CoreIntegrator Workflow vs. SAP Ariba Procurement

I have found CoreIntegrator to work well for our needs as an Accounts Payable workflow solution. The system was implemented with very little internal technical assistance. It can be administered by a business user without a great deal of technical knowledge because the CI support staff is knowledgeable and helpful.

SAP Ariba is well suited for complicated procurement processes requiring lot of inter department interfacinng and comments and reviews at every stage. It is possible to maintain complete history of the procurement cycle and records inputs from all stakeholders- internal and external. It automatically creates a to do function on the system of the person at whose desk any issue remains unresolved.

• Integration to Great Plains
• Simple to use

• Customer Service. We have an incredible team that look after us.
• Listening. The team are receptive to ideas of how to improve the network and these ideas are often implemented.
• Standards. Providing a uniform set of rules enables us to onboard and engage quickly.

• The system administration is somewhat difficult for someone that is not highly technical.
• Deleted or removed items appear in search results.

• Integration with other tools is not very good. The APIs provided are not scheduled within the Ariba process and must use a middleware to send information back and forth between tools
• Customer support for configuration questions. The response time can be weeks or months waiting time and the response back is often unhelpful.
• Flexibility with company entities. With a large company with so many entities it is hard to structure and customize your suppliers into many entities. You often have to duplicate.

Incentivized

We are saving comprehensive cost of spend. We also foresee further saving when it would come to contracts management.

Incentivized

As an end user I tend to prefer modern interfaces. It may be good for the backend users in accounting, but for me it is obvious that all the email notifications and built in interface is lacking on the overall state of UI/UX in the industry. It is not the worst of course if compared to those of the biggest competitors though (company starting with "O").

Incentivized

Sometimes we receive slow responses.

The Good -

1. SAP Ariba support comes with multiple options. The standard support model for all customers is the shared service model where the SLAs are acceptable.
2. For customers with critical needs, a paid upgrade is offered in the form of 'Preferred support'. This paid service promises better SLAs and Best Practice literature and services from Ariba.

The Bad -

1. Some service issues get caught in between SAP Ariba support and SAP support. This triage may result in a loss of time for customers.

Incentivized

We didn't review another product because CoreIntegrator so perfectly met our needs.

Incentivized

I have and still use Coupa. Coupa is much less robust in comparison to Ariba. SAP Ariba Procurement has the ability to see what transactions have been sent, the ability to resend cXML Purchase Orders, see a history of what has happened with transactions, much more robust reporting capabilities, etc. SAP Ariba Procurement is 5-10 times better than Coupa in my opinion.

Incentivized

• Time saving outweighs the cost.
• Ease of use is so much better than most software solutions.

Incentivized

• Improving Broadspectrum's PIFOT for suppliers who have migrated to invoicing through Ariba.
• Provided a simple end-user interface to support PO creation, which has improved internal business process. This has led to good quality PO's being created upfront, which has reduced unnecessary re-work to ensure invoices are paid on time, and improved the businesses capability to report on real time commitment.