A strong procurement practice is one of the most crucial tenets of a successful business. However, with increase in competition across markets and expansion of customer base, there is a growing need to transform traditional supply chain processes. 

SAP Ariba is SAP’s leading procurement solution to digitally transform and elevate supply chain management, offering a host of benefits to enterprises who want to integrate it with their ongoing business operations. Some of its most sought-after advantages are as follows: 

1) REDUCE COSTS with Spend Management Solutions 

SAP Ariba employs tried and tested spend-management solutions so you can identify every dollar spent and get the most out of it. As a part of ‘Spend management best’, the platform integrates and displays complete spend-related activities from source to settle. Businesses are hence presented with an opportunity of planned buying, wherein their suppliers get paid contractually and most importantly, timely.  

Examples: Kennametal Inc., The Central America Bottling Corp and (cbc) and Grupo Mexico are examples of companies that onboarded SAP Ariba to reduce overall procurement costs along their supply chains.  

2) ENSURE SUPPLY CONTINUITY with Ariba Network and SAP Ariba Discovery 

In times of remote-working, it become imperative for businesses to globalise their supply chains. The Ariba Network is one such solution that serves as the meeting point for suppliers and customers from any device, at any time. By joining the largest commercial network, your business will benefit from faster information exchange, better teamwork, and simple access to fresh solutions. Ariba Network enables in-depth communication about all aspects related to purchasing processes. This global network manages offers, contracts, orders, invoices, and payments for you saving your company both time and money, thus ensuring supply continuity.  

SAP Ariba Discovery is an SAP solution that plays the role of a virtual market place. It is a place where buyers announce their current supply needs, and suppliers can respond to them immediately. With this solution, organizations will have more supply sources at their disposal. Additionally, buyers themselves can search the supplier database for fresh leads that can meet their current requirements. 

Examples: Vestas Wind Systems, Henkel and ERG S.P.A are leading enterprises that have ensured their stronghold in the global market by ensuring supply continuity with SAP Ariba. 

3) ACCELERATE DIGITALISATION with Ariba’s Assorted Solutions: 

Accounts Payable Process Automation - Automation of the accounts payable process is a technique employed by Ariba to reduce human involvement and dispense with processes that are prone to error. This is accomplished by utilising accounts payable software connected with a digital trading partner network. 

Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) - The CLM solution streamlines contract processes since the commencement of a transaction through approval, compliance and renewal of orders, all in a singular portal, thus digitalising your procurement activities. 

E-Invoicing - By digitising invoices with E-Invoicing, you can increase compliance, decrease supplier enquiries, and eliminate errors. It digitalises your procurement process by adding a feature of traceability of documents and bills, which is otherwise hard to manage in traditional purchasing structures.

Strategic sourcing - The strategic sourcing tool at Ariba integrates data gathering, spend analysis, market research, negotiation, and contracting. 

Vendor Relationship Management - With the help of an advanced database management structure, Ariba’s vendor relationship management solution offers integration with your current purchasing methods. This feature helps you narrow down your search to specific vendors, and direct purchasing only to them, hence minimising vendor-related risks.  

Examples: Woolworths Group Limited, Trivalor SPGS SA and M-Industry are a few cases in point of organizations that have accelerated their businesses with the above-mentioned Ariba solutions. 

4) ENSURE TRACEABILITY OF TRANSACTIONS with E-Invoicing 

SAP Ariba’s E-Invoicing is a smart invoicing tool that simplifies processes, makes sure payments are made on time and above all, ensures traceability of transactions. It also gives you the freedom of to do away with the paper-pen method of keeping accounts, and going digital. 

By digitising invoices with E-Invoicing, you can increase compliance, decrease supplier enquiries, and eliminate errors. It digitalises your procurement process by adding a feature of traceability of documents and bills, making transactions easy and secure, which is otherwise time-consuming and hence hard to manage in traditional purchasing structures.

Examples: Boston University, Woolworths, Sasol are some institutions and firms that have strengthened security in transactions with SAP Ariba. 

5) IMPROVE AGILITY with Guided Buying 

With guided buying at SAP Ariba, you can gain full visibility of your external workforce, making your system agile so you can adapt to the uncertainties that may follow, without the tension of restarting your processes from scratch. It also lets you better drive your business outcomes by helping you achieve a lean procurement transformation with globally applicable processes. The integrated platform of Guided Buying isolates the various stages of your supply chain, so that chunks of processes can be altered without reinventing the entire product lifecycle. This in turn saves time, money and resources. It also makes sure morals of suppliers, vendors and their workforce do not dip, thus improving the overall experience of the individuals involved. 

Example: NTT DATA Services, Air Canada and Lloyds Banking Group are some established global firms that have significantly improved business agility with SAP Ariba’s Guided Buying. 

Several companies across industries such as Energy, Electrical, Travel, Aviation, Automation and many more have integrated SAP Ariba to transform their business.  

Get in touch with SAP Ariba experts at Exalogic Consulting and get a free demonstration of Ariba solutions and their core benefits.  

We encourage you to kickstart your SAP Ariba journey today.