SAP is inte­grat­ing its gen­er­a­tive AI copi­lot, Joule, across its spend man­age­ment solu­tions SAP Ari­ba, SAP Busi­ness Net­work, and SAP Field­glass to help cus­tomers auto­mate their spend­ing process­es while enhanc­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and compliance.

SAP Busi­ness Net­work, mean­while, will launch a new ​“pro­mote” sub­scrip­tion for sup­pli­ers to improve their vis­i­bil­i­ty on the plat­form, attract new buy­ers, and grow their businesses. 

SAP Field­glass is gain­ing an ana­lyt­ics add-on, equipped with AI capa­bil­i­ties. SAP Spend Con­trol Tow­er, announced last year as a com­mand cen­ter for enter­prise-wide spend analy­sis, is now avail­able for all businesses.

Final­ly, SAP Ari­ba Intake Man­age­ment, a new solu­tion built on SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form, will auto­mate pro­cure­ment request cre­ation and improve process orches­tra­tion, align­ing process­es across het­ero­ge­neous land­scapes and solu­tions into a cen­tral loca­tion through which to view sta­tus updates and requests.

The announce­ments were made at SAP Spend Con­nect Live, the company’s annu­al spend man­age­ment con­fer­ence, held Oct. 14 – 16 in Las Vegas. 

Embed­ding Joule Across Spend Man­age­ment and Busi­ness Net­work Solutions

As SAP aims to embed its gen­er­a­tive AI copi­lot across its entire suite of cloud solu­tions, the com­pa­ny plans to deliv­er Joule capa­bil­i­ties for SAP Ari­ba, SAP Busi­ness Net­work, and SAP Field­glass, start­ing in the fourth quar­ter of 2024.

In SAP Ari­ba solu­tions for direct and indi­rect spend, users can lean on gen­er­a­tive-AI capa­bil­i­ties to cre­ate requests for pro­pos­als (RFPs), also lever­ag­ing Joule for help with rou­tine inquiries, buy­ing rec­om­men­da­tions, and sup­pli­er sum­maries. SAP Ari­ba will also pro­vide users with ​“sus­tain­abil­i­ty score­cards” to help them align their spend man­age­ment with envi­ron­men­tal, social, and gov­er­nance (ESG) objectives. 

In SAP Field­glass solu­tions for exter­nal work­force man­age­ment, Joule will offer tem­plate rec­om­men­da­tions to help gen­er­ate job post­ings and SOWs with pre-filled infor­ma­tion such as start date and num­ber of work­ers need­ed, allow­ing users to speed up time-con­sum­ing process­es while request­ing assis­tance in nat­ur­al lan­guage and guid­ance informed by SAP Help por­tal resources.

Joule will also help to auto­mate logis­tics and asset man­age­ment process­es with­in SAP Busi­ness Net­work, help­ing users via a nat­ur­al lan­guage inter­face to address and nav­i­gate sta­tus requests and queries, invoice dis­putes, work orders, freight orders, and more. The cost of resolv­ing excep­tions will be reduced by Joule’s abil­i­ty to iden­ti­fy errors while ana­lyz­ing, cat­e­go­riz­ing, and pro­vid­ing insights into invoice rejections.

Sup­pli­ers Ben­e­fit from SAP Busi­ness Net­work Enhancements

Begin­ning in the first quar­ter of 2025, sup­pli­ers on SAP Busi­ness Net­work will ben­e­fit from a ​“pro­mote” sub­scrip­tion option that will help them to dif­fer­en­ti­ate them­selves and build bet­ter brand vis­i­bil­i­ty to buy­ers on the platform. 

Through the pro­mote sub­scrip­tion, sup­pli­ers will receive rec­om­men­da­tions to improve dis­cov­er­abil­i­ty, explore advanced search results, ver­i­fy their sup­pli­er pro­files, and make use of net­work cat­a­log APIs, accord­ing to SAP. 

With SAP Busi­ness Net­work gain­ing gen­er­a­tive-AI capa­bil­i­ties, sup­pli­ers will also be able to speed up the high­ly man­u­al work of fill­ing out RFPs and relat­ed spend paper­work, load­ing all their avail­able offer­ings into the net­work cat­a­log, and opti­miz­ing prod­uct descrip­tions and summaries. 

Sup­pli­ers can gain insights into how they appear in search­es, update key­words to reflect trend­ing top­ics, eval­u­ate their geo­graph­i­cal reach, apply sus­tain­abil­i­ty rat­ings via Eco­Vadis, and track their over­all vis­i­bil­i­ty in the plat­form. Buy­ers, mean­while, can view sup­pli­er pro­files and fil­ter by var­i­ous cri­te­ria, includ­ing how active sup­pli­ers are on SAP Busi­ness Net­work, in order to bring up those best matched to their needs.

With near­ly $6 tril­lion in com­merce flow­ing through SAP Busi­ness Net­work annu­al­ly, this is a core area of invest­ment for SAP; the pro­mote sub­scrip­tion will espe­cial­ly allow small­er sup­pli­ers to stand out to poten­tial buy­ers on the net­work and iden­ti­fy sales oppor­tu­ni­ties based on region­al search data and oth­er such insights.

Cen­tral­iz­ing Spend Data Man­age­ment via SAP Spend Con­trol Tower

Announced at last year’s SAP Spend Con­nect Live as a cen­tral­ized expen­di­ture mon­i­tor­ing plat­form for the company’s cost-con­trol and account­abil­i­ty offer­ings, SAP Spend Con­trol Tow­er equips users with var­i­ous dash­boards to assess spend fac­tors such as com­pli­ance, oppor­tu­ni­ty analy­sis, and sustainability.

Designed to dri­ve vis­i­bil­i­ty of cost-sav­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties while enhanc­ing data qual­i­ty and sim­pli­fy­ing the user expe­ri­ence, SAP Spend Con­trol Tow­er is intend­ed as ​“a sin­gle loca­tion for all spend data,” accord­ing to Manoj Swami­nathan, Pres­i­dent and Chief Prod­uct Offi­cer, Intel­li­gent Spend and Busi­ness Net­work, SAP.

Through cen­tral­iz­ing data from SAP spend man­age­ment solu­tions into one data lay­er, the plat­form will allow users to see the big pic­ture of their orga­ni­za­tion­al spend while enabling them to access and ana­lyze spe­cif­ic data with­in SAP Ari­ba, SAP Field­glass, or SAP Con­cur solu­tions, he said. Through embed­ded SAP Busi­ness AI solu­tions, users can ana­lyze spend data while sim­pli­fy­ing cat­e­gories; through cen­tral­iz­ing and stan­dard­iz­ing spend data with­in one uni­fied struc­ture, users can also improve data har­mo­niza­tion and enrichment. 

“Many orga­ni­za­tions feel over­whelmed by the vol­ume of data and don’t know what steps to take to use it for effec­tive deci­sion-mak­ing,” Swami­nathan told atten­dees dur­ing his open­ing keynote. ​“SAP is laser-focused on reduc­ing this type of com­plex­i­ty, and SAP Spend Con­trol Tow­er — a solu­tion that brings end-to-end spend vis­i­bil­i­ty and insights — is a major mile­stone in that mission.”

Opti­miz­ing Pro­cure­ment Process­es via SAP Ari­ba Intake Management

With SAP Ari­ba Intake Man­age­ment, a new solu­tion built on SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form, users can stream­line the pro­cure­ment request process by han­dling pur­chase requests, con­tract pro­cess­ing, and ser­vices provider onboard­ing through one cen­tral loca­tion for pro­cure­ment inquiries and sta­tus updates.

SAP aims to pro­vide users with one pane of glass through which to han­dle sta­tus updates and requests, enhanc­ing employ­ees’ abil­i­ties to adhere to com­pa­ny poli­cies and ensure com­pli­ance with exist­ing reg­u­la­tions. The solu­tion, to be avail­able in the first quar­ter of 2025, will fea­ture out-of-the-box inte­gra­tion with oth­er SAP solu­tions and con­nec­tors for third-par­ty integration. 

Enhanc­ing Exter­nal Work­force Ana­lyt­ics for SAP Fieldglass 

With its new ana­lyt­ics add-on, enhanced by gen­er­a­tive-AI capa­bil­i­ties, SAP Field­glass will make it eas­i­er to imple­ment mul­ti-chan­nel tal­ent strate­gies and account for var­i­ous exter­nal tal­ent scenarios. 

The ana­lyt­ics add-on for SAP Field­glass solu­tions lets users:

• Review per­for­mance against over 50 exter­nal work­force key per­for­mance indicators.
• Access glob­al mar­ket intel­li­gence includ­ing rates, tal­ent sup­ply and demand, and time-to-hire trends.
• Track sus­tain­abil­i­ty ini­tia­tives such as spend with diverse sup­pli­ers and work­er health and safe­ty, while observ­ing cost over­runs, work­er fatigue, and on- and off­board­ing compliance.

Thanks to Joshua Green­baum, of EAC, and Jon Reed, of Dig­i­nom­i­ca, for pro­vid­ing addi­tion­al back­ground con­text that informed this story.