Approving Preferred Category Status Requests

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to make an approval decision for a preferred category status request.

About Approvals for Preferred Category Status Requests

The approval process for preferred category status requests depends on your site’s setup. Your organization may define an approval flow or automatically approve requests.

Unlike supplier registrations and modular questionnaires, administrators cannot configure different workflows for new and updated preferred supplier management projects; they use the same workflow. However, when you approve an update, the approval task details page displays the answers to the current and previous versions of the request form for a side-by-side comparison.

How to Make Approval Decisions for Preferred Category Status Requests

If you're an approver for a preferred category status request, follow these steps to approve or deny it. Final approval grants the supplier the requested preferred category status.

Prerequisites

Preferred supplier management projects are only available in solutions that include SAP Ariba Supplier Lifecycle and Performance.

Business Scenario

At NSM Global, category managers approve preferred category status requests to prioritize suitable suppliers. Joe Ortiz, a category manager, just received two requests: one seeks a new preferred status for a supplier, and the other asks to update an existing status. Joe must now decide whether to approve or deny each request.

In this video, you’ll watch Joe make approval decisions for preferred category status requests.

Steps

Open the approval task details page by performing one of the following actions:
- Choose the link in the notification e-mail.
- Navigate to the Preferred detail area of the supplier's profile, then locate and view the preferred category status that’s pending approval. Act on the approval task directly from the preferred category details page.
Review the information in the preferred category status request.
Note
If you're approving an update, choose Updated to display only the questions with updated answers. Choose All to display all answers.
Perform one of the following actions:
- To approve the preferred category status request, choose Approve, enter an optional comment, and choose Approve.
- To deny the preferred category status request, choose Deny, enter an explanatory comment, and choose Deny.

Result

The status of the preferred category changes to Approved or Denied in the Preferred detail area of the supplier's profile. Any comments you or other approvers added during approval are shown on the approval task details page.

Approve a Preferred Category Status Request

In this exercise, you’ll approve a preferred category status request.

Summary

Your organization may set up a specific approval flow or choose to approve preferred category status requests automatically.
The same workflow is used for new and updated preferred supplier management projects.
When approving updates, the task details page displays current and previous form answers for comparison.
Approvers can approve or deny requests and add optional comments to justify their decisions.