SAP Ariba Live, the largest procurement and supply chain conference globally, is over, but the innovations, targets, and strategies announced are related to the present and future.

Top 10 Latest News of SAP Ariba Live 2019

SAP Ariba Live, the largest procurement and supply chain conference globally, is over, but the innovations, targets, and strategies announced are related to the present and future. 

Our SAP Ariba consultants couldn’t miss the event. They delved into theoretical and practical sessions and prepared a list of the most topical news from the Ariba world. 

1. SAP Ariba, SAP Fieldglass, and SAP Concur 

Now SAP Ariba, SAP Fieldglass, a cloud solution for external talent management and services procurement, and SAP Concur, a system that simplifies travel management, are working in tandem. The union of these solutions is demonstrated by a common user interface. It will be available in the third quarter of 2020. 

2. Partnership with Barclaycard is a key to quick payments

A payment service in Ariba Network allows making virtual payments via Barclaycard. Quick payments increase suppliers’ cash flows and contribute to the sustainability of their businesses. Buyers have additional time for payments, i.e., paying on credit terms. 

3. Procurement Operations Desk as the new functionality for SAP Ariba Sourcing and SAP Ariba Buying

With Procurement Operations Desk, you can customize the priority of tasks/deadlines and manage workload distribution.

The solution improves the transparency of interaction between employees and enables efficient procurement management processes. 

4. The PAULA chatbot for guiding users through the procurement process 

PAULA stands for Procurement Automated Learning Assistant. The chatbot was built with the SAP Leonardo framework, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. PAULA answers the questions from new users of the SAP Ariba system, e.g., “How to create a purchase requisition?”. Besides, the chatbot supports voice recognition. 

PAULA will also be used for getting accurate data quickly, including accounting information on certain line items in the requisition, requisition details, document status, etc. The chatbot uses dialogues and conversations for self-learning. 

This easy-to-use assistant will let driving down costs of trainings for new system users, shifting the focus from day-to-day to strategic activities, and reducing risks. 

5. Innovations in the SAP Ariba Strategic Sourcing Suite 

The innovations for the solution are powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Users will have an intelligent news feed. It covers displaying user-specific external news and recommendations based on their commodities and suppliers. 

Commodity forecasting will be available, too. Users will get proactive notifications about purchasing needs and sourcing activity recommendations during the creation of sourcing events. 

On top of that, there will be a chance to create an automated sourcing event from unstructured data (Excel, emails, or messages to a chatbot).

6. Increasing power of SAP Ariba Supply Chain Collaboration

The major update is the new functionality in the supplier’s account named product packaging support. Suppliers now follow the packaging specifications uploaded to Ariba by buyers. The label printing process has become easier, and automated packaging leads to saving time and resources for suppliers.

7. SAP Ariba integration with SAP Analytics Cloud

The integration is one of the new SAP solutions to improve data analysis. Data from the SAP Ariba applications are uploaded into a single database, and then different types of reports based on the data can be created.

8. SAP Ariba Intelligent Hub

This new service allows managing SAP Ariba production and test environments as well as API applications. Among the SAP Ariba Intelligent Hub benefits are easier management of the environments and data migration; app creation, configuration, and deployment using APIs; and security check.  

9. New SAP Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway tools

During the conference, SAP Ariba introduced the latest mapping opportunities, dynamic and custom routing, and a test suite. 

10. Payment Terms Governance as an example of SAP Ariba extensibility  

We proved that SAP Ariba extension is not a challenge. The Payment Terms Governance app created by LeverX is hosted on the SAP Cloud Platform and connected to SAP Ariba via API. The app’s users manage payment terms in a centralized way and monitor the accuracy of documents.