SAP’s tireless efforts to build solutions that address today’s toughest challenges and deliver real business value is paying big dividends for our customers. Now, we have more recognition to prove it.
Based on an IDC analysis and customer feedback, SAP has been positioned in the Leaders Category of the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide SaaS and Cloud-Enabled Sourcing Applications 2023 Vendor Assessment.*
For those of us at SAP who have been working to deliver sourcing applications that help organizations work more strategically and efficiently, this is another milestone as we continue to advance up the leader board. More significantly, it is gratifying to know that this positioning is not just based on the IDC MarketScape’s detailed examination of our solutions. It’s also based on the word of our customers.
IDC MarketScape vendor analysis model is designed to provide an overview of the competitive fitness of ICT suppliers in a given market. The research methodology utilizes a rigorous scoring methodology based on both qualitative and quantitative criteria that results in a single graphical illustration of each vendor’s position within a given market. The Capabilities score measures vendor product, go-to-market and business execution in the short-term. The Strategy score measures alignment of vendor strategies with customer requirements in a 3-5-year timeframe. Vendor market share is represented by the size of the icons.
Source: IDC MarketScape: Worldwide SaaS and Cloud-Enabled Sourcing Applications 2023 Vendor Assessment, IDC #US51215923e, November 2023
According to the IDC MarketScape’s assessment report, “SAP Ariba is a mature, established, and trusted brand…users expressed that the integration with SAP ERP and SCM products is a compelling feature.”
The report highlights these SAP strengths:
- Integrated sourcing functionality leverages capabilities across spend analytics, supplier identification, SAP Business Network, analytics/reporting dashboards, and contract management to serve as a “force multiplier” and provides a view to total cost impact of sourcing decisions.
- Milestone/project view extends functionality beyond simple sourcing events and provides all impacted stakeholders with the ability to follow progress, achieve milestones, assess the sourcing strategy, and provide input.
- Complex sourcing capabilities are strong, providing the ability to plan and execute large and compliant global sourcing events that come with a myriad of deliverables and complex pricing. Client references noted and appreciated the ability to scale and support sourcing events often involving many thousands of line items.
The IDC MarketScape report says, “Consider SAP when you need a trusted, enterprise-grade sourcing application that can be utilized for large, complex, and global sourcing activities while also leveraging the capabilities of the full SAP Ariba solutions.”
Continuing Our Commitment to Customer-Focused Innovation
I believe one of the reasons SAP continues to advance its leadership position is our commitment to steady innovation. However, this is not just innovation for innovation’s sake. We carefully study the day-to-day role that sourcing and procurement professionals play today and, importantly, how that role is evolving. With these insights, we build solutions that are designed to help sourcing and procurement teams play an increasingly valuable role within their organizations.
In just the past year, we have introduced a slew of innovations:
- SAP Ariba Category Management empowers category managers to use data insights strategically to help identify trends, develop and implement strategies, and evaluate success relative to tangible business metrics. Just a few weeks ago at SAP Spend Connect, we announced enhancements to SAP Ariba Category Management with the power of generative AI to help procurement professionals build comprehensive and effective category strategies faster. We also highlighted Joule, which will be embedded across the SAP portfolio and available in SAP Spend Management solutions in 2024. Integration with large language models through SAP Business AI empowers procurement professionals to jump-start category strategy development and planning. Generative AI enables us to enhance our market analysis tool, offering valuable, visual insights into supply and demand, risk, opportunity, and top suppliers. Watch a demo here.
- The next evolution of the guided buying capability in SAP Ariba solutions provides a personalized buying experience for today’s professional and casual buyers. It leverages AI to offer suggestions for specific work roles, and intelligent recommendations to help weigh the sustainability and environmental impact of a purchase. Much of this functionality is available today with more to come in future releases. Watch a demo here.
- SAP Spend Control Tower delivers comprehensive spend analysis capabilities. To make it easier for procurement professionals to make timely, informed decisions, new dashboards in SAP Ariba Sourcing and SAP Ariba Buying embed near real-time insights where they are most useful — within key process workflows. These capabilities are available today and built on a new architecture that helps create the foundation for future innovation. Beginning in the first quarter of 2024, SAP Spend Control Tower can help uncover cost-saving opportunities with advanced AI features and the ability to see across all spend — in cloud ERP, SAP Ariba, SAP Fieldglass, and SAP Concur solutions.
- With risk-aware procurement with AI-infused risk assessment in source-to-settle solutions, SAP has embedded AI-powered supplier risk assessment capabilities into its source-to-settle solutions to help business users make smarter decisions faster. This can make it possible to assess risk profiles within the sourcing, contracting, and buying solutions as an integral part of these processes to determine third-party risk. Supplier risk assessment capabilities are available today in SAP Ariba Sourcing, SAP Ariba Contracts, and SAP Ariba Buying.
- Supporting the future of supplier management, at SAP Spend Connect Live we provided a sneak preview of a feature we refer to as “the new supplier 360,” which can deliver instant access to risk data, AI-powered sustainability information, and operational evaluation to help track metrics like price variance. Watch a demo here.
Want to read more about these innovations? Check out our announcement from SAP Spend Connect Live 2023 that provides additional detail.
Why SAP is a Leader
With our steady stream of innovations designed to help businesses solve their biggest sourcing challenges, I am not surprised that SAP is once again a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide SaaS and Cloud-Enabled Sourcing Applications 2023 Vendor Assessment. Of course, we don’t intend to stop here.
Looking ahead, we know that sourcing professionals are looking for an intuitive user experience that allows them to focus on strategic, value-added tasks. And as we have seen recently, they are eager to use generative AI, analytics, and practical AI use cases to support them.
Of course, AI is only as effective as the quality and availability of data. A huge amount of data and transactions run through SAP’s systems and business network. This makes us uniquely qualified to help organizations — large and small — access the data they need, interpret it, and take decisive action.
As we have already shown, SAP is in the best position to deliver the broad-based use cases that businesses will need to stay competitive as conditions evolve.
Baber Farooq is senior vice president and head of Market Strategy for SAP Procurement Solutions.
*“IDC MarketScape: Worldwide SaaS and Cloud-Enabled Sourcing Applications 2023 Vendor Assessment” November 2023, IDC #US51215923e