Describing Operational Procurement

For Purchase Order Collaboration, integration into the SAP Business Network solution is provided for SAP S/4HANA. See also: https://www.sap.com/products/business-network.html.

SAP S/4HANA offers standard integration to the SAP Business Network (and Ariba Network) solution for integrating purchase orders, RFQs, order confirmations, and advanced shipping notifications. Integration of invoices and the status update of these invoices for a supplier, is also supported. No separate add-on is required.

SAP Business Network is not exactly the same as Ariba Network. See the following blog post for a list of frequently-asked questions: https://blogs.sap.com/2021/04/15/ariba-network-2q21-release-faq-for-ariba-network-becoming-part-of-sap-business-network/.

The SAP Business Network solution is the strategic supplier collaboration platform for SAP S/4HANA. Following this strategy, the interface technology required for it has been built into SAP S/4HANA. Most messages required during a purchasing process can be directly exchanged with SAP Business Network.

Purchase Order Collaboration enables the transmission of purchase orders and other order-related documents through SAP Business Network:

• End-to-end collaboration on purchase order fulfillment, including creating purchase orders, changing purchase orders, confirmations (on-premise), cancellations, and advance shipping notifications.

• Ariba Supplier Enablement Services help with on-boarding of suppliers onto the network.

Benefits of using Purchase Order Collaboration are:

• Reduce purchase order error rate by improving the transmission of purchase orders and communication between buyers and suppliers.

• Lower cost and complexity by connecting to the largest and most comprehensive business network available.

• Reduce procurement costs by reducing buyer and supplier time-consuming manual activities.