With supply chain delays and economic turbulence expected to continue for the next year or so, buying decisions and vendor choices remain highly critical to overall business health. Yet, many procurement functions still operate with technology lacking basic capabilities such as visibility across the organization and supply chain and predictive analytics for business planning, forecasting, and investing.
Procurement leaders struggle with optimizing the use of data and analytics (54%), adopting artificial intelligence (51%), and automating processes (37%), according to Oxford Economics research sponsored by SAP. And if they do implement new technologies, adoption for 41% of organizations tends to be low, presenting a significant barrier to digital transformation.
The SAP Preferred Success plan for SAP Ariba solutions, expanded edition, empowers procurement leaders to rethink the status quo of their digitalization during a new implementation of procurement and supplier collaboration solutions from SAP.
A Guided Adoption Experience
The need for cloud-based procurement technology – such as SAP Ariba solutions – has accelerated in recent years to realize more substantial business results. For most procurement functions, this digitalization approach increases process efficiency, improves vendor relationships, reduces business costs, helps ensure spend compliance, and drives value to the bottom line while unifying purchasing, supply chain, manufacturing, deliveries, and sales.
Despite such impressive possibilities, such a procurement experience can be difficult to achieve without the right guidance – only exacerbating the pressures, challenges, and frustrations felt across every vendor and buyer interaction.
SAP Preferred Success for SAP Ariba solutions, expanded edition, works to break this cycle of lackluster technology adoption. Building on the highly valued portfolio of the existing SAP Preferred Success offering, this edition can identify the value of SAP Ariba solutions based on individual goals and challenges and analyze the impact of adoption to set expectations and determine required changes. In addition, it is designed to activate new features as soon as they become available and measure business outcomes from testing to go-live and production.
SAP Preferred Success for SAP Ariba solutions, expanded edition, combines personalized advice, practical guidance, and proactive partnership to help accelerate the procurement function’s digital transformation in the cloud. Organizations can collaborate with SAP experts to enable new features, interfaces, and simple customizations during each quarterly update of SAP Ariba solutions.
This relationship helps troubleshoot issues in areas of concern, including data management, configuration, and setup and addresses any other high-priority issues with in-depth knowledge of the implemented solution. For example, product experts can investigate and resolve integration requirements, answer non-support questions, and advise on best practices.
Even more beneficial is a semiannual application review led by SAP experts. Procurement leaders can experience a holistic assessment of their business’s cloud landscape to understand current and upcoming challenges and explore opportunities for new functionalities, such as machine learning-based automation of a process or workflow.
The Extra Impact of Continuous Support
With SAP Preferred Success for SAP Ariba solutions, expanded edition, procurement organizations can take advantage of the ever-evolving and continuously improving nature of the cloud – even if they’re unfamiliar with the technology.
The edition offers the prescriptive guidance and personalized assistance necessary to implement new technologies and capabilities while safeguarding process integrity, optimizing operations, and unlocking innovative thinking. But more importantly, it turns procurement organizations into impactful business partners that create new opportunities for profitability and growth with less risk and greater flexibility.
Ready to amplify the impact of your procurement function? Contact your local SAP representative to learn more about SAP Preferred Success for SAP Ariba solutions, expanded edition.
John Wagner, Jr. is global practice lead for SAP Preferred Success – Procurement at SAP.