Requesting Preferred Category Statuses

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to request a new or updated preferred category status for a supplier.

About Requesting Preferred Category Statuses

Preferred supplier management lets you mark certain suppliers as preferred based on their qualifications for specific commodities, regions, and departments. You may request a new preferred category status or update an existing one when circumstances change.

You can request a preferred status only for suppliers fully qualified for the desired combination of commodities, regions, and departments. If your organization uses qualification process projects, you can’t request a preferred status when the qualification is conditionally approved or includes denied subordinate qualification processes. Similarly, if your organization manages supplier qualifications and disqualifications through legacy projects, you can’t request a preferred status if the supplier has partial qualifications, such as being qualified for clothing in the United States but disqualified for shirts in California.

When you ask for a status change for a supplier previously set as preferred through a project, the system reopens the original preferred supplier management project and restarts all associated tasks.

Suppliers can also gain preferred status through a data import. The preferred data import doesn’t create a corresponding preferred supplier management project, but you can still request an update to the existing preferred category status. This action generates a preferred supplier management project based on the supplier's previous preferred level.

How to Request New or Updated Preferred Category Statuses

To request a new or updated preferred category status for a supplier, follow these steps.

Prerequisites

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

To request a new or updated preferred category status for a supplier, you must be a member of the Preferred Supplier Manager or SM Ops Administrator groups.

You can only request a new preferred category status for a combination of commodities, regions, and departments for which the supplier is fully qualified.

Business Scenario

Supplier manager Amy Chen has identified a high-performing supplier that she believes should be preferred for providing computer equipment and accessories to NSM Global Canada. Additionally, based on a routine evaluation, she will update another supplier's preferred category status to reflect their current service levels better.

In this video, you’ll watch Amy request new and updated preferred category statuses for suppliers.

Steps

In the Preferred detail area of the supplier's profile, perform one of the following actions:
- To request a new preferred category status, choose Add Preferred.
- To request a change to an existing preferred category status, locate the status and choose More → Edit.
If you're requesting a new preferred category status, select one or more commodities, regions, and (if your organization uses them) departments by performing one of the following actions:
- Enter search terms in the field, then select a value from the search results list.
- Leave the field blank and choose Search to open its hierarchy, then use the arrows to navigate through the hierarchy and select values to include in the request.
Note
Your choices are limited to the values the supplier is already fully qualified for.
Select a preferred status level to request.
Enter any other required information in the form.
Choose Submit.

Result

The request, with its current status, is shown in the Preferred detail area. If there's an approval task for it, that task starts now.

Request a New Preferred Category Status

In this exercise, you’ll request a new preferred category status for a supplier.

Summary

Preferred supplier management allows marking suppliers as preferred based on their qualifications for commodities, regions, and departments.
Users can request preferred category status only when suppliers are fully qualified for chosen commodities, regions, and departments.
Requesting status changes requires membership in the Preferred Supplier Manager or SM Ops Administrator groups.
Status updates can modify the preferred level, not categories, regions, or business units.
Preferred status updates reopen existing projects or generate new ones if the status was achieved through data import.