Integrating Supplier Management into Procurement Processes

The Summary area in the supplier 360° profile shows basic information about the supplier. The panels that you see vary depending on your site's solution package and feature enablement. In sites that include SAP Ariba Supplier Risk, the Overall supplier risk panel shows a summary of the supplier's risk exposure information. In site that include SAP Ariba Sourcing, the Sourcing Events panel displays an overview of the sourcing events the supplier has participated in, including the number of Open, Pending, and Completed events. In sites that include SAP Ariba Contracts, the Contracts panel shows an overview of the contracts the supplier has participated in, including the number of Published, Draft Amendment, and Expired contracts. If an administrator in your organization has imported diversity information for the supplier, it’s displayed in the Diversity panel and the supplier’s diversity types are shared with SAP Ariba Procurement’s guided buying capability.

In the guided sourcing user interface, you can search for suppliers based on qualification status and risk level.

When inviting suppliers to sourcing events, you can see their registration, qualification, and preferred statuses. You can configure event templates to define eligibility criteria for inviting suppliers to events or awarding events to them, based on their status in the supplier management process. You can also configure event templates to automatically invite preferred suppliers to events or line items based on the commodity and region specified during the event creation process.

In the guided sourcing user interface, you can view suppliers' risk level and scores in various categories.

You can link an engagement risk assessment project to procurement contract requests and workspaces. The Engagement Request Details area in Contract Attributes shows the status and risk rating for the supplier based on the risk project.

The guided buying capability uses qualification statuses to indicate qualified suppliers in buying workflows. Suppliers need to be qualified to show up as suggested suppliers when users create non-catalog requests. Additionally, when guided buying users request quotes, suppliers need to be qualified to show up in the list of available suppliers.

You can direct spend towards certain suppliers by designating them as the preferred suppliers. Suppliers with the highest preferred category can appear at the top of guided buying search results.

You can promote diversity through procurement within your organization by labeling suppliers with diversity types that are displayed on supplier tiles and item tiles. If your organization wants to promote diversity through procurement further, you can create a diversity program. Suppliers that belong to the program are labeled with your diversity program logo and their details include a description of your diversity program.

Guided buying users can mitigate risk when requesting non-catalog purchases or requesting a quote for an item by reviewing a risk exposure graphic that shows the level of risk associated with each supplier.

You can gain actionable insights from prepackaged supplier lifecycle and supplier performance management reports. Supplier lifecycle reports are designed to help you analyze suppliers and supplier management project activities in your site and examine supplier creation and onboarding activities to identify trends and bottlenecks. Supplier performance management reports are designed to help you monitor your company’s supplier performance management programs and analyze supplier performance using the metrics that you have established in that program.

You can build custom dashboards for quick access to the supplier onboarding, lifecycle process, and risk assessment process data that’s most important to you.

SAP Ariba Supplier Management doesn’t just integrate with other SAP Ariba solutions, it also links to:

• Your existing supplier data, either through bi-directional synchronization with an SAP system or limited import from other systems
• The suppliers themselves, through self-managed data and questionnaires in SAP Business Network
• Third-party providers of supplier risk data