This Guest Per­spec­tive was writ­ten by Sal­va­tore Lombardo

SAP recent­ly shared excit­ing updates to the new guid­ed sourc­ing capa­bil­i­ty for SAP Ari­ba Sourc­ing solu­tions. As many ASUG mem­bers may already know, SAP Ari­ba Sourc­ing had the same look and feel for years. Strate­gic buy­ers, sourc­ing ana­lysts, cat­e­go­ry man­agers, and oth­er deci­sion-mak­ers have trust­ed the famil­iar inter­face for their sourc­ing needs, and it has served them well. These updates and new func­tion­al­i­ties relate to the SAP Ari­ba Sourc­ing solu­tion — specif­i­cal­ly to the guid­ed sourc­ing capa­bil­i­ty, mod­ern­iz­ing eSourcing.

These improve­ments arrive at an ide­al time for cus­tomers, as glob­al trade restric­tions and sup­ply chain issues have made eSourc­ing more chal­leng­ing and have even threat­ened busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity. I’m excit­ed to share with ASUG mem­bers the details of our mod­ern eSourc­ing solu­tion, which has an improved user expe­ri­ence, more intel­li­gence, and improved efficiencies.

The guid­ed sourc­ing capa­bil­i­ty meets the needs of these unique times and the chal­lenges that many ASUG mem­bers may face. It offers a more intel­li­gent, intu­itive solu­tion for man­ag­ing strate­gic process­es and RFx[RI(1] events. This ensures that users can source the mate­ri­als they need when they need to. It also intro­duces effi­cien­cies that accel­er­ate event cre­ation, so team mem­bers have more time for risk mit­i­ga­tion or secur­ing on-time delivery.

With guid­ed sourc­ing, a pro­cure­ment team can:

• Man­age projects and cre­ate RFx events from a sin­gle page
• Auto­mate RFx event cre­ation with autonomous pro­cure­ment fea­tures such as Smart Excel Import
• Mes­sage peers and team mem­bers from with­in the inter­face about project and RFx event activities
• Facil­i­tate the mul­ti-round bid­ding process to effec­tive­ly move from a long list to a best, final offer
• Real­ize bid­ding gains from the advanced bid analy­sis engine

The Jour­ney to Sim­pler, Eas­i­er eSourcing

Muham­mad Alam, the new GM for SAP Busi­ness Net­work and Chief Prod­uct Offi­cer for SAP Intel­li­gent Spend and Busi­ness Net­work Solu­tions, recent­ly spoke with ASUG. In the dis­cus­sion, he high­light­ed the impor­tance of the user expe­ri­ence (UX). He also empha­sized UX reli­a­bil­i­ty and avail­abil­i­ty in ensur­ing that cus­tomers get the most val­ue from SAP solutions.

With the guid­ed sourc­ing capa­bil­i­ty, SAP con­tin­u­al­ly invests to improve func­tion­al­i­ty. In line with our mis­sion to improve usabil­i­ty and the UX, ASUG mem­bers will find that in the lat­est release, usabil­i­ty has expo­nen­tial­ly improved. Cre­at­ing RFx events is faster, search is enhanced, and con­tex­tu­al help is available.

The user inter­face is much more intu­itive, which can speed up adop­tion among users. It also improves the over­all expe­ri­ence by still address­ing com­plex eSourc­ing require­ments. Like­wise, exe­cut­ing an RFx event is much faster. In fact, cus­tomers are real­iz­ing a 50% improve­ment in time to cre­ate an RFx event. Project and RFx event man­age­ment are much more intuitive.

I also want to high­light the Full Projects func­tion­al­i­ty, which is extreme­ly help­ful with strate­gic sourc­ing initiatives.

Some capa­bil­i­ties are includ­ed below:

• Process and Project insight areas pro­vide vis­i­bil­i­ty into task and phase com­ple­tion, as well as into cre­at­ed RFx events and sup­pli­er par­tic­i­pa­tion. Users can nav­i­gate across all sec­tions from a sin­gle page, and they can choose from mul­ti­ple actions. They can also track a project’s progress and get a sum­ma­ry of project components.
• Col­lab­o­ra­tion with mes­sag­ing, con­tract work­spaces, and quick links: team mem­bers can eas­i­ly com­mu­ni­cate with col­leagues and sup­pli­ers through inter­ac­tive mes­sages. They can also find help­ful links.
• The Tasks area has a new look and feel, plus the abil­i­ty for you to edit or cre­ate new tasks direct­ly in the project. Start­ing and fin­ish­ing tasks is much eas­i­er and intuitive.
• Tasks and Phas­es are dis­played on the home­page, sav­ing nav­i­ga­tion clicks to anoth­er page to locate tasks. Users can cre­ate, rearrange, and com­plete tasks on a sin­gle page.
• The RFx Events and Doc­u­ments area is updat­ed. You now have the abil­i­ty to cre­ate project place­hold­ers at the tem­plate lev­el and cre­ate ad-hoc RFx event place­hold­ers. Users can upload doc­u­ments, cre­ate RFx events and sub­pro­jects, and orga­nize their content.

The capa­bil­i­ties of SAP eAuc­tion have also improved. Sup­port­ed eAuc­tion types are Eng­lish, Dutch, and Japan­ese reverse auc­tion, as well as traf­fic light bid­ding. Strate­gic buy­ers can cre­ate, mon­i­tor, and award reverse auc­tions from the guid­ed sourc­ing inter­face along with a great auc­tion mon­i­tor­ing cock­pit. We plan to add more auc­tion types in future releases.

Anoth­er time saver is the Smart Import fea­ture. Cre­at­ing an RFP event can be time con­sum­ing. Smart Import uses ML capa­bil­i­ties pow­ered by SAP to con­vert spread­sheets in RFPs so that buy­ers can quick­ly and eas­i­ly pop­u­late line items in an RFP event. Strate­gic buy­ers are guid­ed through the process to min­i­mize man­u­al errors. Con­se­quent­ly, they can quick­ly and accu­rate­ly cre­ate an RFx event and source the spe­cif­ic mate­ri­als needed.

Now Is the Time to Adopt Guid­ed Sourcing

Guid­ed sourc­ing is com­plete­ly self-ser­vice, mean­ing it can be adopt­ed by cus­tomers when they’re ready and rolled out to users based on per­mis­sions. This pro­vides the abil­i­ty to gauge users’ com­fort lev­els and help them onboard to guid­ed sourc­ing when they’re ready.

Anoth­er advan­tage of guid­ed sourc­ing is the syn­er­gy between old and new. The user inter­face for guid­ed sourc­ing can co-exist with the clas­sic SAP UX sourc­ing solu­tion so that users can cre­ate strate­gic projects and events in both inter­faces. This allows users to tran­si­tion as they get more com­fort­able with the enhance­ments and improvements.

Now’s an opti­mal time to move to guid­ed sourc­ing. It’s the most mod­ern, intu­itive, and stream­lined way to man­age eSourc­ing. Cus­tomers can tran­si­tion from the clas­sic UX to guid­ed sourc­ing eas­i­ly and gain all the advan­tages need­ed for mod­ern­ized eSourcing.

Guid­ed sourc­ing is avail­able at no extra cost to cus­tomers, as part of the SAP eSourc­ing solu­tion. ASUG mem­bers can learn more here. Also avail­able are Guid­ed Sourc­ing Dutch Reverse Auc­tions and Guid­ed Sourc­ing Eng­lish Reverse Auc­tions videos.

Sal­va­tore Lom­bar­do is SVP, Chief Prod­uct Offi­cer, of SAP Procurement.