Creating and Editing SPM Projects

SPM projects are created from templates, by advanced users. The template-based design provides the ability to support an organization’s unique processes and best practices for SPM for different commodity categories. Even though the template provides a model, after the initial project is created, it may be necessary to edit some of the project details, but generally speaking, if templates are well designed, required changes are minimal.

Usually SPM projects stay open for a period of time, which may be years and, although an assessment can be one time only, most projects have certain work that is repeated in a cyclical manner representing the nature of the performance assessment. This is handled through recurring phases and the tasks and their documents within those phases. Once the project is set up and tasks are assigned, the team members work on the project by completing tasks, starting in the first phase, typically called the Planning Phase. This may involve editing and saving documents, such as the Master survey, reviewing or approving documents, or just doing the work described in the task. When tasks are started or completed, owners should mark these status changes so progress can easily be tracked by other users.

As the project progresses, the project moves into the Monitor Phase, where the actual performance process is supported. This phase is typically a repeating phase where tasks and documents for each performance phase are organized in date-marked folders.

When all phases are completed, that is, at the end of the project where no more evaluations are to take place, you can change the project state to Completed to indicate that the project is finished.

The project can be displayed in 2 views: Full View and Compact View. Most people select the Full View. In the Full View, the overview tab provides general information about the project including the project name, description, the project owner’s name, and the supplier whose performance is being measured. Additional fields may be configured as custom fields. The process area provides a quick summary of the project status as well as shortcuts to view and/or edit the major tasks, phases, and milestones. Quicklinks provide paths to project documents.

Most document formats are supported: Microsoft Word, Adobe PDF, .jpg, Microsoft Excel, etc. Document files can be shared by users who are working together on the project. Scorecards and surveys are also considered to be documents. Documents can be linked to tasks and submitted for review or approval. SPM provides version control so that the complete history of changes to a document may be tracked.

The Tasks tab shows all of the tasks, milestones, and phases in the project.

Each project includes project groups that are associated with roles that are used to grant access and permissions within the project. Users or groups are assigned to the project groups.

Tasks are generally assigned to a Project Group. Any member of the Project Group can perform the task. It is also possible to assign a task to a specific individual, but it is a generally recommended that assignments use the project groups on the Teams tab.

You can send messages to team members using the message facility or via email. Email allows you to communicate with people who are not users of SAP Ariba Supplier Management solutions. Regardless of the method selected to create the message, all messages and their replies are stored on the message board. The message board also provides a convenient way to capture any documents which are part of email communication.

The history tab provides an audit trail of all activity within the project, including all actions within the system by each team member and by the system itself. The entries are searchable, allowing you to search for a specific activity.

Project related documents are managed in the documents section. Examples of SPM project documents include scorecard and survey, corrective action plan, performance summary. Project documents are files that can be shared by users who are working together on the project. Documents can be linked to tasks. SAP Ariba Supplier Information and Performance Management provides version control so that the complete history of changes to a document may be tracked. Quick Links are shortcuts or paths to important documents that provide easy access to those documents that are most commonly accessed by team members.

• An action performed by the task owner

• An action on a Document performed by the taks owner

• Tasks that include routing of a document for review, approval, or negotiation
• Allows task owner to create a list of reviewers, approvers
• Allows reviewers/approvers to add additional approval flow, submit comments, and attachments

• A task that generates reminder emails to recipients, primarily used after the contract is published. Reminders can be set up to be sent once or repeatedly on a scheduled basis.

The types of tasks in SAP Ariba Supplier Information and Performance Management are To Do Tasks, Document To Do Tasks, Review Tasks, Approval Tasks, Negotiation Tasks, and Notification Tasks.

A To Do Task requires the task owner to do something, like set up a meeting.

A Document To Do Task is a To Do Task that is associated with a particular document or folder. For example, if you have a form that needs to be completed by a particular team member, you could assign a To Do task directly from the document. If there are several forms, you could put them in a folder and assign the Document To Do task from the folder.

Review Tasks and Approval Tasks are designed to route a particular document for other users to review or approve. Document reviewers can submit comments, while approvers have the authority to approve or deny a document with comments. These tasks are used to make sure the proper users have signed off on critical documents before they are published.

A Negotiation Task is designed to capture the negotiations between two or more parties concerning a contract, or any other type of document. It captures the comments from the negotiating parties as well as the changes in the document.

A Notification Task is used to send email reminders to recipients. It is used primarily after the project is closed to remind users to take some action. These reminders can be set up to be sent once or repeatedly on a scheduled basis.

Each task has a corresponding status that indicates its progress from start to completion. The initial status for any type of task is Not Started.​

For standard To Do tasks, the task status changes to In Progress when the task owner marks it as started. The final status is Complete. This requires that the owner of the task to manually mark it as complete.​

For Review tasks, the status changes to In Review when the owner of the task submits the task for review. When all reviewers have completed their reviews, the task status is automatically updated to Reviewed. The owner of a review task may also mark it as complete before the reviews have been completed, in which case the task status will change to Complete to indicate that the change in status was made manually. ​

For Approval tasks, the status changes to In Approval when the owner of the task submits the task for approval. When all approvers have approved, the task status automatically updates to Approved. The owner of an approval task can not manually mark it as complete. If an approver denies the task, that round is marked as Denied. When a new round is created it starts out in the Not Started status. This will change to In Approval until the current round of the approval task is approved by all approvers and finally can be marked as Approved. If you view the Task History and you scroll down to the section labeled All Rounds, the status information for previous rounds is displayed in the Task Details screen.

My tasks allow users to manage their tasks by showing a running tally of all the tasks assigned to them. Tasks can be filtered by name, date, status, etc.

The calendar gives users a monthly overview of tasks, including items that need review, items that were submitted for review, a list of overdue tasks, and tasks that need to be completed in the current week.

An important part of participating in a project is keeping track of any tasks that you are associated with. These could be tasks directly assigned to you, or document tasks for which you have been selected as a reviewer or approver. The My Tasks page helps you manage these tasks by showing a running tally of your tasks. Access the My Tasks page by clicking My Tasks from the dashboard’s Common Actions panel.​

The My Tasks page displays all tasks assigned to you, regardless of the project in which they were assigned. To get more information on a task, click its title. To view a particular project, click the project title. To filter which types of tasks appear, use the Show controls at the top of the page. For example, you could choose to view only overdue tasks that are required in a specific project. To organize the way tasks are displayed on the My Tasks page, click the Table Options icon. The Table Options menu allows you to display or hide columns, to export the list of tasks to Microsoft Excel, and expand all the phase folders. To export all of your tasks to Microsoft Excel, click either Export current page or Export all rows from the Table Options menu.

Another useful feature for monitoring your personal SPM tasks is the calendar. The calendar is a prepackaged dashboard module that you can include on your spend management dashboard. The calendar gives you a monthly overview of tasks, including items that need your review and items that you submitted for review by others. To view task details, click the name of the task from those listed below the calendar. To view all tasks in a given category (e.g. Needs Review), click the section heading. This will bring up the My Tasks page with the proper filters applied to limit your view to only those tasks of the type you have chosen.

When the project owner first creates a project, the tasks, milestones, documents, and project groups are inherited from the template. The project owner can modify the project to add details specific to project. If the project was based on a very thorough and detailed template, few modifications are required. ​

You can use the team tab to control visibility to the project. For example, you may include all of the users that should be able to view the project on the team tab and then set the access to the project to Team Members Only by editing the access setting in the project overview information. You may also use this same access setting at the individual document level so that a project is open to all users, but specific documents are restricted to team members.

When you first create an SPM project, depending on the template used, you may or may not have phases, tasks, documents or team members defined. Even if this information has been defined, you will mostly likely still need to set due dates for milestones and tasks, specify team members, and assign reviewers and approvers to tasks. You may need to edit the Overview information and redefine information such as commodity or regions involved in the project.​

Other changes that are possible include:​

• Rearranging the order of tasks - Use your mouse to drag and drop the tasks​

• Adding new tasks - Use the actions menu on the Tasks view​

• Replacing documents - Click the document link and select replace document​

• Adding new documents - Use the actions menu on the Documents tab