Introducing Project Template Types

This course is intended to help SAP Ariba Strategic Sourcing administrators create and manage project templates. This applies to the following SAP Ariba solutions:

• SAP Ariba Contracts
• SAP Ariba Sourcing
• SAP Ariba Strategic Sourcing Suite
• SAP Ariba Supplier Information and Performance Management
• SAP Ariba Supplier Lifecycle and Performance
• SAP Ariba Supplier Risk
• SAP Ariba Spend Analysis

A project workspace is a collection of information, supporting documents, tasks, and a team of users who can assist with the project duties within SAP Ariba Strategic Sourcing solutions.

When a user begins to create a workspace, the system looks at the project information and displays templates that will determine the remainder of the project outlook. This is based on conditions within each template that match field values or answers to the user's questions.

Once the template is selected, the appropriate content is added based on the template made available for selection. This includes the team, tasks, and documents, resulting in a consistent workspace containing all necessary information.

Project templates are tools for creating projects such as contracts, sourcing projects, and supplier management documents.

• Templates standardize project creation by controlling what steps are included and what is expected of all users within an organization.
• Templates usually model an organization’s best practice process and may have unique processes.
• Typically, only advanced users with specific process and/or commodity knowledge have the required access to edit and maintain project templates.
• Project templates may contain one or several standardized documents, which will be copied into the newly generated project after selecting the template.

• Reusable project content
• Standardize workflow
• Enforce required tasks/approvals
• Provide template documents
• Pre-populate team members

Depending on the solution your company has purchased, you might use one or more of the following types of projects:

1. Contract workspace: a project for managing a contract with a supplier (procurement contract workspace), a buyer (sales contract workspace), or another part of your company (internal contract workspace), including contract agreements, terms of service, pricing documents, negotiations, and approvals.
2. Contract request: a project for requesting a contract workspace (procurement or sales). Users can create a contract workspace from a contract request; the contract workspace inherits all data specified in the contract request. Contract requests enable users who are not contract authors to specify information needed for a contract workspace. For example, a sales agent can submit a contract request that specifies customer and commodity information. This contract request can be used to create a contract workspace with the information specified by the sales agent.
3. Procurement workspace: a project from which you can view and manage all documents relating to a procurement project, such as requisitions, contracts, purchase orders, invoices, and receipts.
4. Procurement workspace request: a project for requesting a procurement workspace. Users can create a procurement workspace from a procurement workspace request; the procurement workspace inherits all data specified in the procurement workspace request. A project owner might send a procurement workspace request to their procurement group to inform them that a procurement workspace needs to be created for a project.
5. Sourcing project: a full project for managing an SAP Ariba Sourcing process or event from planning through approval and execution, or a quick project for running an event.
6. Sourcing request: a project for requesting sourcing events and sourcing projects. After sourcing requests are approved, event managers can create a sourcing project or event to obtain the requested items.
7. Knowledge project: a project for associating archived business information with certain commodities, regions, departments, or pre-loaded keywords for knowledge matching with other SAP Ariba Contracts or SAP Ariba Sourcing projects.
8. Supplier Performance Management (SPM) project: a project for managing supplier performance, including scorecards, recurring tasks that prompt stakeholders to respond to surveys, and action plans.
9. Internal supplier request project: a project for internal users to request a new supplier.
10. External supplier request project: a project for suppliers to request to be added to your site.
11. Supplier registration project: a project for collecting and maintaining detailed profile information about suppliers from internal users and suppliers.
12. Supplier qualification project: a legacy project for vetting a supplier's suitability to provide specific commodities for specific regions and departments.
13. Supplier disqualification project: a legacy project for disqualifying suppliers for specific combinations of commodities, regions, and departments for which they were previously qualified.
14. SM process project: a project for collecting information about and deciding status for supplier qualifications, other business processes, or their discontinuation.
15. Preferred supplier management project: a project for designating suppliers with preferred category statuses for specific commodities for specific regions and departments.
16. Supplier risk engagement project: a project for evaluating the desirability of engaging with a supplier or other third party, assessing the potential risks using your organization's standard risk controls.
17. Issue management project: a legacy project for raising, analyzing, and resolving issues related to supplier or third-party engagement risk assessments.
18. SM modular questionnaire project: a project for collecting specific sets of information about suppliers in one place, where it can be maintained and reused where needed. These projects can be included in process qualifications, miscellaneous lifecycle processes, and supplier risk engagements, or they can be standalone projects.

At least one active template must exist for each type of project users create in the system. If there are no active templates for the selected project type, the project owners cannot create their project.

Although different project types are used to accomplish different goals, they share many of the same features. This course will review the details of these shared features across templates within SAP Ariba Strategic Sourcing solutions.

• Project templates standardize processes in SAP Ariba Strategic Sourcing, ensuring consistent creation and management of project workspaces.
• Templates enforce required tasks and approvals, pre-populate team members, and provide essential documents for projects.
• Available template types include contract, procurement, sourcing, supplier management, and risk management projects.
• Users must select active templates to create projects, leveraging shared features across different project types.
• Templates reflect best practices and are typically maintained by advanced users with specific process knowledge.