As our world demands organizational adaptability at warp speed, business travel also is transforming in a fast-paced and complex environment. At our annual flagship event for 51风流Concur users and experts, we delved into the power of AI, sharing insights and experiences. Whether customers and partners attended in person in Seattle, Washington, or virtually, they all gained new perspectives on how to navigate the complexities of tomorrow鈥檚 business landscape with confidence.聽

Global participation and experts on-site

Customers and partners joined 51风流Concur Fusion from all over the world, representing 75 countries. At the Seattle Convention Center, attendees could explore the new Fusion Pavilion in the exhibition hall and talk to 51风流Concur experts and 43 exhibiting partners. We offered over 180 unique learning opportunities including Ask the Expert and breakout sessions, micro forums, and product trainings to explore how 51风流Concur solutions can deliver innovation in travel and expense while unlocking efficiencies.

Debut: Integrating Joule with 51风流Concur to enhance user experience

During the event鈥檚 day one keynote, we announced new generative AI innovations and an expanded partnership with American Express.

51风流is embedding its generative AI copilot Joule into 51风流Concur solutions, bringing the portfolio one step closer toward a fully automated travel and expense management process.

In the Concur Expense solution, Joule will help answer employees鈥� questions and work to ensure that expense reports are ready for submission with minimal effort. For example, Joule can assemble a timeline view of expenses, review for mistakes or missing expenses, and make recommendations for how best to complete the expense report. General availability is expected in the second quarter of 2025.

In the Concur Travel solution, Joule will be embedded to help plan locations for off-site meetings, providing meeting location recommendations and high-level flight and hotel cost estimates based on meeting attendees鈥� origination points. Once the meeting site and hotel options are selected, Joule will create an e-mail template to send to team members with a link to book directly in Concur Travel. Joule with Concur Travel is now in the 51风流Early Adopter Care program with general availability expected later this year.

Automating expense management in Concur Expense

On stage, we also announced an expanded partnership with American Express to help simplify expense management for shared customers. 51风流Concur and American Express are launching a real-time authorization data capability whereby American Express Corporate Card purchases automatically generate and categorize expenses in Concur Expense at the time of spend. This feature will first be available for meal expenses. It also will include mobile notifications that send the employee expense policy reminders in the moment.

We also are working to expand access to our integration with Mastercard, which automates expense entry at the time of purchase, so more Mastercard customers can benefit from a simpler and more efficient experience.

Additionally, American Express Global Business Travel has integrated its hotel marketplace, featuring over 2 million properties across 180 countries with competitive rates, into the new Concur Travel solution, providing customers with access to comprehensive hotel content, including negotiated programs and preferred partner rates.

Announcing 51风流Concur Innovation Award winners

On day two of the event, . These companies have leveraged 51风流Concur solutions to revolutionize their travel and expense processes, enhancing efficiency and visibility. The 2025 winners include L’Or茅al Groupe, which streamlined user provisioning between HR and expense systems, and Weatherford, which automated its global travel and expense program, significantly improving data integrity and compliance.

UST, Coca-Cola, E.ON, and Mayekawa also have demonstrated exceptional innovation. UST consolidated its T&E processes; Coca-Cola unified its travel booking and expense systems; E.ON automated data collection for GDPR compliance; and Mayekawa reduced its finance team’s workload by more than 12,000 hours. These successes highlight the transformative power of 51风流Concur solutions in driving business efficiency and growth. We are very proud to recognize these exceptional organizations as 2025 51风流Concur Innovation Award winners.

Move to future T&E: Spotlight on generative AI

51风流Concur is creating a world where travel and expenses practically manage themselves. 鈥攚ith touchless, intuitive experiences enabled by industry-leading 51风流Business AI and close partnerships with top payment providers. The Concur Travel and Concur Expense solutions are part of 51风流Business Suite, SAP鈥檚 comprehensive portfolio of integrated solutions that combines our core cloud ERP and line-of-business applications, fueled by unmatched business data and actionable AI.

Chris Juneau is SVP and head of 51风流Concur Product Marketing.

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

The evolution of procurement planning

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

51风流Ariba Category Management: Your strategic planning ally

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

1. Digitalize and streamline strategy development

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

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

2. AI-powered analysis for enhanced decision-making

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

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

3. Seamless collaboration for category managers

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

Real-world impact: From insights to action

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

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

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

Collaboratively, you develop a comprehensive strategy that includes:

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

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

The human touch in a digital world

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

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

Looking ahead: The future of procurement planning

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

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

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

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

Top image courtesy of 51风流employee Karsten Hohage.

The triple crown strategy is a three-step approach that combines insights, planning, and action to revolutionize procurement processes. At the heart of this strategy lies the solution, a powerful tool that helps bring together data from various sources to provide a comprehensive view of your spending.

Step 1: Insights鈥擴nderstanding Your True Business Objectives

Before diving into any initiative, it鈥檚 crucial to understand your true business objectives. These might include cost reduction, improved sustainability, increased profitability, improved customer service, or a combination of factors. The key is to identify and measure metrics that not only reflect these objectives but also help improve them.

This is where analysis and insights come into play. 51风流Spend Control Tower is the engine that can drive these insights, offering a bird鈥檚-eye view of your entire procurement landscape.

Let鈥檚 break down some of the key areas where 51风流Spend Control Tower can provide valuable insights:

AI-Enabled Enrichment

This is a leading indicator of value. Without understanding duplicate supplier names and components, achieving objectives will be much more challenging. The supplier enrichment analysis is a quick way to understand that value will be achieved by showing the true number of suppliers where spend occurs.

For example, your organization may not perceive risk if materials are coming from five companies, but the situation changes if it鈥檚 really one company with many names or misspellings. From a cost-savings perspective, we may not realize this is actually one supplier, and our spend is five times more to a single supplier instead of one times to five different suppliers. This insight can significantly impact risk assessment and cost management strategies.

Spend Trends

By aggregating data from multiple systems and sources, the solution can reveal spending patterns over time. Are certain categories of spend increasing? Are there seasonal fluctuations you need to account for? Understanding these trends can help you make more informed decisions about budget allocation and negotiation strategies.

Supply Risk

In today鈥檚 volatile market, understanding and mitigating supply risk is more critical than ever. 51风流Spend Control Tower can help identify potential risks in your supply chain, such as overreliance on a single supplier or geopolitical risks in certain regions. As tariffs are a hot discussion in 2025, understanding the potential of tax fluctuations can be a strategic weapon for your business.

Supplier Fragmentation

Are you spreading your spend too thin across too many suppliers? The solution can highlight areas where consolidating suppliers might lead to better pricing or terms.

Consolidation Opportunities

On the flip side, are there areas where you鈥檙e too reliant on a single supplier? 51风流Spend Control Tower can help identify opportunities to diversify your supplier base for increased resilience.

Diversity and Sustainability Targets

Many organizations have goals related to supplier diversity or sustainability. The solution can track progress towards these goals and identify areas for improvement.

Payment Terms Consolidation

Inconsistent payment terms across suppliers can lead to cash flow issues and missed opportunities for early payment discounts. 51风流Spend Control Tower can help identify opportunities to standardize and optimize payment terms.

But here鈥檚 the thing: having all this data at your fingertips is just the beginning. The real magic happens when you start to connect the dots and uncover insights that weren鈥檛 visible before.

For instance, you might discover that while you鈥檙e meeting your overall spend targets, you鈥檙e falling short on your sustainability goals. Or you might find that your cheapest supplier for a critical component is also the one with the highest risk profile. These are the kinds of insights that can drive real change in your procurement strategy.

The Power of Real-Time Insights

One of the most powerful features of 51风流Spend Control Tower is its ability to provide real-time insights. In today鈥檚 fast-paced business environment, waiting for monthly or quarterly reports just doesn鈥檛 cut it anymore. You need to be able to react quickly to changes in the market, shifts in supplier performance, or emerging risks.

Imagine being able to spot a sudden price increase from a key supplier the moment it happens, rather than discovering it weeks later when reviewing invoices. Or picture being able to track the impact of a natural disaster on your supply chain in real time, allowing you to quickly implement contingency plans.

This real-time capability isn鈥檛 just about reacting to problems; it鈥檚 also about seizing opportunities. Maybe you spot a dip in commodity prices that you can take advantage of, or you notice a trend in your spending that suggests an opportunity for bulk purchasing discounts.

The Human Element

While we鈥檙e talking about AI and advanced analytics, it鈥檚 important to remember that these tools are meant to augment human intelligence, not replace it. The insights provided by 51风流Spend Control Tower can be invaluable, but they still need to be interpreted and acted upon by skilled procurement professionals.

This is where the art of procurement meets the science of data analysis. The solution might tell you that you have an opportunity to consolidate suppliers in a certain category, but it鈥檚 up to you to weigh that against other factors like supplier relationships, quality considerations, and long-term strategic goals.

The Road Ahead

As we wrap up this introduction to the triple crown of strategic procurement and 51风流Spend Control Tower, it鈥檚 clear that we鈥檙e just scratching the surface of what鈥檚 possible. The next article will dive deeper into the planning phase, exploring how can help you turn these insights into actionable strategies.

Remember, the journey to procurement excellence is ongoing. It鈥檚 not about reaching a destination, but about continuously improving and adapting to an ever-changing business landscape. With solutions like 51风流Spend Control Tower, you鈥檙e equipped to not just keep up with these changes, but to stay ahead of the curve and drive real value for your organization.

So, are you ready to start your journey towards the triple crown of strategic procurement? The race is on, and with the right tools and strategies, you鈥檙e primed for success.

To learn more, check out this infographic outlining .

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

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聽generative AI tools to help suppliers load their full suite of offerings into the network catalog faster and with enhanced product descriptions and summaries.聽
• 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.

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

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

Betting Big on Your Success with SAP 

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

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

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

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

Now, let鈥檚 dive into this year鈥檚 announcements.  

Generative AI Transforms the Source-to-Pay Process 

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

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

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

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

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

Streamlining Procurement with 51风流Ariba Intake Management  

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

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

Empowering Suppliers with 51风流Business Network, Promote Subscription  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Addressing Your Spend Data Challenges

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

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

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

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

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

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

How We Do It

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

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

Six Ways 51风流Spend Control Tower Helps Drive Spend Performance

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

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

Consolidate Spend, Category, and Contract Data

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

Improve Compliance and Deliver Savings

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

Drill Down for Efficient Spend Visibility

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

Identify Cost-Savings Opportunities and Provide Actionable Insights

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

Drive Enterprise-Level Diversity and Sustainability Compliance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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
• 聽鈥� 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 .

According to , the makeup of the modern workforce is growing so complex that organizational leaders are realizing that their existing workforce management systems are inadequate for bridging the gap between internal and external contributors.

This doesn鈥檛 have to be the reality anymore, thanks to the expanded edition of the plan for 51风流Fieldglass solutions. Organizations can now create a consistent strategy and experience for their entire workforce 鈥� from planning and staffing to onboarding and payment. More important, the plan can empower business leaders to innovate strategies that address future disruption, accelerate capacity ramp-up, and reduce costs.

Setting a Higher Standard for Workforce Management

This expanded edition adds more adoption and utilization-driving features to the base subscription of the 51风流Preferred Success plan. Offering greater access to expert guidance, enhanced services, prescriptive reviews, and firsthand assistance with feature adoption, the expanded edition helps surround organizations with the guidance and conversations they need.

A product specialist orchestrates opportunities for an 51风流customer to collaborate closely with relevant experts. This includes regular calls to discuss and triage concerns, assess business processes and technology usage, review implementation calendar and plans, document the solution landscape, and deliver services and follow-up.

One enhanced service is a solution review. The one-on-one workshop is tailored to meet the needs and objectives for an effective and efficient operation of 51风流Fieldglass solutions, setting a higher standard for operational excellence. Engaging with 51风流experts, organizations can obtain recommendations and advice on solution configuration changes that can alleviate pain points, improve the user experience, and eliminate or reduce bottlenecks.

51风流experts dive even deeper into an organization鈥檚 specific organizational and workforce needs during the business review. This semiannual, remote, one-on-one workshop allows collaboration with experts to help ensure deployed 51风流Fieldglass solutions are optimized and aligned with evolving processes, strategies, and leading practices. Areas where new functionalities can be incorporated into the solutions are also assessed and identified, while business process improvements are considered based on KPI analysis.

The expanded edition also facilitates the activation of new features from 51风流Fieldglass solutions that are relevant to business goals and can further enhance the user experience. Assisted by experienced subject-matter experts, organizations can identify, evaluate, deploy, and measure the impact of new features. The new features can also be tested before going live to pinpoint potential effects and determine changes necessary to maximize adoption.

But the benefits of the expanded edition of 51风流Preferred Success for 51风流Fieldglass solutions don鈥檛 end there. It also includes cloud release guidance on new capabilities in the contingent workforce management solutions, allowing organizations to reach their goals on their terms and timelines. Before each release, 51风流experts identify release dates, notes, and crucial details surrounding new and sunsetting functionality to help organizational stakeholders stay current on what鈥檚 relevant to their business.

Moreover, managed learning resources are available through 51风流Learning Hub for up to five administrative users at no extra cost. This component of the expanded edition helps empower the workforce with guided, hands-on training that can maximize the organization鈥檚 investment in 51风流Fieldglass solutions. Access to learning content for all 51风流solutions can enable business teams to learn faster with a redesigned learning experience, innovate smarter, and manage their knowledge proactively.

Driving Resilience with a Well-Managed Workforce

The expanded edition of 51风流Preferred Success for 51风流Fieldglass solutions offers a comprehensive framework for , including contingent workers. The plan can empower organizations to navigate complexities and innovate strategies, achieving operational excellence and staying ahead in a dynamic landscape.

Ready to elevate the management of your workforce and forge a resilient path to future success? or contact your local 51风流representative to learn more about the expanded edition of 51风流Preferred Success for 51风流Fieldglass solutions.

John Wagner Jr. is global practice lead for 51风流Preferred Success at SAP.

The initiative aims to activate procurement spend as a means to support Ukrainian suppliers in rebuilding their businesses. Beyond sourcing for quality goods and services, 51风流has a focus on integrating ESG (environmental, social, and governance) principles into decision-making as is standard with its procurement policy.

It highlights SAP’s commitment not only to sourcing products from Ukraine, but also to promoting social change.

Built-In Sustainability 

In implementing the initiative to attract more suppliers from Ukraine, 51风流initially focused on the IT sector and conducted a rigorous selection process. So far, suppliers, including industry leaders like Softserve, Unicsoft, and Luxoft, have been selected. SAP’s commitment extends beyond services to include product areas, where notable Ukrainian companies producing innovative environmentally sustainable products have been discovered.

At 51风流Spend Connect Live in Vienna, Austria, held in October 2023, Ukrainian manufacturers Rekava, Mol鈥檉ar Tea, and Releaf Paper showcased their sustainable and innovative products. Rekava, for example, specializes in producing biodegradable candles made from recycled coffee grounds, while Mol’far focuses on minimalism and ethical environmental practices in tea production. Releaf Paper is the world’s first manufacturer of paper made from fallen leaves, promoting sustainable products such as paper bags. By supporting these unique Ukrainian companies, 51风流is not only contributing to the economic reconstruction of the country, but also sustainability efforts.

One of SAP’s tier one suppliers, ABC Premium, has taken an important step by offering Rekava candles within its purchasing catalog, available to 51风流employees on the 51风流Ariba Buying solution.

Strong Alliances for Reconstruction

At the outset of the project, the NGO Impact Ukraine helped 51风流connect with Ukrainian suppliers. It focuses on microfinance, procurement, and recruitment from Ukraine. The collaboration is facilitated by the voluntary engagement of professionals from the technology, healthcare, and finance sectors. With Impact Ukraine鈥檚 support, 51风流and other organizations can further advance their goals regarding procurement from Ukraine.

SAP鈥檚 commitment to promoting innovation, sustainability, and economic growth through partnerships with Ukrainian companies not only fulfills its aspirations for procurement with purpose, but also contributes to making the world a better place.

Helping the World Run Better 

The 鈥淪ource from Ukraine鈥� initiative builds on global efforts to integrate social enterprises and diverse suppliers into 51风流purchasing opportunities. Beyond SAP鈥檚 own internal purchasing efforts, the 51风流Corporate Social Responsibility (51风流CSR) team is also investing in social and sustainable procurement ecosystems alongside public, private, and social sector partners like the European Commission, Deloitte, World Economic Forum鈥檚 Global Alliance for Social Entrepreneurship, and Social Enterprise World Forum鈥檚 People and Planet First verification.

Consider that US$5.3 trillion in annual commerce is transacted on . If we can help create a small shift in procurement spend to organizations prioritizing people and planet like Releaf Paper, we could collectively increase investment in sustainable development in a way that is not possible through corporate philanthropy alone. To join our efforts, please e-mail: csr-global@sap.com.

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

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.聽聽
• Catalog enrichment using ChatGPT recommendations: This feature can enable suppliers to generate and improve product descriptions and overall catalog quality based on prompts and keyword recommendations from ChatGPT.聽
• Intelligent error simplification using generative AI:聽This feature uses machine learning and a large language model to interpret and categorize invoice rejection reasons, allowing suppliers to reduce the number of failing invoices, improve rapid invoice submission and payment, and optimize cash flow.

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

But What Are Our Customers Saying?

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

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

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

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

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

Driving Success for Our Customers

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

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

Join Us at 51风流Sapphire!

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

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

It was also the year when business leaders worldwide decided enough is enough. They began taking steps to future proof their supply chains. And we can鈥檛 forget that 2023 was the year when generative AI came to dominate every conversation about technology.

Now it鈥檚 time to look ahead. Where will world events, business developments, and technology innovations take spend management in 2024? What strategies and technology will business leaders employ to bring greater resilience and efficiency to their supply chains?

Here are predictions for 2024, from SAP鈥檚 intelligent spend and business network leaders.

鈥淚n 2023, generative AI was like a bolt of lightning that compelled every business and technology leader to sit up and take notice. We鈥檙e no longer asking if businesses will adopt AI technology, but rather how quickly they can deploy it and realize its benefits. In 2024, businesses leaders will look beyond the industry buzz for solutions that deliver real-life, AI-based use cases. They鈥檒l also see firsthand that AI is only as effective as the quality and availability of data. With the huge number of data and transactions running through our and , 51风流is uniquely positioned to help organizations access the data they need, visualize it, and take decisive action to drive their success.鈥�

鈥� , President and Chief Product Officer,
51风流Intelligent Spend and Business Network,
and General Manager for 51风流Business Network

鈥淎s we enter 2024, procurement organizations will continue to focus on cost containment and supply continuity in order to bring value to their businesses. These have traditionally been the primary value drivers and, in today鈥檚 economic environment, I see this continuing. The opportunity will be maintaining the expanded voice earned with stakeholders during the volatile, crisis-riddled past few years, given the resurgence of hyper focus on cost containment. I believe that the scope of procurement will not contract back to a sole focus on supply stability and cost containment. In fact, I think procurement鈥檚 remit will continue to evolve to lead broader supply chain risk management, given the growing variety and number of risks faced such as geopolitical tensions, sustainability expectations, the need for more diverse sources of supply, and lingering labor availability concerns. The challenge facing procurement will be how to tackle all of this successfully. What we’ll see is the use of innovation like generative AI, spend analysis, and category management solutions to not only provide relevant, real-time business insights, but, importantly, to increase the efficiency and productivity of procurement teams, giving more capacity to focus on the strategic work stakeholders now expect.鈥�

鈥� , Chief Marketing and Solutions Officer,
Intelligent Spend and Business Network, SAP

鈥淭he more things change, the more they stay the same. Or do they? Last year we were talking about how businesses needed to grapple with economic, political, and environmental uncertainty. That hasn鈥檛 changed. What鈥檚 different is how quickly new strategies and technologies have emerged to help businesses deal with these challenges. In 2024, I expect business leaders to continue pursuing supply chain resilience and to look for solutions such as AI that enable them to make big leaps. There will also be a continued focus on cost savings. With economic concerns looming as central banks raise funds rates to counter inflation, I foresee leaders being asked to deliver higher margins for their enterprises. To do this, traditional cost-focused sourcing and procurement cost compliance will be essential.鈥�

鈥� , Chief Revenue Officer,
Intelligent Spend and Business Network, SAP

鈥淎s enterprises continue on their journey to digitalize procurement processes, the need for an even more intuitive user experience will increase. Procurement professionals are looking for ways to spend more time on value-adding tasks and are looking to generative AI and analytics to support them at the point of decision. Moving into 2024 and beyond, we expect the demand for these technologies to increase, as well as for new use cases to arise. At SAP, we are already evaluating further ways to embed generative AI and analytics into solutions throughout our 51风流Ariba portfolio to help make our customers鈥� business lives easier than ever.鈥�

鈥� , SVP, Chief Product Officer,
51风流Ariba Procurement Solutions, SAP

鈥淎s technology evolves, pragmatic business leaders are looking for ways to leverage these new developments to help streamline and simplify their processes. Managing a workforce that can be comprised of up to 40% external workers demands tools that can simplify the user experience and offer broad visibility to both external and full-time workers. I predict that in 2024 we will see more organizations lean into total workforce management strategies to address this need for greater visibility across full-time and external workers, allowing businesses to align the skills they have with the work they need to complete. Along with a more holistic approach to managing their workforce, these same companies can leverage innovative AI tools designed to offer efficiencies and improve the user experience. In 2024, 51风流Fieldglass customers will be able to leverage powerful AI tools, including AI-enhanced statement of work creation, translation capabilities, and our new powered by generative AI. These offerings are just the beginning, with many more use cases to come.鈥�

鈥� , Chief Technology Officer,
51风流Fieldglass Solutions, SAP

鈥淚n my conversations with customers and prospects about their plans for 2024, they consistently voice concerns about supply chain disruption and economic uncertainty. Meanwhile, most seem to appreciate that artificial intelligence is vital to maintaining their competitive edge, yet many are unsure how to distinguish the actual value from the ample hype. In 2024, we will see more of the value that AI can deliver to organizations with capabilities to support their value chains. These include generative and predictive AI capabilities to help forecast disruptions, recommend alternate sources of raw materials, detect errors in invoices, extract pertinent data from requests for information, predict shipment and delivery times, and complete catalogue details. Trading partners need the ability to enter into additional collaborative relationships, such as those between buyers and suppliers spanning 51风流Business Network Supply Chain Collaboration and material traceability and freight collaboration solutions. Also in 2024, we see network convergence taking center stage to give organizations a shared onboarding experience across all network applications, as well as a set of common data federation services to support data residency requirements.鈥�

鈥� , Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer, 
51风流Business Network

鈥淚n 2024, generative AI will deliver trillions in economic benefits. It will help companies realize greater top-line growth, be more productive, and safeguard supply chains. At the same time, resiliency will continue to be a major focus. The combination of AI and business networks will drive game-changing resiliency and productivity by facilitating improved demand forecasting and more efficient inventory management. These technologies will empower businesses to respond proactively to market changes, allowing them to source new suppliers quickly. In times of supply chain disruptions or demand surges, the nimblest companies will benefit most. Business networks will help them anticipate challenges with real-time information sharing and enhanced supply chain visibility. And there鈥檚 more good news for midmarket and smaller companies: as enterprise adoption of these technologies may begin to lag behind due to complex and unique use cases, segments like the midmarket and smaller companies will start to gain the competitive edge, building more resilient, predictable, and sustainable supply chains at scale.鈥�

鈥� , Global Head, 51风流Business Network
Customer Success and Go-to-Market, SAP

鈥淲e鈥檒l see business digitalization efforts go a level deeper 鈥� and become substantially more integrated 鈥� in 2024. Continued adoption of AI, automation, and virtual forms of payment will drive streamlined processes in travel, expense, and invoice. Instead of using a company credit card, employees will be able to expand their use of virtual payments for all business expenses, including travel. In turn, we鈥檒l start to see two types of transactions emerge: trusted and exceptions. Most transactions will use trusted payment methods, and AI will quickly validate them as compliant, enabling near-immediate reimbursement. Exceptions will trigger AI-driven, automated audits to ensure compliance. In both cases, payments will be issued faster with more ease, and employees will have more time to focus on what matters most to them and the organization.鈥�

鈥� , Head of 51风流Concur Market Strategy,
51风流Concur

“After another year of significant disruption caused by economic and geopolitical uncertainty, supply chain optimization has risen up the agenda as companies seek to better manage their working capital. Embedded finance has emerged as a solution, promising to reshape the way we do business and interact. Embedded finance has the power to expedite transactions, facilitate financing between trading partners, and lower trade barriers. By harnessing embedded finance, companies have the potential to optimize processes and access financing solutions seamlessly through B2B platforms. Ultimately, this will result in more streamlined payments, faster credit decisions, and expanded access to working capital.鈥�

鈥� , Chief Product Officer, Taulia

鈥淎s organizations, especially midmarket companies, continue to navigate today鈥檚 dynamic business environment, they are realizing the need to work with solution partners to create more value for their customers and themselves. A strong relationship between organizations and their partner ecosystems is critical to success, and I expect we will continue to see more businesses, both large and small, looking to establish these relationships. With the cost of managing sustainable supply chains continuing to increase, companies should turn to their partner ecosystems to leverage their expertise, skills, and services. This approach can help unify a company鈥檚 operations to provide a greater experience for its buyers and sellers, enabling stronger collaboration, greater visibility and transparency, risk mitigation, and more efficient operations.鈥�

鈥� , Head of Intelligent Spend and
Business Network Partner Ecosystem, SAP

One More Prediction

Recent times have shown that unexpected disruptions aren鈥檛 the only reason businesses struggle in times of crisis. It鈥檚 also about their readiness to deal with disruption, to adapt, and to come out stronger when the crisis subsides. Many business leaders have learned this lesson. They鈥檙e taking action to ensure 鈥� to the best of their ability 鈥� that their businesses are prepared for what comes next.

Of course, that鈥檚 easier said than done. Sometimes it feels like we need a crystal ball to see into the future. Or, to use a more common term, we need 鈥渧isibility.鈥� Visibility into market trends. Visibility into world events. Visibility into every corner of the supply chain.

Here鈥檚 a prediction you can take to the bank: in 2024, 51风流will continue to design and deliver and solutions that can drive efficiency, leverage AI in ways that are relevant, reliable, and responsible, and create greater visibility for every size business.

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

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.

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.

With today鈥檚 highly complex and sometimes volatile and disruptive environment, spend management and supply chain professionals鈥� remit is bigger than ever. Throughout the event, you will hear how 51风流can help you develop a spend management strategy that can enable cost savings, risk management, supplier management, and compliance with local regulations. Learn how our powerful business network, spend management, and data-driven intelligence solutions provide the visibility needed to address the challenges of today and tomorrow, so you can set your business up for long-term success.

Vienna was named the world鈥檚 most livable city for the fourth time by the Economist Intelligence Unit in . Also known as the 鈥淐ity of Music,鈥� Vienna has a rich musical legacy and many famous classical musicians, such as Beethoven and Mozart, called the city home. But if Mozart and Beethoven aren鈥檛 your idea of a good time, there are still many reasons to join us at 51风流Spend Connect Live 2023. Here are my top reasons to attend:

Learn How to Fuel Total Spend Management with Inspiring Keynote Speakers

I love hearing our customers share their stories, and this year鈥檚 speakers will blow you away. You will hear compelling speakers share their transformation stories and how 51风流solutions are empowering them to reach their corporate goals. This year鈥檚 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 51风流Ariba solutions for source-to-pay led to 100% supplier visibility and a 50% reduction in procurement lead times for SCI, fueling its mission to provide for marginalized children around the globe. You can read more about Save the Children鈥檚 strategy and successes on its .

Over 100 Interactive Sessions Covering Hot Topics in Spend Management

With a variety of formats, you can find resources on specific topics or explore our learning tracks to meet your organization鈥檚 spend management needs. From keynotes and customer stories to solution deep dives and demos, we have something for everyone at every step of the spend transformation journey. You do not want to miss these sessions that cover the hottest trends 鈥� and what is coming next 鈥� across procurement, external workforce, travel and expense, and business network:

• How to unlock the power of effective category management
• Why it takes a network to build a sustainable supply chain
• How to implement total workforce management to optimize skill availability
• How to create a P2P automation strategy to support your accounts payable business case

Check out our for a sneak preview of the answers and insights you are looking for.

Connect with Experts from around the Globe in Our Marketplace

I talk about the importance of connection often, so one of my favorite things about 51风流Spend Connect Live is the marketplace. This is a one-stop shop for connecting with our partners and 51风流subject matter experts.

At the marketplace, you can experience the best of SAP鈥檚 spend management solutions while establishing relationships with contacts from different industries from all around the globe. You will find demos, meeting areas for peer-to-peer discussions, and a customer connect center to meet with partners and 51风流leadership. And, of course, you can enjoy plenty of Vienna鈥檚 famous coffee to fuel these exciting conversations.

In-Person, Pre-Conference Training Sessions to Make the Most of Your Experience

The need to upskill employees has never been more urgent, as outlined in a recent Forrester Consulting study, 鈥�.鈥� To address this need, we will be offering pre-conference, in-person, expert-lead training sessions to help you drive efficiency and growth. They鈥檒l be held at 51风流Spend Connect Live on October 9, allowing you to take part in live discussions and peer-to-peer interactions in a stimulating environment that cannot be replicated online. This hands-on training and direct access to experts can help you extend your expertise and support your organization鈥檚 digital transformation journey. Space is limited, so today to secure a spot!

It鈥檚 in Vienna!

Does this need explaining? Our venue for 51风流Spend Connect Live is beautiful Vienna, Austria. A sustainable city that holds a delightful balance of urban walkability and lush natural areas, Vienna is a world-class city full of the arts, history, and, yes, plenty of great food. At 51风流Spend Connect Live, you will experience some of what the city offers at our celebration night with a 鈥淭aste of Vienna.鈥� Whether it is sipping water that comes from natural springs in the Alps, trying your hand at ballroom dancing, or sampling Viennese Schnitzel, you鈥檙e bound to have a wonderful experience in Austria鈥檚 capital.

If you are a procurement, supply chain, or travel and expense professional 鈥� or support these areas in sustainability, finance, logistics, or operational risk 鈥� 51风流Spend Connect Live is a must-attend event. To learn more about how you can be part of this vibrant community of buyers, suppliers, and 51风流partners, visit the 51风流Spend Connect Live 2023 . Check back often to see new session offerings, speakers, and pre-conference trainings.

Most importantly, remember to take advantage of our significantly discounted 鈥渆arly bird鈥� pricing that ends on July 28.

51风流Spend Connect Live is October 9-11, 2023, at the Messe Wien Congress Center in Vienna, Austria. With so many collaborative and innovative opportunities at this year鈥檚 event, I鈥檓 confident you will leave energized with new ideas and an expanded network. See you in Vienna!

Etosha Thurman is chief marketing and solutions officer for 51风流Intelligent Spend and Business Network.

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

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

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

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

Introducing 51风流Category Management

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

51风流Category Management can support our customers with:

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

.

Intelligence-Driven Category Management

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

1. Define Product and Service Categories

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

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

2. Gather Facts about Organizational Spend

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

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

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

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

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

3. Strategize and Plan

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

Here are some key challenges:

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

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

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

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

4. Implement, Monitor, and Improve

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

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

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

Category Management鈥檚 Transformational Moment

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

On the Horizon: A New Way to Drive Category Management

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

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

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

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

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

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

It鈥檚 Time to Take Category Management Digital

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

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

Stay Tuned for More

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

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

Long a leader in facilitating the transformation of procurement, 51风流has also been named a Leader in the .*

What鈥檚 most gratifying about this latest report is that 51风流is being recognized for the significant progress we鈥檝e made since the last IDC MarketScape for procurement applications, released in 2021. We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.

From sourcing and supplier networks to supplier relationship management, contract lifecycle management, spend analytics, procure-to-pay, and sustainability, 51风流provides a that help businesses solve problems at every point in the procurement process. And, as noted within the IDC MarketScape report, 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�

The report also cites these strengths:

• 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 products is a compelling feature.
• The guided buying capability and the guided sourcing capability for 51风流Ariba Sourcing were cited by all reference clients as extremely useful. One client reference even referred to the capabilities as “lovely.” 51风流has continued to innovate in this space with multiple enhancements and next-generation offerings currently in the works.
• SAP’s exceptional industry expertise, particularly in fields such as energy and natural resources, banking, chemicals, and automotive, is cited as a differentiator by multiple client references. SAP’s experience and offerings in the direct sourcing space drives significant buyer interest.

True to Our Roots

Procurement transformation is nothing new to SAP. It鈥檚 in our DNA. The electronic catalogs and material requirements planning processes that changed the game started here. Additionally, has revolutionized the way goods are bought and sold. It is used by more buyers and sellers to connect and collaborate across procurement, supply chain, logistics, and asset management than any other network on the planet.

Committed to Innovation

For SAP, innovation is about assessing the business environment and listening to our customers, then responding with powerful tools to help them combat their business challenges. Building on an established, trusted product portfolio and clear road map, we continue to deliver innovations that help organizations address the procurement challenges of today and prepare for tomorrow.

Here are two procurement innovations we鈥檙e introducing this year, along with a sneak preview of an innovation we have in the works:

• The next evolution of guided buying: The guided buying capability in 51风流Ariba solutions is the gold standard for purchases of goods and services. Its next evolution provides a buying experience that is personalized for today鈥檚 professional and casual buyers and their roles. It is predictive, leveraging artificial intelligence to offer suggestions for specific work roles as well as intelligent recommendations to help them make the right decisions and weigh the sustainability and environmental impact of their decisions. Many of the capabilities will be included within the guided buying capability this year, as well as in future releases.
• A new category management solution: Today, category management consists of highly manual processes, leaving almost no time for category managers to develop or implement effective strategies. Our new category management solution, which we鈥檒l roll out this year, provides actionable market intelligence and category insights. It empowers category managers and procurement professionals to make strategic category decisions for direct and indirect spending. Additionally, it offers intuitive scenario analysis to help visualize opportunities.
• Total spend reporting: While we can鈥檛 reveal too much right now, stay tuned to hear more about what we have in store to enable total spend visibility for your business.

Focused on Users

Every person across the procure-to-pay process has a different role to play. We鈥檝e made it our mission to understand the needs and priorities of every user persona and to deliver unique, intuitive tools that each can use to reach their goals. For example, an employee doing material requirements planning (MRP) for the procurement of direct materials will have a different experience than someone purchasing a laptop or managing contingent labor.

Risk Management and Sustainability

Given the supply chain disruptions of the past few years, business leaders understand the importance of risk management. In fact, in a 2022 sponsored by SAP, respondents said risk reduction was the second most important area to focus on to deliver increased value in procurement. In the same survey, nearly a quarter of the executives identified sustainability and environmental, social, and governmental (ESG) concerns among the top priorities for organizational risk.

Social responsibility legislation is only adding to the pressure. For example, Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz (LkSG) is an act that took effect in Germany this year. It requires companies to report on the ability of their risk management system to address violations in their supply chain to the German government no later than April 2024.

Businesses need a single source of truth across the entire supply base to support risk-aware core processes. 51风流innovations can help facilitate risk management and sustainability requirements with the newly enhanced solution and , along with additional extensions to address company-specific requirements.

Delivering Solutions for the Future

Procurement has changed significantly in the last two decades. 51风流is pleased to be recognized as a leader in driving this change, and we remain committed to delivering next-generation applications that help our customers transform their business for continued success.

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

*鈥淚DC MarketScape: Worldwide SaaS and Cloud-Enabled Procurement Applications 2023 Vendor Assessment鈥� March 2023, IDC #US48785722

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.

The past few years have been tough, with many changes in the world impacting the business community. Between labor shortages, geopolitical tensions, logistics challenges, and now inflation, supply chain functions have undergone a series of disruptions. 51风流Spend Connect Live 2022 offers an opportunity for procurement leaders, supply chain officers, risk managers, sustainability personnel and other employees working with these issues to connect with industry peers to hear their stories and understand our latest innovations.

With over 110 sessions — including more than 30 business success stories, 24 expert-led deep-dive sessions, and 16 road map breakout sessions — we are bringing together procurement, external workforce, travel and expense, and supply chain solutions for a dynamic, interactive experience. Join other spend management professionals to learn strategies for keeping costs low amid inflation as well as how to become the buyer of choice with streamlined, transparent procure-to-pay processes. Looking to create a proactive risk management strategy for a ready-for-anything supply chain? We have sessions for that too.

Whether you have been an 51风流customer for years, are new to the community, or are considering our solutions, 51风流Spend Connect Live has something to offer. The event will address top-of-mind business challenges, inspiring transformations for you to take back to the office.

Here are five things you can look forward to at 51风流Spend Connect Live 2022.

1. Hear Success Stories and Attend Keynote Sessions

Don鈥檛 miss hearing more than 30 companies add their insights into today鈥檚 challenges and the latest trends in total spend management as they share their success stories. And do we have success stories: our customers — including CDW, Grainger, Halliburton, Johnson & Johnson, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sony Pictures Entertainment — will share how they transformed their businesses by digitalizing their supply chain and harmonizing their spend management processes. Join these customer-led sessions to hear how they manage disruption and mitigate risk with a centralized procurement function.

Don鈥檛 forget to check out this year鈥檚 keynote speakers, too: listen as McKinsey & Company Partner Roman Belotserkovskiy and Hall of Fame quarterback Troy Aikman share learnings from business challenges and transformations in their keynote sessions.

2. Optimize Spend Management Investment and Network with Peers

Participate in interactive discussions with peers and 51风流solution experts to accelerate outcomes and maximize the value of your solutions. Various sessions offer the opportunity to discuss best practices in real time with your peers to get the most out of your investment. Topics include creating and maintaining sustainable supply chains, improving usability through a stellar user experience, and driving compliance and supplier adoption.

This year鈥檚 event will also be the perfect environment to engage with fellow customers, get 1:1 time with industry executives, and chat with innovation leaders in breakout sessions. With guest speakers from around the world, along with analysts, partners, and spend management leaders, there will be no shortage of networking and knowledge-sharing, even outside of formal sessions. Take advantage of the variety of opportunities to make new connections and strengthen old ones to leave with a stronger network than before.

3. Upskill Tomorrow鈥檚 Workforce with SIG and ASUG

Through the disruptions of the past three years, the role of spend management professionals has been a critical and strategic one to the business. With this elevation in visibility and expectations comes the need for upskilling within procurement and supply chain teams. Join 51风流and the as they showcase online and in-person courses from and .

For more knowledge-sharing, join the onsite to connect with other practitioners, exchange peer-to-peer learning, and hear perspectives from 51风流experts and partners from the procurement, supply chain, and technology communities of practice.

4. Ensure Travel and Expense Spending Goes Farther

With the resurgence of business travel, the range of employee-driven spending is widening. For most organizations, it is a delicate balance between expanding employee travel and controlling cost amid economic headwinds. Procurement and travel managers set the definition of compliant spend, which requires looking at the entire life cycle — from spending policies to how expense claims are validated to employee reimbursement. Join the team to learn how technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are creating scale and efficiency within procure to pay processes. We will also show you how to establish a comprehensive, end-to-end approach to managing travel and expense to make your spending go farther.

5. See Innovation from the 51风流Ecosystem

51风流Spend Connect Live 2022 features a diverse group of , partners, and startups. Twenty-seven industry leaders, all part of the 51风流ecosystem, will be showcased. In addition, a select number of partners are hosting breakout sessions on a range of timely, critical topics 鈥� from addressing spend management challenges in a volatile macroeconomic environment to creating a collaborative, sustainable supply chain, and so much more. Learn more about our .

At 51风流we continuously strive to bring innovation to market through development as well as through investments. has enabled more than 450 startups to deliver exciting innovations for our customers. This year, SAP.iO will showcase spend management ventures with and interactive demos at the event marketplace. See how is working to create a B2B world with zero waste, enabling companies to participate in the circular economy and support sustainability initiatives. will demonstrate how it provides insights and sourcing strategies by identifying opportunities that align spend to current market intelligence. Come see our ecosystem at work, bringing thought leadership, solutions, and innovation to address your pressing challenges.

Of course, it won鈥檛 be all business. We’ll have some fun too at the celebration night in the AT&T Discovery District with great food, drinks, and music. We hope you join us in celebrating our first in-person event since 2019.

If you have not already, for 51风流Spend Connect Live, taking place October 24-26, 2022, at the Sheraton Dallas Hotel. to build the perfect itinerary for you and your business. I look forward to seeing you there!

Etosha Thurman is chief marketing and solutions officer for 51风流Intelligent Spend and Business Network.

That鈥檚 just how we did it; there was no other option. Or so it seemed.

Then came the pandemic. Businesses were forced to figure out at a moment鈥檚 notice how to stay productive despite closed offices, necessitating many of their on-site people to work at home in spare bedrooms, kitchens, and basements.

Of course, we have had the means to work remotely for a long time. I鈥檒l never forget the first time I attached a whiny modem to a phone line so I could work remotely from my apartment. And like it or not, video conferencing has been around for years.

The pandemic took things to a whole new level. It was like a wake-up call that prompted us to question our long-held beliefs about jobs, locations, and careers.

A new eBook from IDC, sponsored by SAP, takes a closer look at the lasting effects of our pandemic wake-up call. examines how the disruptions of the past few years have impacted the world鈥檚 supply chains and how businesses have been forced to adapt. It also offers forward-looking strategies to increase workforce resiliency in times of disruption.

What We Learned from the Pandemic — and What It Means for the Future of Work

Workers want flexibility. For many workers, this was their first opportunity to prove to themselves and their employers that remote work is not only possible, but it can also be effective. Many also found that working remotely could lead to a better work/life balance. People have come to like the idea that they don鈥檛 have to commute to the office every day. They also like having a more flexible schedule to accommodate other aspects of their lives.

This need for flexibility impacts the way we work in different ways. Workers are now more likely to ask to work remotely as a term of employment. Alternatively, employers have more flexibility in recruiting because remote working removes geography as a factor in hiring. For example, if you鈥檙e staffing a software development project where the core team is based in Chicago, you aren鈥檛 precluded from hiring a developer in Toronto or someone in the far suburbs. It also frees you to consider contingent workers to fill specific skill gaps for a defined period of time.

Workers are reevaluating what they want from their careers. For so many of us, the harsh realities of the pandemic have been a rude awakening, showing just how quickly life can shift from 鈥渘ormal routines鈥� to something completely foreign. You start thinking, 鈥淲hat am I doing with my life? Why am I so engrossed with my work? Am I in the right job, or should I be doing something else? How can I make time in the day to do other things that I just can鈥檛 seem to get to?鈥�

I鈥檓 sure this has helped fuel what we have come to know as 鈥渢he Great Resignation.鈥� But I would like to think of this as more of a great adaptation than resignation. Many people are no longer interested in working insane hours to make big money, stuck to one company, location, or job. Instead, they鈥檙e asking what they can do to enjoy their working life, or is it 鈥渓ife while working鈥�?

As economic conditions change, it鈥檚 not clear who has the upper hand. Clearly, the exodus of workers during the pandemic put many employers on the defensive. But continuing inflation, fears of recession, and the coinciding possibility of fewer employment opportunities are giving workers reason to reconsider jumping ship.

Job growth in the U.S. has been very strong, with the nation returning to its pre-pandemic employment level in July. Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Labor reported that , which was lower than the month before but still represents significant growth. It鈥檚 unclear how many of these jobs are new and how many are the result of early retirements or workers who have chosen other paths, such as doing gig work or joining the contingent workforce.

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What Employers Are Doing to Avoid Talent Shortages

Regardless of where the economy takes the job market in the coming months and years, employers have been put on notice by the hard-earned lessons of the pandemic and the Great Resignation. From , IDC has identified key strategies organizations are adopting to mitigate the risk of talent shortages. They include:

• Strategic workforce planning: Organizations are emphasizing strategic workforce planning to balance job requirements with the necessary organizational capabilities. This includes evaluating the need to operate functions remotely with centralized capabilities that leverage talent across multiple geographies and worksites.
• Hybrid work models: Nearly all industries, including those which have never before been considered to have remote-work potential, are evolving and innovating to adapt to the demand for hybrid work. For instance, the pandemic has driven manufacturing to embrace a mix of in-office and remote working. IDC predicts that by 2023, 40% of G2000 companies will develop all new processes based on remote-first designs.
• Employee training and engagement: To retain employees and increase skills, businesses continue to invest in training and certification. Additionally, they are using sustainability programs and technology adoption to increase engagement, enable transparency, and build a culture of trust and innovation. The emphasis is on working with technology rather than technology replacing the meaningful components of work.
• Improved recruitment practices: Organizations are proactively building and expanding candidate pipelines, regardless of current hiring needs. They鈥檙e also enhancing the interviewing and sourcing skills of hiring managers, automating recruitment practices, partnering with educational institutions, and using apprenticeships to cultivate a wider talent pool.
• The contingent workforce: Organizations that face a shortage of local talent may end up outsourcing jobs internationally or contracting parts of their processes to a third party. If they lack in-house skills, they might also hire contract workers or turn to managed services to supplement their workforce. Organizations are also turning to contingent labor to right-size the number of employees on the payroll and give them the ability to flex. Using or SOW-based contracts offers businesses the flexibility to act nimbly when business requirements change. Technology enables these organizations to predict requirements for contingent workers, strategize their onboarding, track their productivity and performance, and balance labor requirements with outcomes.

A Workforce in Progress

Adapting to the changes in the workforce we have seen over the past few years is a work in progress. Worker attitudes will evolve, as will business strategies to address them. Technology solutions that organizations use to stay ahead of the trends will continue to prove invaluable to forward-looking business leaders as they navigate the ever-changing landscape of the post-pandemic workforce.

Vish Baliga is chief technology officer at .

鈥淭he pandemic has allowed for a once-in-a-generation 鈥� or even a once-in-100 years 鈥� opportunity to question some of our long-held assumptions about how we work,鈥� he says. 鈥淎ssumptions like needing to work on-site have been reshaped, and we have an opportunity to rethink things at a very fundamental level.鈥�

Once in a hundred years is a pretty long stretch.

But I think he鈥檚 right. As the Harvard Business Review Analytic Services report observes, the pandemic and other unprecedented global disruptions have created 鈥渟eismic shifts鈥� in how we work, where we work, and with whom we do business.

Workers sense these shifts and feel empowered. Likewise, events haven鈥檛 escaped the attention of business leaders. Last year, a survey of 232 global executives by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services revealed that 96% of respondents have made or are making alterations to workplaces because of recent business disruptions, while 92% said organizations need to adopt new workplace strategies to remain competitive.

We are in a historic moment, a 鈥渙nce-in-a-generation鈥� opportunity to rethink workforce management at a fundamental level. What do we do with this opportunity? The Harvard Business Review Analytic Services report offers some valuable insights, of which I would like to highlight a few.

Procurement Function for External Workforce Emerges from Its Silo

We鈥檝e been talking about this for a while 鈥� the idea that as businesses come to see the strategic value of procurement in external workforce management, it is emerging from its silo.

You might make the same case about human resources鈥� involvement with the external workforce. The integration of HR and procurement is exactly the kind of change we need. As companies increasingly rely on services procurement and contingent labor, HR and procurement will collaborate more closely and rely on the expertise of each other.

The collaborative process would go like this: HR works with internal departments to identify requirements and validate compliance and how external workers are going to be engaged and managed. Meanwhile the procurement team finds the right sources for talent and creates the contracts with rates and other terms and conditions. Then, the business uses these artifacts to engage the personnel, governed by these contracts. HR, procurement, and other departments can then monitor performance and compliance and report back to the appropriate parties.

Of course, while this type of collaboration is important, it is mostly moving the tactical aspects to the business while setting up necessary guardrails. Moving forward, businesses will need these functions, and other business functions, to collaborate in developing workforce strategies designed to achieve specific business outcomes.

Insourcing versus Outsourcing

It鈥檚 one thing for a business to decide it will use more external labor. It鈥檚 another to make strategic decisions about when and where to use this labor to achieve business outcomes.

鈥淢y sense is that many businesses are still handling hiring and recruitment tactically as opposed to what is the right approach for the business,鈥� says Philip Ideson, managing director of Art of Procurement, in the report. 鈥淭hey should be asking, 鈥榃hat are the outcomes we鈥檙e trying to drive? What鈥檚 our position on insourcing or outsourcing services?鈥欌��

The concludes that 鈥渃ompanies will continue to grapple with the pros and cons鈥� of outsourcing versus insourcing. This is another area where HR, procurement, and other business functions need to engage in strategic discussions.

Of course, any such discussions will undoubtedly come around to the topic of business flexibility. If the past few years have taught us anything, it鈥檚 that flexibility gives businesses 鈥渟uperpowers鈥� that enable them to stay resilient in the face of disruption. Outsourcing is a source of flexibility, for example, allowing businesses to incur fewer fixed costs than with full-time employees. It also helps them adapt quickly to surges in demand, slowdowns, or unexpected events that could derail their success.

The Role of Technology in Strategic Workforce Planning

As the Harvard Business Review Analytic Services report observes, 鈥淒igital solutions have long been used to boost efficiency and savings in other areas of the business, and their value is equally key in enhancing external workforce outcomes.鈥�

Vendor management systems like enable organizations to search a wide employee landscape to find and hire the external workers they need to fill roles and staff projects. These solutions can also show where the business is using temporary labor and whether it鈥檚 relying too heavily on one supplier or region. This enables proactive action to minimize service disruption.

51风流Fieldglass solutions can open opportunities for procurement professionals to focus on strategic, value-add work instead of manual processes that can be automated. Ideson envisions a scenario where 鈥渢echnology will move us to more of a self-service environment where business stakeholders can procure the services they need faster and more efficiently without the involvement of the procurement function.鈥�

As Ideson says, procurement teams could see technology as 鈥渁n existential threat to the profession or an opportunity.鈥� However, given our 鈥渙nce-in-100 years鈥� opportunity, I hope you choose to focus your expertise on strategic workforce planning, not repetitive processes. As you find new ways to use services procurement and contingent labor strategically, you鈥檒l realize significant benefits, including:

• Budget flexibility through fewer fixed costs associated with full-time employees
• The ability to create workforce capacity on demand and scale up or down to meet changing project needs
• Less risk for the business as responsibility for worker results shifts to services companies
• Better value from the ability to actively manage every aspect of external worker engagement
• Optimized results with tools that enable outcome-based performance assessment

This is the promise of vendor management system technology. It can free you from a sometimes overwhelming amount of tactical work, allowing you to realize greater benefits with true strategic workforce planning.

Vish Baliga is chief technology officer at 51风流Fieldglass.