SAP Ariba Pros and Cons
Updated December 09, 2025
SAP Ariba Pros and Cons
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with SAP Ariba
SAP Ariba is used by my client for both indirect and direct procurement. Ariba has streamlined the procurement process and it has also the customer with the supplier onboarding. The SLP module provides a unified dashboard for the vendor master record which holds all the vendor related information thereby mitigating the need for using multiple systems. The integration between the S/4HANA using CIG is seamless as it helps things get done in short span of time. My scope for the customer is to support them for both Supplier Onboarding, Help the customer to save money using RFPs and Auctions. The customer uses SAP Business Network for sending POs in case of direct procurement using SAP ERP
Pros
- Seamless integration with SAP ERP
- Unified Vendor Model within SAP Ariba SLP. One stop solution for vendor onboarding
- User friendly portal for Buying for an end user using Guided Buying portal
- Savings by using RFPs and Sourcing
Cons
- Providing customisation access go partners
- Enable simplified customisation
- Getting Ariba FedRamp Certified and other government certified
- At times Ariba is a bit rigid in terms of building new requirements
- Unified Vendor Model using SLP
- Guided Buying for end users to apply organisation policy
- Guided sourcing to streamline the whole sourcing process, as it streamlines and simply everything in one page
- Allowing contract module to be integrated with Icertis
- Business network provides a broader access to buyer organisation
- 15% savings on the cost due to simplified sourcing process as the complete turnaround time is reduced and helps with more competitive bidding
- 10-15% Lesser redundant supplier data
- 20% end users sticking onto the organisation policy using guided buying
- Cloud Solutions
- Integration with Other Systems
- Ease of Use
Integration with SAP ERP system is very seamless using Ariba CiG. This is the important factor as it helps to send both the master and transactional records from one system to another system seamlessly without a great amount of customisation. The Turnaround for integration substantially comes down with Ariba and SAP product as there is no need to manual mappings until there are no major customisation
Ariba currently is known because majority of the customer still use SAP as the back end ERP. As mentioned earlier, it’s easy to integrate Ariba with S/4HANA or ECC more seamlessly than any other system. In case of any other system the integration between multiple system becomes a major challenge
Do you think SAP Ariba delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with SAP Ariba's feature set?
Yes
Did SAP Ariba live up to sales and marketing promises?
I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process
Did implementation of SAP Ariba go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy SAP Ariba again?
Yes
Using SAP Ariba
1000 - The core IT users are less than 30. However, the number of end users using SAP Ariba is more than 4K. The customer is currently as a Life-Science customer and the end of end process mainly includes SLP, Sourcing and P2P or Guided Buying Solution. The end users are from various business functions or from different departments
10 - The main skill requires stakeholder management. As an IT consultant we mainly interact with Procurement Team for streamlining the business process and we also have the L1 Operation team who pre-dominate help end users with the non-catalog requisitions within the system. The major required is to have a fully fledged understanding of the Ariba modules along with its integration aspects.
- Service Procurement
- Indirect Procurement
- Direct Procurement through Business Network
- Supplier Onboarding
- RFI & RFPs
- Enhanced Supplier Collaboration
- Data-Driven Insights
- Sustainability Initiatives
- AI-Driven Procurement Automation
- Enhanced Supplier Risk Management
- Integration with IoT Devices
Evaluating SAP Ariba and Competitors
Yes - The customer which I have worked on have replaced their native solutions with SAP Ariba. I am unable to recall the name of the Native tool. The reason why they replaced of because they were unable to capture everything in one single place. SAP Ariba provides seamless integration of transactional documents with SAP ERP and for Supplier Onboarding it provides a unified place which has all the details. For Sourcing, it provides templates to capture the pricing information on a granular level and integrating Sourcing Module with native SAP ERP was also seamless. Hence, the customer went ahead with Ariba
The overall evaluation & selection of the product needs to be done based on the requirements and as per the current business process within an organization. SAP Ariba tool should be leveraged to streamline the process and make the life of end users easy in terms of Procuring good and services. In multiple scenarios customization within Ariba becomes a bottleneck and the TAT is also humongous for that reason. Along with new requirement, the cost is also on a higher side.
Using SAP Ariba
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | None |
- Placing an order in SAP Ariba using Guided Buying
- Submitting Supplier Request for Onboarding Supplier
- Creating Sourcing Events
- Doing Direct sOURCING EVENTS
- Adding new fields and customizing the solutions
- Integrating custom fields at times becomes dicey
- Configuring dynamic approval flow in SLP is difficult without user matrix
- Pre-packaged reports aren't user friendly
Yes, but I don't use it
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