Summarizing Sourcing Processes within SAP Ariba Sourcing

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to Summarize Sourcing Processes within SAP Ariba Sourcing.

SAP Ariba Sourcing Solution Overview

A unified solution supporting the complete sourcing lifecycle management process

SAP Ariba Sourcing helps organizations realize sustainable savings across spend categories through the automation of sourcing strategy development and execution, supplier discovery, and savings tracking.

Process Overview of Source to Pay

What does a successful sourcing process look like?

Understand detailed spend and identify savings opportunities
Define robust category management
Identify and qualify appropriate suppliers
Execute a strategic sourcing program
Formalize negotiated terms within the contract
Ensure compliance tracking and savings realization

Overview of SAP Ariba Strategic Sourcing for use in Direct Spend

SAP Ariba Strategic Sourcing Suite includes a layer of innovations to support the sourcing of direct materials.

This Direct Spend Sourcing functionality enables product costing and sourcing activities throughout the lifecycle, facilitating collaboration with trading partners:

Coordinate with suppliers on new products
Drive spend reduction across your enterprise

It provides companies with a better understanding of costs by removing walls between engineering, sourcing, and supplier by exposing materials and components of a BOM in an early stage to the supplier. This capability is essential during the new product development process and it increases the speed of getting products to market and helps to keep costs under control.

Sourcing Project Workflow

Create a project	Modify/add project details	Work on project tasks	Complete project
Provide basic project information Select a process template	Create a project team Assign tasks and due dates Create documents and edit details	Create/review/approve documents Mark tasks as started/completed	Add any Award Justifications and finalize header field information Update the project state to completed

The Sourcing Project workflow consists of tasks that can be executed online and offline. Project Owners will need to update project details and documents within the template to complete these tasks, which can include due dates, approvals, and to-do actions. Ultimately, Sourcing Projects include events in the documents that need to be created, reviewed, published, and then awarded. When all required project tasks are complete, the project can be closed.

Sourcing Event Stages

Draft	Preview	Open	Pending Selection	Completed
Project owner builds the event content Suppliers do not see any information	Suppliers view the event and ask questions Pre-bids may be possible depending on template, but no competitive information is shared	Suppliers bid Project owner monitors activity Clock displays time until event ends, though this may be extended or reduced by Project Owner	Bidding has ended Project owner analyzes bids and selects winners	No more activity The event is available for viewing only

Regardless of event type, all SAP Ariba events will go through the various statuses listed, in order. The initial project creation drafts a project that will require header fields and a template selection. After the create button is selected, the project owner will complete all of the rules, participants, content, team, and summary tabs to publish the event. If the event is scheduled to start in the future, it will remain in preview, and when the start time arrives, the event will open, Once the event closes, it moves to pending selection until the project owner decides the next steps, by award, or by completing the project.

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