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My use cases mainly involve using SAP Ariba Procurement for sourcing and contracting, running RFPs, RFIs, processing the contracts through all approvals, reviews, and signatures. I'm currently doing a full redesign, rebuild, and reimplementation of contracts, and I've just rolled out Guided Sourcing to basically the global organization.
The best thing about SAP Ariba Procurement, in comparison to a lot of its competitors, is that if the company has someone who knows how to configure it, they can do a lot of the process building themselves. In my last company, we used Icertis, and if you wanted any configuration done in it, you had to get Icertis themselves to do it, losing control over how you designed and implemented changes into the process and system.
Whereas in SAP Ariba Procurement, if you've got someone who knows the system and you can give them the admin rights, you can build whatever processes you want. The only thing you really need SAP Ariba Procurement for is if you need extra metadata fields; you need them to add in the metadata fields, but then the rest of it you can do yourself. Most of its competitors don't offer that level of configurability, making you reliant on a third-party organization for any configuration changes. Additionally, it's actually priced lower than many competitors because, technology-wise, it might not be as advanced, but it's priced accordingly.
There's always room for improvement in SAP Ariba Procurement. On the sourcing, it could be easier to import the documents you want, so if you want items to be bid on, it could be a bit easier to import that from a spreadsheet. It's currently not the most user-friendly of processes.
On the contracts, I can't think of anything that needs improvement. If you're just using it to manage a process flow for a draft contract, it's perfectly adequate. One thing that could be improved is the way you interact with the supplier; if you draft a contract, unless you have contract authoring, which has its own problems, you can send the contract from the system to the supplier, but the supplier must reply by email, and then the user has to upload the latest version. That kind of process could be improved so you don't need contract authoring to do the redlining.
On the whole, it does what it's meant to do.
I've been using SAP Ariba Procurement for probably about 14 years.
The stability of SAP Ariba Procurement is not bad. It doesn't often fail, and it's quite reliable. It's very rare to have days where you can't do anything in it because it's not working; I couldn't tell you the last time that happened. It is pretty robust and reliable.
In terms of scalability, SAP Ariba Procurement has been used globally in my last company, managing about 300,000 contracts through it. The quantity of events or contracts you can put through it is limitless. Once you've built the process to handle it, you can use it for however many events and contracts that you want. Currently, NSG, where I am at the minute, has done 30,000 contracts in 12 years, while BMS managed 300,000 in five years, so it can handle both effectively.
The customer support team is generally good most of the time. Most of the time, the support is pretty good; however, you do occasionally have a ticket where someone picks it up and they really don't know what they're doing, which can be frustrating, but I'd say that's more uncommon. Typically, when you raise a ticket, the support you get is pretty good.
I'd probably rate their support a seven.
Positive
In my last company, we used Icertis, and if you wanted any configuration done in it, you had to get Icertis themselves to do it, losing control over how you designed and implemented changes into the process and system.
Regarding pricing, from what Absolut told me, it is priced according to the fact that it's not the most technologically advanced tool. For NSG, for sourcing and contracts, I think they pay in the hundreds of thousands a year, maybe two or three hundred thousand pounds, but I'm not certain on that.
The contracts in SAP Ariba Procurement are fairly easy to use, while the sourcing takes a bit of getting used to. We just rolled it out, and I do have to sit with many of the end users who start using it because they just can't figure it out. The sourcing does take a bit of getting used to, but the contracts are fairly straightforward. There's not much you can really do wrong in the contract process, although people do get it wrong. Once you've done it a few times, people pick it up; we have a couple of people in the office who have used it extensively and they know what they're doing.
The benefits of using SAP Ariba Procurement are that it leaves an audit trail. If anyone wants to look at how a sourcing event went, who bid on it, and what the bids were, you can see it. For contracts, you can see who approved, reviewed, and signed it, giving a history of who did what. If someone fiddles something they shouldn't, you can generally find out how they did it, so the audit trail is great. The reporting is quite good; if you want a full list of all your contracts, it's easy to generate that report. The search function on contracts is pretty good, but not quite as good on sourcing. If you want to find a contract, there are various criteria you can search on.
I set a template up for sourcing for someone in India who was previously doing all his sourcing events by email and struggling to track everything, and now he manages everything in a full project within SAP Ariba Procurement, where all relevant information is easily stored and accessible.
I would recommend it to other people. If a company is going to use SAP Ariba Procurement, I would advise them to ensure they have either a consultant or a member of staff who's worked with it before and knows how to configure it, as you can save a lot of money by configuring the processes yourself rather than paying SAP to do it.
I rate SAP Ariba Procurement six out of ten.
What I find best about SAP Ariba Procurement is the ease of connecting contracts, POs, and the procurement part, which is most useful. It is not just usable as a standalone; the connection of the whole system has been more useful over the years.
SAP Ariba Procurement is worth the money as a tool because it connects all departments in one. It functions similarly to Salesforce where you can plug in and out different components.
Support could be faster for critical issues with SAP Ariba Procurement.
When patching happens and new releases come out, it can be hit and miss, though mostly it remains reliable. The on-time response is 99.9999%, but the main issue over the years has been with releases and patching.
The initial setup of SAP Ariba Procurement is not straightforward. We have been trying to set it up for two and a half years for the council I work with. The personal account login is ready-made and allows landing page adjustments, but the overall software implementation can take forever and requires multiple teams to work on it.
I have been using SAP Ariba Procurement for about a couple of years since my first experience in 2011, which was simpler, with a company in Leeds, specifically in Castleford. Then I used it for a couple of years with several Council, and now since 2023, I have been trying to implement it with Gloucestershire County Council.
When patching happens and new releases come out, it can be hit and miss, though mostly it remains reliable. The on-time response is 99.9999%, but the main issue over the years has been with releases and patching.
The scalability of SAP Ariba Procurement is strong, as it is easy to adjust between big or small implementations because it is all about licensing.
Support could be faster for critical issues with SAP Ariba Procurement.
Their support rating really depends on the instance. We have had instances where it was a two, and instances where it was a ten, so I would rate it at a mid-range six.
Neutral
The initial setup of SAP Ariba Procurement depends on the implementation partner. We have been trying to set it up for two and a half years for one of the councils I work with. The personal account login is ready-made and allows landing page adjustments, but the overall software implementation can take forever and requires multiple teams to work on it.
SAP Ariba Procurement is overall an easy tool to use, but you need to have training because while it is user-friendly, the choices are not obvious. It is all about understanding how it works—you need a helping hand to start with, and then you can take over.
I would recommend SAP Ariba Procurement to other people. You need a lot of time to get it set up, but once it starts flowing, it is 99.9% effective. You may struggle with support, but they are changing a few things, so it should be fixed. Additionally, it has many benefits, as it can help your suppliers as much as you. Because we are a public organization, the supplier accounts are free for the suppliers.
Regarding pricing, I have only purchased it via tenders because I work for the public sector. They are among the expensive options in the market like Oracle and Salesforce
My overall rating for SAP Ariba Procurement is 8 out of 10.
