SAP Spend Con­nect Live called pro­cure­ment pro­fes­sion­als ​“super­heroes,” who used super­pow­ers to weath­er recent years’ busi­ness and tech­nol­o­gy dis­rup­tions, before mov­ing on to a seri­ous con­fer­ence agen­da with solu­tion and enhance­ment previews.

Etosha Thur­man, SAP Chief Mar­ket­ing & Solu­tions Offi­cer, Intel­li­gent Spend and Busi­ness Net­work, told atten­dees they’d become ​“spend man­age­ment heroes” who ​“car­ried the world” as ​“spend man­age­ment became a mat­ter of glob­al impor­tance” and ​“sup­ply chain became a house­hold phrase.”

Accord­ing to Thur­man, ​“Sup­ply chain risk was the glob­al orga­ni­za­tion­al risk area for the C‑Suite” in recent years, and it con­tin­ues as a pri­or­i­ty with height­ened expec­ta­tions for pro­cure­ment pro­fes­sion­als who:

• Man­age sup­pli­er rela­tion­ships as a strate­gic differentiator
• Play an expand­ed role to deliv­er key busi­ness imper­a­tives; and
• Take ​“spend man­age­ment beyond the tra­di­tion­al remit,” includ­ing part­ner­ships with chief human rela­tions offi­cers (CHROs).

Man­age Spend End-to-End

To step up to these oppor­tu­ni­ties and expec­ta­tions, and to help sup­ply and pro­cure­ment ​“man­age your spend in the most com­plete, most end-to-end fash­ion,” Muham­mad Alam, SAP Pres­i­dent and Chief Prod­uct Offi­cer, Intel­li­gent Spend and Busi­ness Net­work, shared key prod­uct roadmap ele­ments and new capabilities.

He said SAP improve­ments aim at three areas:

• User expe­ri­ence, which he char­ac­ter­ized as ​“how do we fun­da­men­tal­ly rede­fine the workflow?”
• Data-dri­ven Intel­li­gence, to ​“unlock the pow­er of the mas­sive amount of data” in SAP sys­tems, ​“enriched by exter­nal data, and ​“apply AI on top,” and 
• Enable col­lab­o­ra­tion, which Alam said, ​“by default, SAP Busi­ness Net­work breaks down silos through­out the sup­ply chain” to sup­port collaboration.

As busi­ness trav­el rebounds, Alam said SAP invest­ed in a ​“next-gen­er­a­tion expense expe­ri­ence” for cus­tomers of its Con­cur trav­el and expense appli­ca­tion. With gen­er­al avail­abil­i­ty this quar­ter, Alam said ear­ly adopters saw a 30% jump in user sat­is­fac­tion over pre­vi­ous ver­sions. A video of future Con­cur Trav­el plat­form capa­bil­i­ties showed improved graph­ics, usabil­i­ty fea­tures, and sus­tain­abil­i­ty choices.

In what SAP billed as a more ​“pre­dic­tive, per­son­al­ized, and sus­tain­able buy­ing expe­ri­ence” beyond the cur­rent guid­ed buy­ing, Alam unveiled ​“buy­ing 360” capa­bil­i­ties for SAP Ari­ba. The enhance­ments, avail­able to select cus­tomers ear­ly next year, are suit­ed for indi­vid­u­als seek­ing sin­gle items to large-scale group pur­chas­ing for direct and indi­rect mate­ri­als; main­te­nance; repair; oper­a­tions; and services. 

In a demo, the buy­ing 360 capa­bil­i­ties searched, iden­ti­fied, and made rec­om­mend­ed pur­chas­es based on the buyer’s role, and, using AI, pro­vid­ed rec­om­men­da­tions based on peer pur­chas­es. A mobile ver­sion includ­ed voice and pic­ture search features.

Data-Dri­ven Cat­e­go­ry Management

At Spend Con­nect Live, the first in-per­son event in three years, SAP announced SAP Cen­tral Pro­cure­ment, pri­vate cloud edi­tion, avail­abil­i­ty, under the data-dri­ven intel­li­gence ban­ner. In addi­tion, SAP declared cat­e­go­ry man­age­ment a pro­cure­ment strat­e­gy focus with con­tin­ued dig­i­tal prod­uct investment. 

“Cat­e­go­ry man­age­ment is a new entry in our SAP Spend Man­age­ment port­fo­lio,” Alam not­ed. SAP plans to shift the high­ly man­u­al data col­lec­tion and analy­sis process­es to more auto­mat­ed, instan­ta­neous data access, cat­e­go­ry insights, and action­able infor­ma­tion to devel­op and track cat­e­go­ry man­age­ment strate­gies and plans. 

The ​“one-stop work­bench” via SAP Ari­ba solu­tions can inte­grate data from var­i­ous pro­cure­ment sys­tems, accord­ing to SAP, and ​“slash­es time by pro­vid­ing rel­e­vant data where it is need­ed, when it is need­ed.” The solu­tion for cat­e­go­ry man­age­ment is planned to be avail­able to select cus­tomers by the end of this year with expand­ed avail­abil­i­ty through­out 2023. 

Col­lab­o­ra­tion by Default

To sup­port its col­lab­o­ra­tion by default theme, Paige Wei-Cox, Senior Vice Pres­i­dent, Chief Prod­uct Offi­cer and Head of Engi­neer­ing, SAP Busi­ness Net­work, dis­cussed how SAP Busi­ness Net­work con­nects ​“peo­ple, process­es and sys­tems across mul­ti­ple enter­pris­es, dig­i­tiz­ing trans­ac­tions and cre­at­ing trans­par­ent, resilient, sus­tain­able sup­ple chains.”

Fol­low­ing an SAP Busi­ness Net­work sim­u­la­tion to show how a logis­tics sit­u­a­tion team could use the por­tal to gauge sup­pli­er options, risks, and sus­tain­able busi­ness prac­tice data glob­al­ly, Cox said SAP intends to sup­port cus­tomers’ needs that move beyond tier 1 sup­pli­ers to devel­op and inte­grate ser­vices across ​“tier n” net­works. Our ambi­tion is to con­tin­ue to pro­vide the world’s largest busi­ness net­work con­verg­ing pro­cure­ment, logis­tics, asset, and indus­try-spe­cif­ic net­works to deliv­er val­ue for our customers.”