“Green Cross has decided to deploy an integrated procurement strategy in order to accomplish process improvement and innovation,” said Ryu Man-Kyu, associate director, purchasing, Green Cross.

“With SAP Ariba’s innovative technology and business network, we can fuel a simple, transparent procurement process that delivers savings, efficiencies and market advantage,” said Man-Kyu.

The source-to-settle SAP Ariba solutions Green Cross will use include SAP Ariba Spend Analysis, SAP Ariba Sourcing, SAP Ariba Contract Management, and SAP Ariba Buying.

Green Cross will implement the SAP Ariba solutions alongside its existing SAP ERP system to extend its simplicity, power and speed beyond the corporation, enabling new and innovative levels of collaboration with customers, partners and suppliers to improve their supply chain.

“The digitisation of business is taking hold among companies around the world and Green Cross is leading the way in Korea,” said Ben Redwine, general manager, SAP Ariba, Asia Pacific Japan.

“In embracing solutions from SAP Ariba, the company can drive an innovative, digital procurement process that, beyond savings and efficiencies, delivers broad business value.”

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The solutions, which will leverage SAP Leonardo, IBM Watson technologies and SAP Ariba, will bring intelligence from procurement data together with predictive insights from unstructured information to enable improved decision-making across supplier management, contracts and sourcing activities.

IBM Global Business Services will provide consulting and services to build, implement and operate the new offerings using tailored roadmaps, and working with SAP Ariba to bring new and existing IBM customers to the platform.

The companies also plan to launch a Cognitive Procurement hub to further the development of intelligent procurement solutions and services, working together to explore applications of emerging technologies, including blockchain.

“We’ve built a cognitive procurement platform trained specifically to understand procurement transactions and unstructured data such as weather, non-standard part numbers in contracts and complex pricing structures,” said Jesus Mantas, general manager, Cognitive Process Transformation, IBM Global Business Services.

SAP Ariba and IBM hope to together use data insights to impact the entire procurement process, from improving spend visibility to assisting buyers and enriching content management. For example, a digital assistant combined with IBM Watson services, will transform sourcing events by helping with tasks such as defining the correct Request for Proposal type, identifying appropriate suppliers to participate based on commodity category, region or industry and delivering intelligence on market signals and pricing pressures to optimise results.

“Today marks a major milestone for procurement,” said Alex Atzberger, president, SAP Ariba. “With the deep horizontal integration capabilities native within SAP Ariba’s mature platform and the innovative capabilities of SAP Leonardo and IBM Watson delivered by the industry’s most experienced and trusted providers, companies can realise an even more intelligent source-to-settle process for managing all categories of spend that creates value across the entire business.”

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NTT Data harnesses the advanced capabilities of SAP Ariba to assist many client organisations to improve their operations, with a focus on sourcing and e-procurement. Their Collaborative Commerce platform helps retailers and consumer packaged goods (CPG) organisations leverage technologies to improve operational efficiencies and implement customer-centric engagement systems.

Citing improved efficiency in sourcing and purchasing processes, Anshu Dewan, vice president, new business development, DS Group, said: “We were able to develop over 200 new vendors to mitigate our supply chain risks and deliver tangible cost savings of 10-15 per cent across various categories.”

“They helped us leverage the Ariba platform to eliminate paper-based activities and the inefficiencies, errors, risk, costs and delays. Finally, they have helped us increase transparency across functions,” added Dewan.

For customers like DS Group, NTT DATA provides a portfolio of application services spanning the Ariba lifecycle to improve bottom-line performance by integrating procure-to-pay (P2P) processes and bringing them together on a single technology platform.

Experienced in integrating SAP Ariba with multiple ERP systems, NTT DATA has successful implementations in diverse industries, from automotive and manufacturing to real estate and fast moving consumer goods (FMCG).

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ISAP: What is your integration strategy, and what is driving that strategy for SAP Ariba?

Sanjay Almeida: We think about it in terms of how to start to simplify integration among all the applications that we have and create a ‘plug and play’ model. It’s not just point-to-point integration; we’re very proud of the 100 points that we have integrated among various business processes, but we think more holistically in terms of how we simplify end-to-end business process. Integration plays a huge role in realising the product benefit as well as faster ROI and simplification. So we want to make sure that we have a plug and play approach, we have a cloud approach, and it needs to be flexible. As you know, there’s no standard ERP implementation – there’s always tweaks and customisations that customers have to do to maximise their opportunity. So all integration has to be flexible to accommodate not only the standard business processes but also the custom business processes that customers have adopted.

We also want to make sure that the investment that our customers are making to this integration is future-proof, so as we add new functionality from both sides, it’s more a matter of turning on a few switches, versus reimplementing the integration. So these are core tenets that we operate under.

ISAP: Why is integration so important in the procurement space, and what benefits does full integration yield for companies around procurement activities?

SA: Procurement has a two-sided model – we have a buyer and a supplier. With the Ariba Business Network, we have 2 million suppliers connected to the network, and just last year, we had over US$1 trillion going through the network. When you think about the integration, it has to work for both sides – for suppliers and the way they manage their systems, as well as for the buyers and how they manage their systems. So this is supercritical; it’s truly bidirectional integration for two sets of parties – buyers and suppliers – to integrate with ERP. So it’s more multipoint integration than traditional integration.

ISAP: A lot of other players are relying on open API structures at this stage. Why have you decided to go a different way with your integration approach?

SA: We have two modes at play – for SAP, we have a huge on-premise install base, and then we have S/4HANA, which is our cloud-based solution. Our integration is flexible – we have integration to both on-premise as well as cloud, and the infrastructure that we are building is on the cloud. So we have created what we call the Cloud Integration Gateway (CIG), which is a cloud-based product that can integrate with SAP and for that matter, other ERPs through the cloud, as well as through the on-premise side as well. So we wanted to have a very flexible approach in terms of where the investment exists today from the customer perspective, and where the investment is going to be in the future, and how that seamlessly transitions from on-premise to cloud. We wanted to make sure that customers don’t have to reinvent the wheel as they make that move. That’s why we have this hybrid strategy, and created the CIG that fulfils the promise of seamless integration.

ISAP: What do you see as the key challenges businesses are facing in terms of bringing together a host of cloud solutions as many are now, and making them all work together for the business?

SA: When we started talking to customers, what came up all the time at the top of the list is “We have made investments today, we are continuing to invest for tomorrow, we have all these different protocols and different systems; we don’t want to keep investing into integration every year or every time we want to avail ourselves of new functionality”.

The other thing is that especially on the cloud side, the innovation curve is much faster. We release software every month, every quarter; we add new functionality, and customers are very excited to avail themselves of this functionality. But the real problem in the past was that integration doesn’t catch up with the innovation. So what we have done is we have synchronised our release cycles with SAP, S/4HANA and Ariba, both from an application and network perspective, so that when new innovation is available, it’s automatically added to our integration. So there is no waiting for customers to absorb that innovation.

That’s the beauty of having early access to SAP products: we have the ability to synchronise releases across various products because we own a whole lot of those. So the absorption of innovation from the customer point of view is much sooner than it had been in the past with other vendors.

ISAP: That’s helpful for customers who are pretty much wall-to-wall SAP, but what about other customers – how does the integration work for them?

SA: We have over 100 integration points and we have over 5000 feeds that we integrate. With the Cloud Integration Gateway, that integration is available for other ERPs as well – for Oracle, for Peoplesoft and for Quickbooks, because we know there are some customers, especially on the SME side, and some suppliers with smaller supply base, that use lower-end ERPs. Having a cloud-based integration gateway means it’s not file-based. We go with the industry standard that Ariba actually pioneered 20 years ago, called CXML, which is a commerce standard which is adopted in the industry. That common standard helps us in exposing those integration points, in the procurement products as well as some of the newer innovations that we’ve done in supply chain, payments, supply chain financing – all those business processes are available as part of that integration story.

ISAP: What’s ahead from here for SAP Ariba?

SA: There will definitely be more business processes that we want to integrate more tightly. I think supply chain is a huge opportunity for us. Managing that whole supply chain end-to-end all the way from demand and forecasting to building the products, delivery and quality is a big opportunity for us, and we have invested quite a bit and we’ll continue to do that.

We have a fantastic B2B payment system that’s been adopted across SAP. This is making sure that wherever the payment is initiated, we have an end-to-end process covered in this payment process. We also want to extend it into the financing side, so today we have multisource financing companies that finance our suppliers and buyers – we want to have integration for those and will continue to take that global. Asia, Europe and South America have different requirements in terms of how to handle taxes and legalisation, so we want to accommodate business processes which are local to specific regions.

We also want to continue to expose our Cloud Integration Gateway as a platform for all kinds of integration, whether it’s the Internet of Things, blockchain, logistics, supply chain payments, finance – that’s where you will see a lot of innovation coming out, both from the product side as well as the integration side.

We want to make sure that both buyers and suppliers are realising the value by having this seamless integration. We want to connect various networks – whether they are pharma networks or healthcare or banking – seamlessly through our integration gateway as well. So the strategy and vision around integration is not just limited to ERP integration, it’s going beyond connecting the world and commerce across the globe for various trading partners in the industry.

SAP Ariba’s Cloud Integration Gateway, powered by SAP HANA Cloud Integration, is now available for all customers.

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As an SAP Ariba BPO partner, Premikati will use SAP Ariba’s technology to provide contract management services to both large enterprises and companies under $500 million in annual revenue.

“We have seen clients of all sizes and industries struggle with contract management,” said Marisol Buczynski Buchanan, CEO, Premikati. “Lack of tracking with respect to items such as expiration dates, renewal terms/price increases, service level agreements, notice provisions, and even counter signatures is all too common. With SAP Ariba, we can help them overcome these issues.”

Companies can be up and running in two to three weeks, according to Buchanan.

According to Premikati, the offering will enable businesses to automate and accelerate the entire contract lifecycle; standardise and control contract development; collaborate with all stakeholders; and strengthen operational, contractual and regulatory compliance.

“Contracts are the lifeblood of any organisation and managing them effectively can deliver strategic advantage,” said David Johnston, senior vice president, partner ecosystem, SAP Ariba.

“With SAP Ariba’s technology and Premikati’s contract management expertise, companies of all sizes can get on the road to automation and drive an efficient process that lowers both their costs and risk.”

Premikati is also a SAP silver partner.

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Published on The Briefings Direct Network, The Secrets of Highly Effective Procurement will cover the best practices that define source-to-pay excellence.

“Procurement today is a different game,” said Dana Gardner, principal analyst with Interarbor Solutions and host of the Briefings Direct series. “Once viewed as a back-office task, it has emerged as a key differentiator and driver of business value. And to execute it well requires totally new ways of thinking and acting.”

And there do seem to be some common practices among procurement top performers. According to a survey conducted as part of SAP Ariba’s Benchmark Program, which analysed more than US$350 billion in spend data across 3500 categories for companies connected to the Ariba Network, these top performers:

• Manage source-to-pay as an end-to-end process, not a series of discrete tasks;
• Have an integrated platform from which they manage all of their spend, not disparate point solutions;
• Leverage technology to fuel greater collaboration, not just to automate tasks; and
• Connect to networks to access intelligence, rather than just transact.

“As a result of their willingness to think outside the box and enable a technology-enabled, data-driven approach to procurement, these best-in-class outfits have more spend under management, drive greater savings and efficiencies, and are transforming their operations,” said Kay Ray Lee, director, value realisation, SAP Ariba.

The podcast is now online here.

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The solution will allow buyers connected to the Ariba Network to monitor global shipments in real time through a portal a portal that is continually refreshed with information on the status of each shipment along with notification of any delays. According to NTT DATA, the aim of the solution is to give buyers clear visibility into potential supply chain disruptions and be able to mitigate their impact.

“Increased regulation, globalisation, and changing competitive boundaries are redefining shipping and logistics as we know it – and in many cases, creating supply risk,” said Bhalchandra Bhopal, senior vice president, global SAP practice, NTT DATA. “In leveraging SAP Ariba’s Open Partner Ecosystem, NTT DATA can deliver an innovative solution through which supply chain organisations can minimise this risk and optimise their business outcomes.”

SAP Ariba’s Open Partner ecosystem allows companies to use standard based open APIs to extend SAP Ariba solutions, utilise pre-built solutions made by partners, and access self-service capabilities to create unique experiences.

Dinesh Shahane, chief technology officer, SAP Ariba, said the company is committed to innovation that will transform procurement.

“Through our open partner ecosystem, we can not only deliver these innovations faster, but empower our partners like NTT DATA to deliver new commerce services that drive value for their organizations, their customers and anyone connected to the Ariba Network.”

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“The world is in the midst of a digital transformation and China is at the forefront,” said Alex Atzberger, president, SAP Ariba. “We look forward to bringing the world’s leading cloud procurement solution to customers in China to speed their journeys and help them drive innovation and growth.”

China is experiencing growing demand for efficient solutions for businesses to better manage operations and connect with trading partners, and Ariba will provide Chinese customers a powerful digital platform to manage their commerce activities from end to end.

“As e-commerce continues to take hold in China, SAP Ariba provides a simple, open and smart way for Chinese companies to manage everything from contracts to payments all in one place,” said Mark Gibbs, global senior vice president of SAP SE and president of SAP Greater China.

“SAP Ariba’s market-leading solutions remove the complexity from business commerce and we believe they will enable Chinese customers to gain a competitive advantage in the digital marketplace.”

The announcement was made at the SAP Select event held in Beijing. SAP Ariba currently has over 500,000 customers in Asia.

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“For nearly two decades, executives across North America and Europe have been attending SAP Ariba Live to gather intelligence that enables them to think and operate in new and innovative ways,” said Grant Clinch, head of APJ, SAP Ariba. “We are thrilled to be bringing this unique forum to Singapore so that their peers in APJ can do the same.”

The conference will include content on how digital networks are transforming business functions including procurement, finance, sales and marketing, and IT. Procurement sessions will cover the full source-to-settle spectrum, transforming the source-to-pay process; finance professionals can learn how to run a more effective and collaborative payables process; sellers will learn to leverage digital marketplaces to connect with new business opportunities and manage existing relationships, and IT professionals will benefit from learning about SAP Ariba’s new solutions for direct materials sourcing and supplier risk management.

SAP Ariba Live Singapore will be held 29 August at the Marina Bay Sands, Singapore. To register, visit www.aribalive.com.

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Ariba Collaborative Sourcing Professional provides a single solution through which companies can drive an efficient digital source-to-contract process for direct materials.

“Direct materials sourcing carries a unique set of challenges – it is driven by production planning rather than requisitions, there are enormous variations between different industries in how it is done, it’s usually time critical, and it is executed across many different enterprise systems and processes,” said Bill McBeath, chief research officer, ChainLink Research.

“To do it well requires connecting the systems and processes that support procurement across the end-to-end process and dimensions of collaboration – from design, to planning and forecasting, execution, logistics/delivery, quality, and finally reconciliation/settlement – both internally and externally.”

Built on the Ariba Network platform, the solution integrates seamlessly with ERP and execution system to connect the people, processes and information required for procurement. While there are cost and efficiency benefits for managing spending on both direct and indirect materials from a single platform, according to SAP Ariba, the benefits of this integration include getting new products to market faster by integrating sourcing and product design teams, modelling product costings at the Bill of Material (BOM) level, tracking item costs across time, suppliers and BOMs to negotiate better savings, and speeding up sourcing and contracting with integrated master data across systems.

“Procurement has made great strides in indirect spend by leveraging technology to create a consumer-simple, yet compliant process to manage it,” said Tony Harris, general manager, direct procurement solutions, SAP Ariba. “With Ariba Collaborative Sourcing Professional, they can bring the same efficiency and simplicity to direct material categories and open the door to innovations that transform their business.”

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