In response to the ongo­ing COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, SAP moved its 2020 SAP Ari­ba Live con­fer­ence to a vir­tu­al plat­form. This extend­ed the reach of the event to those who work in the pro­cure­ment and sup­ply chain func­tions and allowed for cus­tomers, part­ners, and sup­pli­ers to have a con­ver­sa­tion about spend man­age­ment, regard­less of where they are based.

SAP pre­re­cord­ed all the keynotes and break­out ses­sions, which cov­ered updates and enhance­ments to SAP Ari­ba along with cus­tomer sto­ries. The vir­tu­al event explored top­ics includ­ing how busi­ness­es and gov­ern­ments have been respond­ing to the pan­dem­ic. From their lap­tops, atten­dees heard how SAP Ari­ba can help strength­en their sup­ply chains and stream­line the pro­cure­ment process, even in times when these are both under pres­sure. The key theme of the entire event was cohe­sion, as SAP announced new inter­con­nect­ed fea­tures for SAP Ariba.

New World, New Sup­ply Chain Measures 

In the first keynote, Pres­i­dent of SAP Pro­cure­ment Chris Hay­don spoke about how the chal­lenges posed by COVID-19 are affect­ing the world. To help com­pa­nies in this dif­fi­cult peri­od, Hay­don empha­sized the fact that SAP is mak­ing SAP Ari­ba Dis­cov­ery free to any busi­ness through June 30, 2020. This online ser­vice match­es sell­ers with buy­ers look­ing to source spe­cif­ic goods and services.

“Dis­rup­tion is our new real­i­ty,” he said. ​“Com­pa­nies that are not agile enough to piv­ot in this time of dis­rup­tion are at risk.”

Time to Move to Just-in-Case Sup­ply Chains

There were a few break­out ses­sions focused on the geopo­lit­i­cal ram­i­fi­ca­tions of COVID-19, as well as ways busi­ness­es can adapt to this new land­scape. Ian Brem­mer, pres­i­dent and founder of Eura­sia Group and GZE­RO Media, spoke about these exter­nal forces affect­ing our dai­ly lives and vital sup­ply chains. He said the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion under­scored the need for com­pa­nies to estab­lish ​“just-in-case” sup­ply chains. ​“Not many com­pa­nies have done a lot of work here,” he added.

Orga­ni­za­tions must pre­pare for worst-case sce­nar­ios so that sup­ply chains can con­tin­ue to func­tion in times of cri­sis. Brem­mer added that the pri­vate sector’s response to the out­break has been ​“robust,” but busi­ness­es need to con­tin­ue demon­strat­ing they can act as crit­i­cal com­po­nents of the social safe­ty net. With the help of the pri­vate sec­tor, he believes that gov­ern­ments can over­come the virus.

SAP Ari­ba: A Focus on Intel­li­gent Spend Management

Hay­don announced a few broad changes to SAP Ari­ba. Mov­ing for­ward, the soft­ware will be grouped togeth­er with SAP Field­glass and SAP S/4HANA Oper­a­tional Pro­cure­ment as a sin­gle orga­ni­za­tion. This means that SAP will enhance these prod­ucts in tan­dem while ​“mov­ing for­ward with one clear vision.”

Hay­don was lat­er joined by Michael Wein­gart­ner, pres­i­dent of peo­ple and spend man­age­ment at SAP, and Ste­fan Olson, pre­sales solu­tion con­sul­tant for SAP Ari­ba, in a keynote exam­in­ing the future of SAP Ariba’s Intel­li­gent Spend Man­age­ment. Hay­den described this as ​“a pro­found, for­ward-look­ing change in how we look at procurement.”

Enhance­ments include reimag­in­ing the buy­ing process, rein­vent­ing the buy­ing expe­ri­ence, and reshap­ing the way users con­nect with trad­ing part­ners. Data-dri­ven insights and inte­grat­ed solu­tions are cor­ner­stones to all three of these focal points. This allows vital infor­ma­tion to flow from buy­ers to sup­pli­ers and back again. For exam­ple, SAP Ari­ba embeds risk and sus­tain­abil­i­ty con­sid­er­a­tions across the entire glob­al sup­ply chain, allow­ing users to view that infor­ma­tion eas­i­ly before they com­mit to an action. 

Wein­gart­ner also said that the devel­op­ment team invest­ed a lot of time to inte­grate these appli­ca­tions with SAP Ana­lyt­ics Cloud, so that cus­tomers can use the same data end-to-end to dri­ve improved busi­ness intelligence.

Con­nect­ing with SAP Ari­ba Customers 

Dur­ing a time of social dis­tanc­ing, SAP Ari­ba Live still deliv­ered com­pelling cus­tomer sto­ries. Lucille Trick­ett, senior direc­tor of glob­al solu­tions for Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Office of Legal Affairs and Admin­is­tra­tion, pre­sent­ed a keynote on the company’s jour­ney with SAP Ari­ba. HPE went live with a new source-to-con­tract solu­tion in every coun­try where the com­pa­ny does busi­ness. It then com­plete­ly restruc­tured its IT infra­struc­ture by con­sol­i­dat­ing mul­ti­ple ERP solu­tions into SAP S/4HANA and deployed SAP Ari­ba Buy­ing and Invoic­ing pro­cure-to-pay (P2P) cloud solu­tion at a large scale. 

In one of the break­out ses­sions, Jo Peter­son, VP of cloud and secu­ri­ty ser­vices at Clarify360; Jinesh Paraku­lan­gara, senior man­ag­er at HPE Glob­al IT; and Nicole Fliki­er, dig­i­tal tools and ana­lyt­ics glob­al lead at Stan­ley Black & Deck­er, explained how each com­pa­ny suc­cess­ful­ly deployed SAP Ari­ba solu­tions in con­cert with SAP S/4HANA and the insights they gained. For exam­ple, Stan­ley Black & Deck­er used SAP S/4HANA and SAP Cen­tral Finance to pro­vide ​“glob­al and con­sis­tent finan­cial infor­ma­tion” and a sin­gle source of truth for the company’s finan­cial data. 

Want to hear from these experts your­self? All of the SAP Ari­ba Live keynotes and break­outs are avail­able on-demand. Reg­is­ter and get access to the entire dig­i­tal con­fer­ence here. 

Reg­is­ter for the on-demand ASUG web­cast, ​“City of Tacoma’s Trans­for­ma­tion to SAP Ari­ba,” to learn best prac­tices and more.