Previously focused on integrating the Ariba offering into its ecosystem, SAP is now focusing on innovation to increase its grip on the market for digital purchasing and procure-to-pay solutions. The SAP Ariba Live in Madrid, held in mid-June, was the occasion for a general review of the new products available or to come.
Three months after Las Vegas, it is in Madrid that SAP Ariba had chosen to present its vision and solutions to markets in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. For three days (from 13 to 15 June), through about fifty presentation sessions and as many workshops around the unifying theme "simple, intelligent, open", the 1,000 customers and partners who had made the trip were able to discover the scope of the publisher's offer in The buying business and in particular its latest novelties. Because if since the acquisition of Ariba, in 2012, SAP had mainly focused on alignment and integration of solutions, the focus is now on innovation. Sap Ariba Live made it possible to discover the three priority areas of work: ergonomics (user experience), partnerships, functional expansion.
In terms of features, such as in Las Vegas in March, speakers from SAP Ariba presented fifteen major innovations, already available or to come. First around Ariba applications: Guided Buying (set of tools to facilitate the appropriation of e-procurement solutions), Supplier Management, Catalog and Content Management, Supplier Risk, Invoice Collaboration, Ariba Spot Buy (module to connect to other "communities" of purchases, including eBay), Direct Materials Sourcing. Little discussed until now, this last feature, co-developed as part of the contract with BASF, facilitates the sourcing process for all components of a complex product nomenclature, with a view to reducing time and costs.
Five other innovations presented in Madrid concern Ariba Network : Ariba Supply Chain Finance, Supplier Enablement Dashboard, Supplier Mobile App, Supplier Light Enablement, Collaborative Supply Chain. All aim to facilitate interactions with suppliers, with the reaffirmed goal of reaching 5 million companies referenced on the network in 2020, compared to about half today. Finally, the publisher detailed the new extensions of its platform, around document templates, workflows, application interfaces (APIs), etc. As well as the strategy automation of purchasing processes among customers in its installed base, in particular companies using SAP S/4Hana. Still ongoing, the full integration of SAP Ariba tools into the ERP is expected by the end of 2016. The connection of the platform with other solutions on the market, of SAP origin or not, in Cloud or On-Premise mode, is also the subject of much work.