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GEP SMART vs Oracle Procurement Cloud vs SAP Ariba Procurement comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Procurement Software category, the mindshare of GEP SMART is 5.2%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle Procurement Cloud is 5.0%, down from 15.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP Ariba Procurement is 11.5%, down from 29.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Procurement Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP Ariba Procurement11.5%
Oracle Procurement Cloud5.0%
GEP SMART5.2%
Other78.3%
Procurement Software
 

Featured Reviews

CJ
Senior Product Manager at a university with 10,001+ employees
Doesn't require a background in analytics to run reports
SMART has been helpful for sourcing and public bids. For regulatory purposes, our university posts bids, depending on the scope of the bid. We get a lot of value out of SMART's ability to post to a public site and have suppliers see that information, register in the tool, and participate. SMART features for collecting information and its timeline capabilities are highly useful. Then on the contract side, the reporting capabilities are the most valuable. Our use case focuses primarily on post-execution and lifecycle management, so it's essential to be able to report accurately especially compliance-related reports. SMART is easy to use, especially when reporting. It isn't designed for a hardcore analyst. You don't need to have a background in analytics to run reports, which is huge. I realized I hadn't touched too much on the spending side, but we use SMART for all spending analytics, and any commodity manager procurement professional can go in and run a spending report. That was a business decision to restrict who can run reports since that data can be exported and used. But the reporting capabilities are incredibly easy to use.
KM
Associate Director Delivery at Apps Associates
Highly customizable, scalable and seamlessly integrates
Off late, most of my customers, where I see a trend, are long-standing heavily customized major customers on ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) on EBS who want to convert themselves to the cloud, and they expect us to provide the same level of customizations that EBS supports them in the cloud. So that's the challenge where we are currently. We have a few strategic advisory accounts like that, and we are evaluating those customizations to see how we can plug them as part of the solution offering so that the customer retains their current custom behavior and they don't have to deal with too many changes with their users. And that's the biggest change that we are working on. And there is a bundle of such initiatives that we do internally. Custom roles are one such thing. There are several areas of improvement. In the procurement cloud, we have today the landed cost management, where there's a lot of flexibility, which has been given on the cloud side in terms of costing. So the license and pricing have become a little complex area. And then auto management has completely changed in the cloud, the way the pricing strategy has been. It's been more complex and more flexible in the cloud. So that's the second area where we see challenges. These two, plus yes, now with self-service procurement, the dynamics have changed in global procurement, where the corporate will do the billing and invoicing, and we can do it from any big use, placing purchase orders and all that, the consolidation and the dynamics of testing. So these are some of the things which have greater flexibility, but at the same time, there is complexity in terms of implementation. We try to implement everything within the same window of the same customer window of six months. In future releases, I would like to see the idea of automating the period close process, which would be beneficial for sustenance after go-live. It is more like sustenance, both go live. If there is a mechanism where the period close can be automated, or it can be if the product can come up with a dashboard specifically for that, which ties with the sequence of the sub-ledgers, what are the conflicts to close the sub-ledger areas to facilitate and close the ledger area? Which consumer buying? That's one initiative or one idea that I'm thinking about. There are quite a few like that, which are more from the sustenance standpoint, more than the implementation standpoint.
Argy Soudi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Procurement Consultant at Ps digital tenders limited
Has connected procurement and contracts efficiently while setup and support still require improvements
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.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"I love it because everything is done within the contract module. The previous tool that we had really acted more as a repository, whereas this is the lifecycle. Once a business owner gets to the point where they want to enter into a contractual relationship with a party, from that point, including the drafting of it through to the signature on it, it covers the lifecycle. It's from the beginning to the end to even the archiving. It's all done within the tool, including e-signature."
"In terms of ease of use, GEP has done a lot of work through its enhancements over the years to make the user experience more intuitive. There is a more standard-Amazon-like experience, where manuals and tutorials are not really required, simply because the user experience and what's on the screen are pretty intuitive."
"The sourcing module is a place we can always go to find all the information we submitted to a vendor and what they submitted back to us, and it is really meaningful and effective in getting that information out to the vendors."
"We operate with three different systems that input data. The fact that GEP consolidates all that information into one place is a big deal for us. It streamlines that data for us."
"The basics of what we use it for and what the product offers work really well for us in terms of contract creation, from beginning to end."
"In summary, using this solution benefits our organization through cost savings, better efficiency, improved transparency, and having information archived."
"SMART's source-to-pay feature has helped us undergo a digital transformation."
"Among the most valuable features are the ability to send out purchase orders, create catalogs, and accept invoices through procurement. And the reporting function is robust."
"Oracle is suitable for those large enterprises that heavily rely on customizations."
"Salesforce provides me with the ability to create reports based on various parameters."
"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."
"The best features are the ease of use and the workflow management that allows me to understand every step in the approval process so that I can forecast the time through my request and its approval."
"SAP Ariba Procurement has impacted my organization in many important ways that have been prolonged benefits."
"SAP Ariba's Sourcing cloud based solution has the greatest quantifiable ROI of its solutions, which typically occurs within the first six months after acquisition for most companies."
"The PunchOut functionality is fantastic as it makes shopping very easy."
"I like the guided buying features."
"Ariba allows us to manage our suppliers seamlessly."
 

Cons

"Quite frankly, we're tired of informing GEP. They should be scrubbing from the left and right and from top to bottom to make sure that anything that they're releasing is fully tested."
"GEP's goal, at least during our integration, is to get through it, not necessarily get it right."
"Very recently, they implemented a customer success team to manage our expectations and communicate them to their technical team. That function is relatively new and some work needs to be done to build that connection so that it's a little more seamless."
"Tech support could use a little bit more work."
"For sourcing, we do see bugs from time to time."
"One of the areas where they could do better is by creating more standard templates when it comes to IT cost."
"I'd like to see drag-and-drop reporting. They have the old model for reports where you have to click the "run" button. The thing runs and then you have to export it to PowerPoint."
"We had a lot of challenges and disagreements with SMART. It's been a long road, for sure, on the contract side."
"Off late, most of my customers, where I see a trend, are long-standing heavily customized major customers on ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) on EBS who want to convert themselves to the cloud, and they expect us to provide the same level of customizations that EBS supports them in the cloud. So that's the challenge where we are currently."
"SAP could make it easier for people to become SAP Ariba consultants within the SAP ecosystem."
"They should make the solution more user-friendly."
"Salesforce is expensive, with a subscription-based model."
"Ariba Procurement tends to integrate best with other SAP products and is harder to work with if you have non-SAP products in your architecture."
"The SAP portion of the procurement is not always obvious or user friendly."
"Salesforce is expensive, with a subscription-based model."
"Integration: SAP Ariba's integration has not matured yet, there is lot of scope for improvement in terms scenarios, error handling, data update intervals, etc."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If our organization could use it as a full-fledged solution, then it would be valuable and give a return on investment. However, since we are not currently using it as a full-fledged solution, even facing some bugs and problems with the synchronization with some of the internal software, we are not able to use it in a full-fledged manner."
"My advice is to think wisely when it comes to estimating the number of licenses that you will require. If you settle on a number too early and you need additional ones, then the extra licenses might be quite expensive."
Information not available
"The licensing cost depends on the customer."
"The license is expensive."
"It is an expensive solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Energy/Utilities Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Transportation Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
7%
Energy/Utilities Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise14
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

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What needs improvement with SAP Ariba Procurement?
At the moment, I don't have any specific reasons for improvement areas in SAP Ariba Procurement. The main improvement...
What is your primary use case for SAP Ariba Procurement?
I am a customer of this tool, and I use SAP Ariba Procurement for my regular procurement roles. This software is used...
What advice do you have for others considering SAP Ariba Procurement?
In managing supplier relationships and mitigating risks, SAP Ariba Procurement has a very strong role to play. It giv...
 

Also Known As

SMART by GEP
Procurement Cloud
Ariba Procurement
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Exxon Chevron Macys
BUYDEEM, Capgemini, Asahi Refining
Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT)
Find out what your peers are saying about GEP SMART vs. SAP Ariba Procurement and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
886,077 professionals have used our research since 2012.