Name: Creating Supplier and Touch Policies in Guided Buying in SAP Ariba
Uploaded: 2023-12-6
Duration: 450 s
Description: The video demonstrates how administrators can create supplier and touch policies for tactical sourcing scenarios in the guided buying capability of SAP Ariba.

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<div><div><div><div><div><div><div>The video demonstrates how administrators can create supplier and touch policies for tactical sourcing scenarios in the guided buying capability of SAP Ariba. </div></div></div></div></div></div></div>

Creating Supplier and Touch Policies in Guided Buying in SAP Ariba

Customers can configure supplier and touch policies, such as N bids and a buy, to specify how much procurement department involvement is necessary for RFQ purchases. Guided buying will use these policies for request forms only. The scenarios that can be triggered are self-service with no involvement from the sourcing team, and low or high touch that require involvement from the sourcing specialists. Supplier and touch policies allow you to define amount-based tiers for each category of purchase. The policy and tier for each category determine whether users can choose suppliers on the form, how many preferred suppliers are needed, whether the user sees an informational message or error message when submitting a form, which sourcing template is used to create the RFQ event or sourcing request, whether an RFQ event is published automatically, and if it's the casual user who reviews and accepts quotes from suppliers or is it the procurement team. When users fill out a request form, guided buying finds the matching policy and tier based on the user's location, the category of purchase, and the monetary amount. To create the policies, administrators must upload the Supplier and Touch Policy Microsoft Excel file in the Policy Management section of the Admin menu. When you upload policies, guided buying creates new data or updates existing data. We can start by downloading a sample of the Excel file, or if we are just making changes to an existing policy, we can export the already existing ones. Let us now focus on the data that needs to be added to the spreadsheet. When working on the file, the spreadsheet structure must be kept as is, so we should not delete any columns or change the headers. On the Description sheet, we must enter a valid policy name, which should be the same on all sheets in the file. It is best practice to copy and paste the name to avoid errors. Under the Key Definition sheet, we first have the policy name, which needs to match the policy name from the description sheet. Then, in the Lookup Key column, we must specify the users or items for which the policy applies. The supported values are location and purchasing unit, which both represent the purchasing unit of the user, and then commodityCode, which is the commodity code of the requested item or service. The Lookup Key value requires the purchasing unit ID or commodity code ID that is affected by the policy. To apply the policy to all purchasing units, specify the parent purchasing unit value in your configuration, such as ALL. The Tier Definition tab allows us to specify the policy parameters. The policy name must match the one on the description sheet. Also, you can use the same policy name across multiple rows in this sheet to specify multiple tiers or field attributes, which determine when to trigger this policy. The tier name is the name you use to define a particular amount-based tier for a policy. You can use the same tier name across multiple policies. Guided buying evaluates supplier and touch policies during two distinct phases, the Request Quotes, which is the time period when users fill out and submit an RFQ or sourcing request form, and the Accept Quotes, which is the time when users examine and award quotes from suppliers. A given policy name and tier name can have both a request quotes phase and an accept quotes phase, but those phases are separate and must not be connected by a logical operator. The tier definition sheet has a left-hand side and a right-hand side, which the system will evaluate against each other. The value "field" is the only one accepted in the left hand side type, while the left hand side field column, which determines when to trigger a policy, has two possible values. Price, which is the total monetary amount of the request form, and the necessary total number of preferred suppliers chosen on the request form. For the right hand side type, the supported values are "constant" and "field". The right-hand side field column represents the ID value for whichever left-hand side field you specified. The value you configure for this column is compared to the field value on the request. The operator column describes the operator that evaluate whether to enforce a policy. In this example, for the self-service scenario to be triggered, we require the preferred supplier count to be higher than 0 and the price to be below $1000. The logical operator describes how to evaluate multiple rows in the file for the same policy and tier combination. Valid values are AND, OR. For example, if you have two rows in the Tier Definition sheet dedicated to a particular policy and tier combination, enter AND for the first row if both conditions are required to trigger the policy tier, and you should enter OR for the first row if only one of the conditions is required to trigger the policy tier. On the Template Configuration tab we enter the policy name again. Also, the tier name should be the same as the one on the Tier Definition sheet. In the Sourcing Template Name column, we enter the ID of the sourcing template we want to use for the particular scenario. If you publish a new template version after you've uploaded the supplier and touch policy that references the original template version, make sure to update the template ID in this file and reload the policy. On the same sheet, we can specify "true" if we want the sourcing event to be published automatically or "false" if the procurement department has to edit the event and publish it manually. In the Award from GB column, we specify whether the RFQ is awarded in guided buying or in SAP Ariba Sourcing based on the triggered scenario. Keep in mind that guided buying can only award self-service and low-touch RFQs. On the Message sheet, we enter the policy name and tier names. Then, under Severity, we define what happens when the user tries to submit a form that does not comply with the policy. We can have info, justification, and error. Error will prevent users from submitting the request until they comply with the policy, while justification asks them to provide a reason for purchasing the item. Administrators can configure a list of options for justification reasons in the next column or leave that blank and ask the user to type in the reason themselves. The same procedure applies to users accepting quotes. The file is filled in, so we must import it, and then we should see a success message. This concludes our video on supplier touch policies configuration. Thank you for watching.