Item: SAP Ariba
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I am the System Admin for Ariba Guided Buying and Buying & Invoicing. The particular use case is our end users who buy technology items and Office equipment to do their jobs.

Pros and Cons

Req Approval and Workflow to PO creation & touchless Invoicing.
Category (UNSPSC) Management.
Basic Reporting.

Need for kitting in Guided Buying, so vendors can group multiple products together within CIF catalog options.
For Level 1 catalogs, allow for multiple UNSPSC or Keywords to resolve to catalog upon search.
Make it easier for Suppliers to create/integrate/maintain Level 2 catalogs, so Buyers can best expose their items in Guided Buying search. A lot of our preferred vendors, including Re-sellers & small local businesses, do not have the means, capabilities, or desire to maintain Level 2 catalogs... limiting/deleting opportunities for them. The introduction of the new Amazon Business "Spot Buy" feature brings the risk of those (smaller than Amazon) suppliers slowly losing business.
With the Team Buying feature, allow for internal teams who do a lot of Buying On Behalf Of to have flexibility in who does the Receiving on the item... as it is still limited to the one original Requester/Preparer.

Most Important Features

Guided Buying ease of use.
Catalog maintenance & flexibility.
Touchless Invoice processing, limiting the exceptions.

Return on Investment

Easier interface to purchase goods, than what we had before.
Touchless Invoice processing.
Exposure to more vendor opportunities.

Usability

There are opportunities to address the earlier pain points I documented.

Key Differentiators

Product Features
Product Reputation

It was the end-to-end Source to Pay solution.

Key Insights

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

The platform lends itself best built for the Manufacturing industry, and it would be great if they considered the scenario of many multiple users buying 1-3 items at a time with great frequency (think of new hires in a company that just need the same equipment to do the job).. other than a smaller set of power users buying a high quantity of items.

Consistent & Simple User Experience is the goal!

Overall Satisfaction with SAP Ariba Procurement