Describing Preferred Supplier Management Process

Yes, for new suppliers (with considerations)

• Drive business towards specific subset of qualified suppliers
  • Current state qualification process is not recommended for component suppliers or regulated industries

No, for existing suppliers

• Unnecessary to complete the template-based process
  • Administrators can upload preferred status data

Integrations with other SAP Ariba solutions

• Automatically add preferred suppliers to SAP Ariba Sourcing events
• Display preferred suppliers at top of guided buying search results

You view and manage preferred category status in the Preferred area of the supplier 360° profile.

• Preferred area is only visible for suppliers qualified for at least one commodity, region, and department

You can do the following things in the Preferred area:

• View a summary of all of the supplier's preferred category statuses
• View the preferred category request for a status
• Request a new or updated preferred category status
• Remove a preferred category status

After a supplier is qualified for a specific commodity, region, and department combination, the supplier can be designated as a preferred supplier for that combination.

The preferred supplier management process is used to:

• Set preferred supplier levels
• Encourage your procurement and sourcing agents to do business with certain suppliers
  • Display preferred suppliers at top of guided buying search results
    • Must use ISO 3 country code as region, unless the configurable mapping between guided buying ship-to countries and preferred and qualified supplier regions feature is enabled in your site
    • Custom supplier levels not shown
  • Automatically invite level 1 preferred suppliers to sourcing events

The preferred supplier management project template defines the process by which your company grants preferred category status to suppliers for specific combinations of commodities, regions, and departments.

1. A user requests a preferred category status change for the supplier from the Preferred area on the supplier's 360° profile.
2. Notifications let the approvers know that the preferred category status request requires approval. They can also see outstanding requests using Manage → My Tasks on the dashboard. The approvers review the preferred category status request and approve or deny it. Alternatively, the preferred category status change can be set to automatically approve, which is recommended when trusted users are the only users in the system with the permission to request category status changes.
3. Notifications let the requesting user know when the preferred category status request has been approved or denied, and show the final approver so that requesting user can have further discussions about denied preferred category status requests.
4. When a preferred category status request is approved, the category status is displayed in the Preferred area on the supplier's 360° profile.