Explaining the Configuration Process

Baseline configurations for SAP Ariba Procurement realms provide a layer of configurations that are applied on top of the product default configurations, which are primarily managed through Template Realms.

These configurations are based on more than 10 years of deployment expertise and experience of learning what customers want to do and how SAP Ariba software helps to get them there.

Baseline configurations contain built-in leading practices that go beyond the initial thought of default settings and serve as an additional layer for what customers are really trying to implement.

Baseline configurations represent a starting point for any customer. They are not intended to be production ready and require additional customer input and configurations.

You can run a Customization Export from the Template Realms to obtain baseline configurations for Parameters, Approval Rules, and Ariba Markup Language (AML). You can then migrate the resulting zip file into the customer's realm to apply the baseline configurations from which to begin deployment.

There are multiple benefits of using baseline configurations, such as:

• The ability to conduct early demos within the customer's realm instead of sandboxes.
• Accelerated configuration of customer specific scenarios.
• More efficient and productive requirements gathering and build phases.
• Reduced risk of missed configurations.

• One template realm per variant (SAP, Generic, PeopleSoft) that includes, parameters, approvals rules, common customizations, user groups, and invoice exception types
• A minimal set of master data that enables you to create transactions end-to-end
• Two catalogs: one CIF and one PunchOut
• An initial platform for Guided Buying
• A baseline list of feature toggles that you can manually enable
• Basic Ariba Network Buyer account setup

The implementation project teams are responsible for executing the process to apply baseline configurations.