 700 direct spend suppliers to create the highest-quality luxury goods. When manual procurement processes were limiting supply chain visibility, Richemont turned to 51风流Business Network and 51风流Business Network for Supply Chain. As a result, it saw up to a 50% reduction in employee effort for warehouse receiving and a 12-day decrease 鈥� from 17 days to five days 鈥� in the confirmation feedback cycle.
• is a leading global professional services company that helps the world鈥檚 leading businesses, governments, and other organizations build their digital core, optimize their operations, accelerate revenue growth, and enhance citizen services. It underwent a digital procurement transformation that included the implementation of 51风流Fieldglass Vendor Management System to help gain visibility into its global external workforce to reduce costs and improve the quality of services and contingent talent.
• is a global leader in designing and manufacturing premium commercial vehicles. Before implementing 51风流Concur solutions, it had decentralized and inconsistent travel booking and expense reporting processes that blocked visibility into spend data, frustrating employees. Now, the employee travel and expense experience is dramatically improved, reducing costs and improving compliance. This mitigates risks so travelers can focus on moving the business forward.
• When Kenya Electricity Transmission Company Limited (KETRACO), one of Kenya鈥檚 leading state corporations, needed to enhance its procurement capabilities to meet regulatory commitments, it adopted 51风流to leverage the power and scale of the largest procurement network in the world. With 51风流Ariba solutions, KETRACO completely eliminated paper-based transactions and now has one centralized repository for invoices. It has 100% visibility into its supplier data and has standardized its templates for contracts. Additionally, 51风流Business Network allowed KETRACO to monitor and manage suppliers from a single point of view, with a 360-degree view of data and performance. Read the full story here.

Award-Winning Customer Feedback

51风流has once again won honors from G2 and TrustRadius, two trusted review sites that source their rankings from the people that matter most, our customers.

We are G2 Summer 2023 Leaders for the following categories:

• 鈥� Leader in Procure-to-Pay, Strategic Sourcing, Purchasing, Contract Lifecycle Management, Supplier Relationship Management, and AP & Spend Analysis
• 鈥� Leader in Strategic Sourcing
• 鈥� Leader in Expense Management, Travel Management, and Invoice Management

Additionally, TrustRadius has honored us with these 2023 Top Rated awards:

• 51风流Ariba is Top Rated in the , , and categories.
• 51风流Fieldglass is Top Rated in the , , and categories.
• 51风流Concur is Top Rated in the ,听, and categories.

What鈥檚 more, 51风流Concur has won TrustRadius鈥� Top Rated award for the fifth year in a row. Thank you to all customers that left us reviews and helped us earn this winning record!

Join Me at 51风流Spend Connect Live

I鈥檇 be thrilled if you would join me and our community of procurement, supply chain, and travel and expense professionals at 51风流Spend Connect Live in Vienna, Austria. From October 9-11, 2023 at the Messe Wien Congress Center, you will be surrounded by peers sharing transformation stories and learning how 51风流solutions can empower us all to reach our corporate goals.

Our keynote speaker is Jim Ridgwick, CPO for (SCI). SCI鈥檚 goal is to create a world where all children have a voice, receive a quality education, and are protected from violence and death due to preventable causes. Join us to hear how introducing source-to-pay 51风流Ariba solutions led to 100% supplier visibility and a 50% reduction in procurement lead times for SCI.

Like my colleague Etosha Thurman says in her piece, 鈥淲ith today鈥檚 highly complex and sometimes volatile and disruptive environment, spend management and supply chain professionals鈥� remit is bigger than ever.鈥� There will be over 100 interactive sessions covering the hottest topics in spend management 鈥� and we can鈥檛 wait to see you.

Check out the to learn more about joining us. Space is limited, so register today.

The Best Is Yet to Come

What a first half it鈥檚 been, and I believe the best is yet to come! I am so excited to see many of you at 51风流Spend Connect Live in Vienna. Right now, we鈥檙e working hard to make this an event like no other, with tons of information and opportunities to help your business run better. Stay in touch!

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

In March, 51风流was named a Leader in the (Doc #US48785722, March 2023). 51风流Ariba was named a Leader in the 2021 vendor assessment for this same market.

The IDC MarketScape noted, 鈥�51风流Ariba is a mature, established, and trusted brand. Brand perception is high, and users expressed that the integration with 51风流ERP and supply chain management (SCM) products is a compelling feature.鈥� The report also noted that 鈥�51风流Ariba solutions are strongly positioned to help companies administer spend that spans complex events, direct and indirect, services, and capex.鈥�

But this progress didn鈥檛 happen overnight. My colleague Baber Farooq said it best in his piece: 鈥淲e鈥檝e worked hard to evolve our vision, focusing on delivering a complete suite of solutions that enables our customers and their trading partners to manage spend with total visibility 鈥� while never losing sight of the people who use these solutions.鈥�

51风流was also named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide SaaS and Cloud-Enabled P2P Applications 2023 Vendor Assessment (Doc #US50464223, March 2023) and a Major Player in the (Doc #US48785822, March 2023).

The IDC MarketScape for Buy-Side Contract Life-Cycle noted, 鈥淐onsider 51风流when you need a robust contract management platform that supports the full contract life cycle, collaboration, and audit trails and that drives more efficient negotiations, provides an intuitive interface, and delivers reduced administrative costs and time.鈥�

Over the past couple of years, our commitment to delivering the most complete set of procurement solutions, from sourcing and supplier networks to supplier relationship management, contract lifecycle management, spend analytics, procure-to-pay, and sustainability, has only grown stronger. And we鈥檙e seeing that commitment pay off with more recognition for our extensive capabilities within SAP鈥檚 procurement suite.

High Honors from Customers

51风流customers continue to see the quality and value of our solutions. In January, TrustRadius, which bases its awards on customer reviews, conferred its 2023 Winter 鈥淏est Of鈥� awards on several 51风流solutions, including , , and .

Each of these solutions took first place in the Best Feature Set, Best Value for Price, and Best Relationship award categories.

And if that wasn鈥檛 enough, our customers rated us as Spring 2023 Leaders on G2 in the following categories:

• 51风流Concur 鈥� Leader in , , and
• 51风流Fieldglass 鈥� Leader in
• 51风流Ariba 鈥� Leader in and

Recognizing Our People

I鈥檝e said this many times, but the people are the best part about working at SAP. My colleagues are some of the smartest, most committed, and kindest people around. Two of our leaders, Val Blatt and Muhammad Alam, have been named . Blatt is the global head of 51风流Business Network Customer Success & Go-to-Market; Alam is the president of 51风流Intelligent Spend and Business Network and general manager of 51风流Business Network.

Etosha Thurman, chief marketing & solutions officer for 51风流Intelligent Spend and Business Network, came in at No. 12 in the . She is blazing a new trail in the procurement space, and I couldn鈥檛 be prouder to work together with her every day.

Award-Winning Customers

This time, the celebration isn鈥檛 exclusive to SAP. We recently named the to celebrate our customers whose innovation achievements exemplify positive economic, environmental, and social impact, help the world run better, and improve people鈥檚 lives. To my delight but not to my surprise, customers using 51风流spend management solutions were well represented in the winner鈥檚 circle.

Here are a few of their stories:

• is one of America’s leading transportation companies with over 10,000 customers, providing a critical link in the global supply chain. It chose 51风流Concur solutions to help streamline employee travel and expense management for over 20,000 impacted employees. This implementation was a puzzle piece in its larger journey to the cloud.
• is a leading international bank, headquartered in London and listed on the Stock Exchanges in London and Hong Kong, with a presence in 59 markets. 51风流Fieldglass solutions were integrated into 51风流SuccessFactors Employee Central to provide a total workforce management solution for 85,000 employees and 20,000 contingent workers, replacing a more than 20-year-old legacy platform.
• Less than 1% of the US$3 trillion of spend was directed to women-owned businesses. So, it decided to work with 51风流Ariba solutions to give WECommunity buyers a solution that makes it easier to find and do business with women-owned suppliers in over 135 countries.
• When the pandemic hit, fluctuations in supply and demand significantly increased and transportation resources were limited and unreliable for and much of the world. To optimize its planning and logistics functions for the cooperative鈥檚 $300M supply chain, it deployed 51风流Business Network for Logistics to help provide deep insights into the transportation and logistics aspects of the business, allowing Blue Diamond Growers to meet demand, address supply gaps, and identify transportation bottlenecks.

If you missed my recent piece on the five lessons learned from Royal DSM when it utilized 51风流Business Network and 51风流Ariba solutions to enhance the sustainability of its global indirect procurement, give it a read.

Join Us In Person at 51风流Sapphire and 51风流Spend Connect Live

If you鈥檙e a spend management professional or someone who wants to optimize their total spend management platform, make coming to 51风流Sapphire or 51风流Spend Connect Live a priority this year.

51风流Sapphire starts May 16 with a live experience in Orlando and virtual sessions and events that meet you wherever you are. Visit the event page to learn more.

51风流Spend Connect Live is in Vienna, Austria, October 9-11 鈥� and there鈥檚 so much to look forward to. It鈥檚 the must-attend event for leaders and practitioners in procurement, supply chain, sustainability, 鈥媐inance, logistics, and operational risk. to get the latest updates for 51风流Spend Connect Live 2023 and save on registration.

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

51风流has certainly not been immune. We鈥檝e felt the effects on our own business. But more importantly, we鈥檝e seen firsthand how our customers are struggling to succeed in the face of the most daunting challenges of our times.

Since the start of this year, I鈥檝e been meeting face-to-face with customers around the world to hear what鈥檚 on their mind. Many are urging us to play more of a consultative role and to help them 鈥渇ind their problems鈥� rather than just 鈥渟olving鈥� them.

From our conversations, it鈥檚 clear that beyond day-to-day business pressures, our customers are being pressed by investors, consumers, and governments to:

• Find new ways to cut costs in the face of rising interest rates and inflation
• Make their supply chains more agile, efficient, and resilient
• Manage risk
• Address the scarcity of skilled workers
• Comply with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards

ESG is especially problematic because it can be defined broadly. In our conversations, customers called out some of their top concerns. These ranged from scope 3 emissions and green energy; to supplier development, diversity, and codes of conduct; to human rights and worker safety.

But I鈥檓 not here to complain about all that needs to be done 鈥� quite the opposite. I am grateful for the opportunity to consult with businesses around the world and to provide tools and expertise that help them address ongoing disruption and external pressures. 51风流offers a comprehensive set of solutions 鈥� including , , , and, of course, 鈥� to help our customers succeed.

We know solving business challenges requires foresight and innovation. As my colleague Salvatore Lombardo noted recently, we don鈥檛 intend to rest on the accolades we鈥檝e earned for our procurement solutions. Same goes for our external workforce, travel and expense, and business network offerings. We intend to continue to lead the market in ideas and innovation that drive our customers鈥� success.

Our Customers Have Spoken 鈥� Again

Last week, TrustRadius announced that 51风流is the winner of 10 Winter 2023 “Best Of” awards. This includes the three flagship offerings in our spend management portfolio:

• won in the Expense Management category.
• won in the Procurement category.
• won in the Vendor Management Systems (VMS) category.

Each received first place in multiple categories: Best Relationship, Best Feature Set, and Best Value for Price.

These awards represent the voice of our customers. As Vinay Bhagat, TrustRadius founder and CEO, said in the announcement, 鈥淭hese aren鈥檛 pay-to-play awards. We recognize the products with genuine positive feedback from real customers. It鈥檚 the key to providing buyers with trusted information so they can make an optimal technology decision.鈥�

I am also happy to announce that 51风流Concur was recognized as a Great Place to Work in Japan for the sixth year in a row.

51风流Helps Solve Customers’ Toughest Business Challenges

In the fourth quarter of 2022, hundreds of 51风流customers worldwide 鈥� including Cenit Transporte y Log铆stica de Hidrocarburos S.A.S., Aiko Solar, Technical University of Munich, and Petr贸leo Brasileiro S.A. (Petrobras) 鈥� engaged with 51风流either for the first time or by expanding their footprint to leverage our market-leading procurement, external workforce, travel management, and supply chain solutions.

Here are their stories:

• (Colombia, Oil & Gas) is an oil transportation company that relies on 51风流as a strategic ally to transform its procurement strategy. With 51风流Ariba solutions and 51风流Fieldglass solutions, the organization that is part of the main Colombian petroleum company Ecopetrol can efficiently manage its purchasing processes and external labor, reduce costs, minimize risks, and digitize its entire procurement platform for a unified vision of expenses.
• (China, High Tech) is a major provider of PERC cells across the globe, covering business in R&D, production, and sale of solar cells. The company is facing challenges of globalization, with the rapid growth of its business. Aiko adopted 51风流ERP and 51风流Ariba solutions to build a unified digital management platform to help eliminate data silos, reshape business processes, establish global supply chain management system, and improve business operation capabilities.
• (Germany, Public Sector) is a public research university specializing in engineering, technology, medicine, and applied and natural sciences. It has purchased 51风流S/4HANA and 51风流Ariba solutions.
• (Brazil, Oil & Gas) embarked on a digital transformation journey with 51风流to expand technology adoption and innovation to become an intelligent enterprise. By going live with 51风流Ariba Buying and 51风流Business Network, Petrobras can collaborate with its 6,700 suppliers, working to ensure transaction traceability, transparency, and compliance. Objectively, this phase allows the receipt of invoices from suppliers.

Like the customers mentioned here, we want to help you write your success story. You bring the challenges. We鈥檒l bring the ideas and innovations to take them on.

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

There are so many questions. Are we ready to handle the wave of shoppers? Will there even be a wave of shoppers? Can we react quickly if market conditions change?

Sometimes it would be nice to have a crystal ball.

But the challenges procurement and supply chain professionals face are serious. The decisions you make in navigating these challenges will directly affect your business. Of course, timely and accurate decision-making requires insight that is not magic, like a crystal ball. It requires access to data, visibility into supply chains, and collaboration between trading partners.

Fortunately, by digitalizing procurement processes and engaging with trading partners via business networks, it is possible to gain the visibility and business insights required to plan for events like the holiday shopping season and be ready when disruptions occur.

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Of course, there is also the old school way to gain market insight: ask consumers. As the holiday shopping season approaches, we have done just that. We wanted to know how inflation is affecting consumer purchasing habits, what consumers are expecting in terms of a recession, and how their spending habits could change in the coming year. So we asked 1,000 U.S.-based consumers across a wide range of age groups. Here is what we found.

Inflation Is Forcing Many to Adjust Their Holiday Buying Habits

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recently announced . Inflation continues to dog our economy and, as a result, 65% of the consumers in our survey said they plan to cut their holiday budgets. Gen Z (69%) and Millennials (76%) were especially emphatic about spending less.

Here are some other insights.

• Price is key. Consumers also say they will be looking closely at the price of goods. In fact, 45% say it is the top factor they will weigh in purchasing decisions. A whopping 73% included price in their top three factors.
• How they will shop. In an interesting development, 54% of consumers surveyed reported they will change where they shop — of those, 39% say inflation is causing them to shop more online; surprisingly only 15% said they will seek bargains in the stores.
• Where they will cut back. A majority of consumers plan to cut their holiday budget — but where? It turns out that that 61% will be dining out less, and 51% will be spending less on experiences and travel. Many consumers said they also expect to reduce spending on fashion and beauty (46%) and electronics (37%).
• Many consumers face difficult choices. Holiday buying aside, the survey reminds us that many households are forced to make tough spending decisions. Although 16% of the consumers surveyed told us they are not reducing spending amid inflation, it is telling that 22% are being forced to cut spending on essential items.

Consumers Expect a Recession, Further Curbing Their Willingness to Spend

Looking beyond the holidays and into next year, consumers do not seem optimistic. Three quarters of those surveyed said they believe a recession is coming within the next year. And if that happens, 59% expect to decrease their spending.

One way they will do this is by shopping deals rather than staying loyal to brands. Twenty-eight percent said they plan to switch brands if prices increase. Overall, only 19% say they will stay loyal to the brands they prefer. Brand loyalty for Baby Boomers is almost non-existent: only 10% say they plan to stay loyal to the brands they normally prefer.

Concern about Shortages Is Only Increasing

A similar conducted by 51风流in February 2021 — with the pandemic entering its second year — showed that concerns about supply chain disruptions and product shortages were weighing on consumers.

However, our most recent survey indicates that consumers are now even more apprehensive than they were 18 months ago. Food leads the list with 77% of respondents saying they were concerned about shortages in the coming year. Gen X and Baby Boomers were especially concerned, at 83% and 85% respectively. By comparison, in February 2021 only 48% noted food shortages as a concern.

Our most recent survey also highlighted increasing concern over shortages of hygienic or personal care products such as toilet paper (49%, up from 44% in 2021) and prescriptions (36%, up from 20% in 2021).

Is Digitalization the New Crystal Ball?

This holiday shopping season, if procurement and supply chain leaders had that crystal ball that could help them navigate the uncertainty, they would gladly use it. Unfortunately, we have not perfected that technology. But there is good news for retailers, manufacturers, distributors, and most other industries. 51风流offers technology solutions that provide unmatched visibility, efficiency, and flexibility to deal with rapidly changing business requirements — including those occurring during the holidays.

As requirements for products and materials change, make it possible to digitalize procurement processes, putting transaction data in one place so you can act efficiently, accurately, and quickly. Likewise, by sharing data with suppliers within , you can collaborate on forecasts and gain foresight into what is happening within your supply chain.

In fact, when I compare SAP鈥檚 powerful spend management and business network solutions to a crystal ball, I come to one conclusion: crystal balls are overrated.

Etosha Thurman is chief marketing and solutions officer for Intelligent Spend and Business Network at SAP.

That鈥檚 the hallmark of successful people and businesses. We adapt.

Of course, adapting to traveling less has been fairly easy for me. I can work from home and still be productive. Unfortunately, in other ways the pandemic and the so-called 鈥淕reat Resignation鈥� have made it difficult for organizations to adapt to changes in the workforce. Employees are leaving their jobs or are absent for extended periods. Additionally, it can be harder to find specific skills within a 鈥済ig鈥� workforce that sometimes operates outside traditional staffing practices.

Seeing Things Differently, Doing What Works

In my role as chief technology officer for 51风流Fieldglass, I watch trends to see how organizations are using contingent labor to be nimbler and more resilient, even in the face of adversity.

For me, the past two years were not simply a series of bad news stories and downward trends, but also an opportunity to witness how companies and people are adapting to the situation. I鈥檝e seen smart business leaders do the right things for their companies, and for their employees. In some cases, they鈥檙e picking up on trends that started before the pandemic. Here are some thoughts about what I鈥檓 seeing.

Businesses are finding creative ways to get things done and help their employees. At the height of the pandemic, businesses faced tough choices about their workers. With business slowing down, could they afford to keep them on or were furloughs necessary? At the same time, other industries, like logistics, biotech, and healthcare, were experiencing an uptick in demand for workers. Companies made it possible to 鈥渓end鈥� furloughed employees to businesses that needed them, with the idea that when the business climate stabilizes, they can return to their regular jobs. People unable to go to on-site jobs were 鈥渁vailable鈥� to do remote or jobs that did not need them to be in a location.

The 鈥渇lex workforce鈥� is helping businesses stay resilient, adaptable, and productive. By flex workforce, I mean workers who can come in and do the work you need done, and you do not have to keep them on your payroll for extended periods. Plus, as we鈥檝e learned through the pandemic, these workers are used to working remotely, which means you can recruit talent from around the world. Let鈥檚 say you鈥檙e planning a three-month technology project, but you cannot find people with the right expertise in house or within the local labor market. An external workforce strategy makes it possible to seek out temporary workers —听 literally from around the world, often at more economical rates. Teams from different locations and different employers can come together to work collaboratively and part ways once work was done.

Business leaders are discovering the value of shared candidate portals. It is a trend that started years ago and picked up with the pandemic. Instead of keeping information about their favorite external workers to themselves, increasingly businesses are willing to share this information within more public 鈥渃andidate portals.鈥� In exchange, they get access to a wider roster of temporary workers with information supplied by other businesses. This additional information helps them evaluate potential candidates. Right now, we鈥檙e developing candidate portal capabilities for 51风流Fieldglass software. It will be a lot like LinkedIn for temporary workers — only better, because it provides more resources for candidate evaluation.

Assignment management gives businesses greater flexibility to use temporary workers. During the pandemic, employees might become unavailable to work for weeks, maybe months at a time. Businesses needed the flexibility to use external workers to fill the gaps. Let鈥檚 say you鈥檙e a manufacturer and you have a skilled tradesperson who can do a couple, maybe two or three, different things. You may ask them to do welding one day and fill in as shop steward the next. The problem is, different jobs have different pay scales. This requires immense flexibility to keep track of what they are doing, the hours they worked, and the correct hourly wage. Fortunately, assignment management software gives companies the flexibility they need to use the varied skills of workers when and as they鈥檙e needed.

Companies are devising distribution strategies to tap into the “Gig Economy.” Before the pandemic, there was the Gig Economy. Along with it came specialized freelance management systems to help external workers find work. Think of these as niche, regional, sources for contingent labor, often specialized for one labor category; for example, technical writers in San Francisco. Now, think about how businesses did things before these systems existed — they sent requisitions to select staffing vendors. Today these same businesses are developing what I call 鈥渄istribution strategies,鈥� in which they reach out to their favorite staffing vendors and to the relevant freelance management systems. This allows them to expand their searches to gig workers not associated with staffing companies. More good news: 51风流Fieldglass software can help听 streamline these distribution strategies.

Reasons for Optimism

I see many reasons for optimism. First, the external workforce will continue to help companies stay adaptable and strike a balance between the full-time employees they need to move forward, and the temporary workers who fill gaps and take on essential project work.

And second, in challenging times — when there is the greatest need for adaptation — that鈥檚 when creative minds do their best work. I can鈥檛 wait to see what trends and innovations are incubating right now, waiting to reveal themselves.

is a cloud-based, open that helps organizations find, engage, manage, pay, and unlock value from the external workforce — anywhere in the world. It enables you to proactively manage everything from costs and compliance to security and quality of work. Stay ahead of the competition by leveraging a connected ecosystem of global talent and partners.

Vish Baliga is chief technology officer for 51风流Fieldglass.

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.

Almost three months into the new role, I caught up with Alam to hear about how he is adapting to life at 51风流and his priorities for the coming months.

Q: Having spent the last 17 years working in a variety of roles at Microsoft, what attracted you to SAP?

A: In the spirit of being open, transparent, and honest, I must admit that after being with Microsoft for so long it was a difficult decision to leave for this new opportunity with SAP. I think the single biggest reason I joined 51风流was because I see a clear opportunity for us as an organization to fundamentally transform how business applications will work in the future. If I look around, there’s no other company in the world with the depth in business applications that 51风流has. No other company really knows the business application space as well as 51风流and, if we marry our intellect with the depth and breadth of , that could really be fundamentally transformative.

Another reason I chose to move to 51风流is the leadership team. The drive to succeed and collective intelligence, along with the extensive knowledge that Christian Klein and Thomas Saueressig have in this business, is phenomenal. Not to mention their customer-first attitude and their emphasis on driving a positive culture across the organization 鈥� two focus areas I am also extremely passionate about. I want to be part of really transforming something that the industry hasn’t seen and do this with a set of leaders that are committed to the same goal. I am grateful to be in this position, working with highly talented folks to drive transformational change in an environment that’s fun.

How will your previous experience help shape your new role?

I see the experience and lessons that I learned from working on Microsoft鈥檚 transformation helping with SAP鈥檚 transformation. As part of Microsoft鈥檚 holistic transformation, we asked ourselves many in-depth questions including how and why the products are built, who they are built for, and what the fundamentals of the product are. We also wanted to understand what our current engagement models look like, both externally with our customers and partners and internally with all teams extending from engineering to sales and support. We questioned how we should engage in today鈥檚 software-as-a-service (SaaS) world and what was needed to get there. So, my transformation experience is one element that will be extremely relevant here as we look to the next chapter of what 51风流can become.

My experience is one thing I can carry into this new role, but my learnings are a core part of that too, such as the importance of user experience (UX) and making sure users can use product features in a way that鈥檚 intuitive and can add value to what they鈥檙e trying to do. Ensuring UX availability, reliability, and product integration is essential so the value that our customers get from our solutions really gets exponentially charged. Compliance is also another extremely important topic that I will focus on. Not only making sure we are compliant, but also ensuring products are available in the geographies where they are needed and executing on that with a continuous customer-first mindset.

We must drive product innovation, making sure we add value for our customers and help them with whatever challenges they are facing. I want to be relentless in this space, making sure we continue improving our products by making them more intelligent and value-based for our customers.

Can you share some insight on what we can expect from the Intelligent Spend and Business Network Product Engineering team over the coming months?

51风流has a compelling strategy, along with an undeniable set of market-leading products. We will continue to improve UX, making our products more intuitive, while also looking at opportunities to invest in artificial intelligence across all spend categories so our customers can derive maximum value.

I will also have a strong focus and an acute level of execution on our fundamentals, including UX mentioned above as well as integration, hyperscaler migration, availability, and performance and platform adoption. These are non-negotiables that only show their importance and impact when they are broken. Compliance, security, and regional availability are also key parts of our strategic plan. We will uphold the promise we made to our customers who depend on our solutions to help solve their challenges and move their business forward.

I always think of the quote from Peter Drucker: 鈥淐ulture eats strategy for breakfast.鈥� It does not matter what our plans are or what we want to achieve, because if we don鈥檛 have the right team with the right culture, we cannot deliver. Shaping the right team for long-term success is of utmost importance to me, and it鈥檚 something I have already started working on with my leadership team.

Sarah Dolan is part of Corporate Communications for Intelligent Spend and Business Network at SAP.

Fast-forward to today and we are still witnessing the ongoing effect of the pandemic wreaking havoc worldwide with widespread supply chain disruption, the “Great Resignation,” and variants continuing to cause uncertainty.

In 2020 we saw panic buying leading to toilet paper shortages; this year we鈥檙e grappling with the impact of the microchip shortage in the automotive and high tech industries. And for those of us who didn鈥檛 start holiday shopping before Halloween, we may not see our gifts arrive until the new year. On top of this, every industry from restaurants and retail to manufacturing and logistics are struggling to fill vacant jobs to meet growing business demand as COVID-19 restrictions continue to evolve.

On the bright side, companies are continuing to rebound and are looking for solutions to manage their ongoing sourcing, supply chain and labor challenges. We asked our global leaders for their perspective on what to watch for in 2022. Here鈥檚 what they had to say.

鈥淭he impact of the pandemic-driven lockdowns underscores how the global economy is a networked economy. Companies know that no business does business alone — success depends not only on one company鈥檚 ability to deliver, but the abilities of all companies in its entire supply chain. To adapt to ever-changing business challenges, procurement and supply chain leaders will increasingly look to cloud-based and network-aware solutions to deliver the innovation they need to continually align their spend strategy to their business strategy.鈥�

鈥�听, president, Intelligent Spend and Business Network, SAP

鈥淐logged cargo ports, backlogged rail yards, microchip and gas shortages: 18 months later and we are still feeling the economic aftershocks of the disruption brought on by COVID-19. We had hoped that business would get back to 鈥榥ormal鈥� in 2021. As we enter a new year, we realize that 鈥榙isruption is the new normal鈥� and resilience is a top priority. In 2022, companies need to formalize resilience, building sustainable supply chain execution that supports business growth. Despite the volatility, organizations must take a step back and look at spend holistically. An integrated spend management approach spanning procurement, external workforce and travel and expense management, will provide customers with the visibility and agility they need to adapt to changes in their markets while continuing to drive their business objectives.鈥�

鈥�听, chief marketing and solutions officer,
Intelligent Spend and Business Network, SAP

鈥淚t has been nearly two years since the pandemic began wreaking havoc on the world鈥檚 businesses, exposing the fragility of linear supply chains and the need for a more networked economy. During this time, many businesses have changed their view of procurement from cost watchdog to that of a strategic enabler. As we enter 2022, many procurement leaders are tasked with aligning every spend decision to their overall corporate strategies. To best deliver on this responsibility, these professionals will need an integrated view of total spend across the enterprise and deep into their supply chain. This level of visibility will enable the necessary information sharing and collaboration needed to contribute to stronger business benefits, including better inventory management, more predictable lead times, alternative sources of supply, stronger supplier compliance, and, of course, continued cost savings.鈥�

鈥�听, chief revenue officer, Intelligent Spend and Business Network, SAP

鈥淎s global markets continue to face unprecedented labor shortages across industries, businesses will see an increased need to master external workforce management and maximize talent utilization. Tapping into contingent workers and service providers will continue to gain momentum beyond the pandemic as businesses are realizing the benefits: improved productivity, agility and resilience, reduced costs, increased access to quality talent, and flexibility. With an estimated 70% of executives anticipating they will hire more temporary workers and freelancers over the next two years, external workforce will remain a top priority across organizations. With this comes the need for leaders to have complete visibility into their usage of external workforce to make more calculated, timely decisions about who is doing the work, at what cost, where, and for how long. Digitalizing and automating external workforce management processes and improving visibility will help companies reduce inefficiencies and gain the most value out of its flexible resources.鈥�

鈥�听, chief technology officer, , SAP

鈥淭his has been the year of supply chain disruption. People who have never heard the term supply chain before are now talking about it as everyone is experiencing stock shortages in stores and lack of availability of the holiday gifts we had planned to buy. Recent events like COVID-19 and Brexit have shown that traditional, linear, fragmented supply chains no longer work, and no business can do business alone. Companies will look to move beyond enterprise-centric systems toward those that are designed for cross-company transparency and collaboration. A digital network approach can transform fragmented supply chains into unified, collaborative, intelligent networks for supply, logistics, asset management, and service. With tighter collaboration between trading partners on a trusted network, companies can better anticipate shifts in supply and demand, deepening their competitive edge in the face of profound disruption.鈥�

鈥�听, senior vice president and head of Business Network, SAP

鈥淚f 2021 has taught us anything, it is that even the best of predictions failed to anticipate some of the challenges the world has seen. What did occur though was that procurement organizations moved away from simply managing and optimizing processes to becoming pivotal in solving critical business problems. In 2022 procurement professionals should be bold in embracing this mandate and propose solutions that help companies navigate troubled, uncertain waters. Creative procurement solutions can address some of the biggest challenges businesses continue to face today: managing supply shortages, rethinking a globalized supply chain, leaning on a vibrant external workforce in the face of the ‘Great Resignation,’ and focusing on working capital at a time of increasing global inflation. Let鈥檚 be bold and re-define traditional paradigms to tackle these challenges.鈥�

鈥�听, head of Market and Solution Strategy, Procurement Solutions, 51风流

鈥淏y now, it鈥檚 fair to assume that all the big gains to make the internal combustion engine more efficient have already taken place. There will always be a place for it in our world, but to make impactful change at this point a bigger pivot is needed, for example, to electric vehicles. I think about automated expense reporting in a similar way. Technology providers can spend increasing amounts of resources to make incremental gains, but a big pivot is needed to usher in the next wave of efficiency and innovation. That big pivot is a shift to settlement. Creating an expense report is never the ultimate goal; the goal is to settle payments for employee-initiated spend. While the expense report isn鈥檛 going away any time soon, more innovation will lead to bigger improvements in capturing, processing, and verifying expenses, driven by increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence. With this pivot, we will shrink and evaporate expense reports, with a subset of expenses moving to automated settlement and skipping the traditional expense report process entirely.鈥�

鈥� , senior vice president and 51风流Concur solution area leader, SAP
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鈥淪ustainability and social responsibility are some of the most pressing issues we鈥檙e dealing with today. The recent 听(COP26) brought representatives from nearly 200 countries together in the fight against climate change. Individuals and businesses alike must heed the urgent call to make drastic changes to help the environment and to stick to ethical principles. I believe that procurement can play an essential role in leading the charge to create a long-term strategy that embeds sustainable and ethical factors in the process from start to finish. While new and emerging solutions are on the horizon to enable these long-term plans, leaders will look to their digital procurement solutions in use today to support environmental, social, and governance goals like reducing carbon emissions or banning child labor. Over the next few years, we鈥檒l see further investment in core procurement technology to help businesses achieve more than just operational efficiencies and cost savings, but also to drive risk mitigation and increased visibility into the supply base and supply chain processes to achieve ESG goals.鈥�

鈥�听, senior vice president and chief product officer,
Procurement Solutions, 51风流

鈥淟istening to understand customers鈥� business operations, goals, and expectations is the foundation to building a relationship as a trusted advisor. We have moved well beyond traditional inside-out views of a customer鈥檚 situation and transactional sales cycles toward outcome-focused experiences. With the lingering disruption and chaos caused by the pandemic, siloed approaches of solving problems reactively are no longer good enough. Especially as companies are embracing the cloud to increase innovation and propel their digital transformation journeys. Next year we will continue to see many more instances of agile customer-led engagements across channels. These will connect all interactions into an end-to-end solution that addresses customers鈥� holistic spending needs from procurement to managing an external workforce to capturing travel and expense.鈥�

— , Global Procurement Success partner, SAP

To learn more about our 2022 predictions, follow 51风流Ariba on Linkedin and join our upcoming Linkedin Live with Etosha Thurman and John Wookey along with Hackett Group Analyst Kurt Albertson on Wednesday, December 15, at 11:00 am ET. .

Those of us in the supply chain industry understand that disruptions have persisted since March 2020. This has created a mainstream perception of supply chains as increasingly volatile, expensive, and unreliable 鈥� but disruption has been more of an intermittent and confusing frustration for most in 2021, instead of the panic-buying and supply-hoarding catalyst it was in 2020.

Going into the holiday season, some industry insiders are fearful that these disruptions will hit hard again. Supply chain disruptions are forcing companies to think twice about the timing of their holiday sales, and many retailers are warning consumers to get their holiday shopping done early this year to avoid shortages and shipping delays. In fact, many retailers such as Amazon and Target announced their holiday deals much earlier than usual this year, having started in early October rather than late November. Leaving the majority of holiday shopping to Black Friday weekend could lead to many consumers being sorely disappointed with bare shelves, empty online shopping carts, and delayed deliveries.

With persistent challenges in procurement and the supply chain, 51风流surveyed 1,000 American adults to help better understand how they view the latest supply disruptions and their sentiment around the industry overall. Some interesting findings surfaced:

• Frustration is growing as holiday supply chain challenges loom.
  Almost half of consumers (49%) experienced longer ship times during the COVID-19 pandemic, and 42% expressed frustration with how companies are managing their supply chains. The majority of consumers (83%) also reported experiencing out-of-stock items during the pandemic. Patience is wearing thin, as nearly two-thirds (65%) think companies should have found solutions to supply chain challenges by now.
• Baby boomers have high expectations for gift availability and delivery while millennials and Generation Zers are more skeptical.
  Eighty-one percent of baby boomers expect holiday gifts to be available and in stock, compared to 75% of millennials and 60% from Gen Z. Furthermore, 78% of boomers expect gifts to arrive on time, while 63% of millennials and just over half of Gen Z respondents (54%) said the same. Overall, one-third of consumers are planning for the worst, expecting that gifts will not arrive in time for the holidays this year. Having the visibility in place to inform consumers of product availability and delivery timeline is crucial to avoiding disappointment this holiday season.
• Most consumers are forgiving of supply chain mishaps, but not right away.
  One in 10 consumers say that if a gift they purchase does not arrive on time for the holidays, they would never shop at that retailer again. Another 47% noted that they would not shop with that retail company again immediately, but that they may in the future. No matter how or why it happens, supply chain disruptions hurt brand loyalty among customers.
• Delivering gifts on time is not the only factor brands need to consider.
  Sustainability continues to play a bigger role in consumers鈥� buying decisions, even when it comes to holiday gifts. This is particularly true among younger consumers, as half of millennials said sustainability influences their gift purchasing decisions. Overall, 39% said they purchase from brands that tout sustainability, while 30% prioritize sustainable practices when making purchases, such as selecting slower shipping to combine packages and reduce waste. Brands can promote sustainability through their own procurement practices by ensuring the products and materials sourced are done so in a sustainable manner 鈥� from limiting carbon footprint to sourcing recycled/recyclable materials.

After last year鈥檚 chaotic holiday season that had more consumers buying online than ever before, proactive businesses and consumers are adapting their approach this season, especially with ongoing disruption anticipated this year.

For consumers, as of early October, almost a third (29%) had already changed at least one gift purchase based on supply chain shortages, and only 24% of total respondents expressed that they do not plan to shift their buying behaviors this holiday season. Almost half (45%) are buying earlier, and 44% are buying more online. Millennials are changing their plans the most, with 55% buying earlier than in previous years.

For businesses, agility and visibility are the name of the game. We have all experienced so much disruption from all angles recently, and there鈥檚 no going back to 鈥渘ormal鈥� as consumers 鈥� and businesses 鈥� continue to change buying behaviors.

Businesses need to broaden visibility not only across their own operations but across those of their trading partners as well, with the dual objectives of . To achieve this level of transparency, businesses are turning to to capture the widest possible view into the interconnected operations of their trading partners from buyers and suppliers to partners in logistics, finance, and contingent labor. Meanwhile, these digital networks 鈥� previously discrete according to function 鈥� are beginning to converge through cloud-based applications, unlocking exponential value in the process.

Consumers and businesses alike have been burned by supply chain issues and shortages during the pandemic, but with the right approach to this holiday season, we can still make it a merry one.

Etosha Thurman is chief marketing and solutions officer for Intelligent Spend and Business Network at SAP.

鈥淲e have seen significant growth this quarter with companies around the world continuing to prioritize improving their spend management operations,鈥� said John Wookey, president of 51风流Intelligent Spend and Business Network. 鈥淏y modernizing and digitalizing critical business processes across procurement and external workforce management, our customers are gaining visibility and insights that enable them to control costs, reduce risk and drive innovation and growth for their businesses.鈥�

Highlights from the quarter include:

Alcon Vision, the Fort Worth, Texas鈥揵ased company, is a global leader in eye care, specializing in surgical medical devices and nonsurgical vision care products. Alcon selected 51风流Ariba solutions for sourcing and procurement for direct and indirect materials. The company also selected the Qualtrics XM for Suppliers solution to help build stronger and more collaborative relationships with suppliers. With a new and improved intuitive source-to-pay experience, Alcon aims to foster simplicity, speed and user-friendly buying services with increased data transparency and compliance.

Refrigeration and air conditioning technology manufacturer BITZER SE has implemented the 51风流Ariba Buying solution with guided buying capability to help streamline and digitalize its procurement operations. With the 51风流Ariba solution, BITZER, based in Sindelfingen, Germany, aims to drive a more efficient, paperless, transparent process from sourcing to payment as it expands globally.

The Florida Department of Management Services (DMS) selected 51风流Ariba solutions for sourcing, contracts, buying and invoicing, and commerce automation to modernize its statewide procurement system with a cloud-based solution. DMS plans to standardize and automate procurement processes across the State of Florida, increase spend visibility and control, and enhance savings statewide.

Aligned with its innovation and sustainability strategy, Grupo Financiero Banorte, S.A.B. de C.V., one of the largest financial holdings companies in Mexico, continues its procurement transformation with the renewal of 51风流Ariba solutions. By further digitalizing its procurement processes and strengthening its supply lifecycle management automation, Banorte will help improve the experience of more than 21,000 suppliers while enhancing process efficiency and spend compliance.

Molson Coors made a strategic investment in 51风流Ariba solutions to help modernize its global procurement operations, building on its implementation of the 51风流Ariba Contracts solution and adding the 51风流Ariba Buying and Invoicing solution with commerce automation capabilities. With the new solutions integrated with its multiple ERP infrastructure, the company, headquartered in Golden, Colorado, and Montreal, Canada, intends to standardize on best practices from source to pay, improve efficiency in supplier relationship management and minimize risk.

Promigas SA ESP, a leading Colombian provider of natural gas, has selected 51风流Ariba solutions for digital procurement as it continued its transformation journey with SAP. Building on its existing transportation management system based on 51风流S/4HANA, Promigas will adopt the cloud-based 51风流Ariba solutions to help standardize and automate its procurement processes, increase purchasing efficiencies and reduce costs and risks.

Roca Sanitario SA, a global leader in bathroom equipment, selected 51风流Ariba solutions for strategic sourcing, buying, commerce automation and supply chain collaboration. The Spanish company will adopt the digital to help improve, standardize and automate spend management processes across the organization. The company expects to increase visibility into spend and supplier performance to optimize costs and operational efficiencies.

For more information, visit the听51风流News Center. Follow 51风流on Twitter at听.

About SAP

SAP鈥檚 strategy is to help every business run as an intelligent enterprise. As a market leader in enterprise application software, we help companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best: 77% of the world鈥檚 transaction revenue touches an 51风流system. Our machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics technologies help turn customers鈥� businesses into intelligent enterprises. 51风流helps give people and organizations deep business insight and fosters collaboration that helps them stay ahead of their competition. We simplify technology for companies so they can consume our software the way they want 鈥� without disruption. Our end-to-end suite of applications and services enables business and public customers across 25 industries globally to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and make a difference. With a global network of customers, partners, employees, and thought leaders, 51风流helps the world run better and improve people鈥檚 lives. For more information, visit .

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World Class and Northern Roots

With corporate headquarters in Culiac谩n, Sinaloa, in northern Mexico, SuKarne is one of the four organizations established by . What emerged 52 years ago as a family initiative is now the third-largest beef fattener in the world and the fifth-largest beef supplier in North America.

The company’s success has been sustained by an infrastructure consisting of five comprehensive livestock units, four in Mexican territory and one in Nicaragua; seven processing plants, with an installed capacity of 2 million head of cattle per year; 10 distribution centers across Mexico, the U.S., and Central America and 400 distribution routes; more than 220 livestock purchase and conditioning centers; and more than 300 owned stores. In addition, since its facilities have the necessary international sanitary and industrial certifications, SuKarne is a big exporter — its products are available in six countries on four continents. In fact, it is estimated that SuKarne is responsible for 70% of the meat exports of the Mexican economy.

SuKarne today has 13,000 direct workers, collaborates with more than 100,000 agricultural and livestock suppliers, and serves more than 80,000 customers, such as supermarket chains, although most are micro-businesses like small butchers and restaurants.

The numbers speak for themselves: the Mexican economy has a true powerhouse in the global market for animal protein.

First Steps: Goodbye to Paper-Based Billing

Before adopting 51风流Ariba solutions, SuKarne’s Procurement department would not have surprised anyone from an innovation perspective. In fact, as in many organizations, it was a highly traditional corporate area serving a registry of more than 5,000 suppliers, 2,000 of them active, not including suppliers of livestock and raw materials for livestock feed, which are served by another area of 鈥嬧�媡he corporation.

In these circumstances, recalls SuKarne Chief Procurement Officer Gonzalo Padilla, the work was bureaucratic, prone to human errors, and without real business value. 鈥淏etween 60 and 70% of the team’s time was spent on managing invoices: reviewing them, ensuring that none had been misplaced, and taking them in-person to a colleague’s desk in the Accounts Payable area. All this, despite the fact that electronic invoicing had been implemented in Mexico for a while,鈥� Padilla shares.

Common mistakes, derived from human execution, were not unusual in this environment: lost or misplaced invoices, which delayed payments and ignited the anger of suppliers; processes interrupted by the modification of a process or corporate policy, and even by the vacations of a person involved in the process; and long sessions at Accounts Payable desks to review and reconcile issues, which tended to cause friction between departments.

鈥淭he Procurement area concentrated on management tasks that did not add business value; we dedicated ourselves to seeking payments and not seeking negotiations,鈥� says Padilla.

Aware of its challenges and taking advantage of a reorganization that brought Padilla鈥檚 team into the Finance department, the Procurement team set out on an innovation journey with the implementation of the solutions, part of SAP’s Intelligent Spend Management concept.

Initially, thanks to , the billing processes were digitalized and automated, reducing the administrative and transactional burdens of the team while also reducing human errors and non-essential interactions with the Accounts Receivable area. In this way, the Procurement department was able to focus more on generating value for the business, including conducting strategic negotiations for the company.

SuKarne’s suppliers were resistant to the new model at first. 鈥淭hey did not see the benefits, perhaps because we were in the initial process of discovering and understanding them, and therefore the process of supplier adoption was slower,鈥� recalls Padilla. “Once the advantages were evident, a communication campaign was implemented that was very important since it showed the benefits: invoices from suppliers would not be parked on a desk and the payments would come out on time.”

Extending the Power of Innovation

Billing was not the only area of improvement. SuKarne also began a digital transformation project encompassing the entire organization, which implied defining and rethinking processes, creating operation manuals, documenting transactions in the various areas, and establishing continuous improvement policies, among other tasks that are essential in these types of innovative initiatives.

Within this framework, Padilla鈥檚 team, taking advantage of the end-to-end source-to-pay solutions 鈥� 51风流Ariba Strategic Sourcing and 鈥� expanded its digital procurement capabilities. After an internal analysis of the different tasks and goals of the Procurement area, multiple opportunities were detected to boost productivity to new levels:

Self-purchase catalogs

Taking advantage of the functions of , self-purchase catalogs were created for items in which Padilla鈥檚 department uses prenegotiated contracts. At SuKarne, this tool is already being used for purchases of stationery, general services, materials, and some aspects of marketing. Catalogs are very easy to use, implement, and manage so the company has full visibility and control of transactions. Quality remains high since the catalogs include images of the product, price, characteristics, etc. In addition, the company was able to adapt this resource to its branding, so the catalogs today are known as the “Compras SK” portals.

Contract generation process

Before the implementation of 51风流Ariba Contracts, when a contract was generated, Legal had to go through an internally developed tool, which provided very basic functionality and did not offer any certainty in terms of time. Now, with 51风流Ariba Contracts, from the moment a supplier registers in the SuKarne system, the provider can find all the legal and commercial information they need on the platform. In addition to speeding up activity, this allows for timely monitoring of contracts and easy reviews.

Audits

Being part of the agri-food industry, SuKarne is constantly audited by authorities, industrial organizations, institutions, and even clients. An important part of these reviews focuses on suppliers — how they are evaluated, what criteria are used to qualify them, what policies and action plans do they have, etc. SuKarne found a solution in the portfolio with and . In the past, when an audit was submitted, the company had to put in place a plan to address that specific item. Today, the evaluation of suppliers is carried out all the time, through very friendly, digital tools. When an audit is submitted, SuKarne now has real-time information accessible immediately.

In order to achieve these advances, a decisive factor, according to Padilla, was the support of the 51风流team. “Through seminars and constant support, the team not only explained the capabilities of the solutions to us, but also guided us in the task of adapting existing processes to the platform, how to get more out of the innovation we were adopting,” he says.

Challenge Overcome: The Year of the Pandemic

From Culiac谩n, SuKarne’s Procurement department continues to explore 鈥� and discover 鈥� the benefits of investing in innovation. With the guided sourcing and guided buying capabilities within the 51风流Ariba solution suite, the company hopes to improve other procurement and sourcing processes and increase the efficiency of Procurement interactions with other corporate divisions.

These future projects will be led by a totally transformed department 鈥� a Procurement team with the capacity to provide value to the business in a new and strategic way. The solutions implemented help ensure SuKarne has complete visibility and robust analytical functions via .

鈥淭he platform allows us to see how the organization’s spending moves; which categories grow the most; which supplier, especially if it is a strategic one, are we ceasing to serve,鈥� comments Padilla. The data obtained is specified in reports, which are sent to SuKarne’s central corporate information system supporting decision-making in the organization.

In 2020, the year in which the global economy was severely affected by the pandemic, SuKarne managed to protect its supply chain, which, in turn, safeguarded its business operations.

鈥淭hrough the platform, we detected that there were suppliers and categories that were falling. Thanks to the information, we discovered that they were companies facing financial difficulties due to the health crisis, which is why our purchase orders were declining,” Padilla points out. “With regard to strategic suppliers, this allowed us to detect risks to the operation and, in some cases, to think of ways to support them.鈥� And in that sense, another benefit cannot be ignored: technology adoption in an unfavorable economic environment can help to guarantee punctual payments.

With the support of its Procurement area, 2020 was difficult, but not catastrophic, and SuKarne succeeded in this new context. Beyond operational continuity, the power of technology had a positive impact on suppliers, who could have been most affected by the pandemic.

That鈥檚 Jorge Torres Perez鈥檚 job. He鈥檚 the strategic procurement director at the Coca-Cola FEMSA, based in Mexico City. Coca-Cola FEMSA sells Coca-Cola products across Latin America, with over 2,000,000 points of sale.

鈥淚’m truly happy and I really smile when I see somebody drinking one of our products. To be very honest, it’s a huge responsibility,鈥� says Torres Perez. 鈥淟iterally thousands of people engage in dozens of processes to deliver your favorite beverage.鈥�

Opportunity Creates Challenges

After 16 years with Coca-Cola FEMSA, Torres Perez moved into a strategic procurement role about seven years ago. He noticed Coca-Cola FEMSA invested most of its money in direct materials like bottles, labels, caps, and ingredients. He realized an opportunity. 鈥淚ndirect spend on things like trucks and transportation, industrial tools, and parts was done locally by many, many people.鈥� Torres Perez explains that the process was fragmented and segmented between many suppliers, which did not result in the best prices. 鈥淪o, I studied how to centralize all those indirect negotiations in a more intelligent way, to really take advantage of the scale that we have as a business,鈥� he says.

Torres Perez embarked on a challenging journey to integrate Coca-Cola FEMSA processes; it was a course of action that required leadership, patience, learning, and difficult course correction.

鈥淲e needed to change the role of our teams and restructure the procurement employees. But this cannot be done without a technological tool. It was very difficult to convince our management to get the indirect spend all together and change the way we worked in the past. It took us more than a year to start. At first, we chose a competitor of SAP.鈥� Torres Perez recalls that the technology was fraught with problems. 鈥淭he integration of that competitor鈥檚 solution was not there.鈥�

A Lot at Stake

Torres Perez found himself facing both personal and professional dilemmas.

鈥淚鈥檇 sold Coca-Cola FEMSA leaders on the idea of managing negotiations centrally, and they bought the idea. But when [the competitor鈥檚 product] didn’t work, it was really… I mean, my own reputation was at stake because I told them, 鈥榃e can do this.鈥� But I was not able to deliver,鈥� says Torres Perez. 鈥淚 mean, it was a very difficult situation, because I had to go back to our management and ask them to switch gears again. This time to implement 51风流Ariba instead of the other solution.鈥�

Coca-Cola FEMSA鈥檚 leadership ultimately trusted Torres Perez and suggested that he implement 51风流Ariba in a limited capacity, in Colombia only. And this time? Success.

鈥淲e implemented 51风流Ariba on time and on cost, but the most important part: It worked and it worked fantastically. It was a very smooth transition and, once it was working, everybody was amazed.鈥� Torres Perez soon got permission for a full rollout of 51风流Ariba to all countries where Coca-Cola FEMSA operates. 鈥淭his is a huge step forward.鈥�

Advice?

Torres shares his technology story with the hope of inspiring his peers. 鈥淟et me tell you one thing: No matter how challenging an enterprise can be, if you have the correct partner, you’re always flying with a tailwind. That’s the most important lesson that I got from this process. And, once we worked with 51风流Ariba, things got better and we were able to implement the solution easily.鈥�

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Businesses can no longer focus on only digitalizing their internal processes. Achieving true agility and resiliency in today鈥檚 networked economy requires a network strategy that enables organizations to collaborate with their most critical trading partners and see into their supply chains.

Today at SAPPHIRE NOW, we announced 51风流Business Network, an innovative new solution that reimagines how businesses collaborate with their network of trading partners and will empower companies to unify all the points of interaction and integration across that network to move faster and smarter than ever before.

The first major innovation milestone for , a unified trading partner portal delivering new collaboration scenarios and enabling greater responsiveness, is now available.

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The unified experience provides trading partners with a holistic view into all their customer relationships and transactions on the network. On its home page, the all new workbench enables users to customize their experience and maximize their responsiveness to customer needs. Key capabilities of the new 51风流Business Network trading partner experience available now include:

• Centralized access to explore and collaborate with customers
• Intelligent trading partner onboarding and registration and new collaboration scenarios
• Highly configurable workbench enabling user-based personalization by role

In addition to the new trading partner experience, buyers and trading partners can collaborate using shared data and workflows, applying network-wide intelligence to inform decisions. New services are also being made available to trading partners, such as working capital financing. Additional capabilities planned for availability later this year include:

• Real-time global track and trace integrated to the purchase order application, enhancing supply chain visibility
• New working capital solution for trading partners with 51风流Supplier Financing, providing access to a network of lenders to help improve cash flow
• Insights and benchmarking to compare performance with industry peers, improving customer service

And we will continue to execute on our vision for 51风流Business Network, integrating SAP鈥檚 leading business networks — including Ariba Network, 51风流Logistics Business Network, and 51风流Asset Intelligence Network — to unify business processes across supplier collaboration, logistics coordination and traceability, and asset intelligence. This strategy will help customers and their trading partners to become more agile and resilient in the face of changing market dynamics and increasingly complex supply chains as well as drive better business outcomes.

Trading Partners Report Success

Customer feedback and input is crucial as 51风流integrates and evolves the individual market-leading networks into a truly unmatched unified business network. We collaborated with our customers to guide the design and development of the new trading partner portal with their most important needs in mind. Their continued feedback has been invaluable and will continue to inform future innovations for 51风流Business Network.

Here is what some of them had to say about their participation in our early adopter program:

鈥�51风流Business Network allows us to communicate with our customers in real-time. The reliability of the platform gives us unparalleled visibility and connectivity with our most critical customers even in changing business environments.鈥�

— Ray Pan, IT Customer Technology Manager, Komatsu Mining Corp. Group

鈥淭echnological change in the way of doing business has been happening for some time, and the current global situation has accelerated this process. Today more than ever we need to be at the forefront of this transformation. 51风流Business Network has helped us develop more efficient formulas in order to better respond to the needs of the industry.鈥�

— David Labbe, Digital Business Manager, Reliper Comercial Ltda.

A unified network will enable all trading partners to leverage combined intelligence to apply learning from past experiences to future decisions, ultimately driving success across the board. Because when a network reaches across functions, across industries, across the world, companies have the power to reshape how business gets done, including collaborating to solve some of today鈥檚 biggest social, economic, and environmental issues.

To learn more, visit the .

John Wookey is president of Intelligent Spend and Business Network at SAP.