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GEP SMART vs SAP Ariba Procurement comparison

Why PeerSpot?
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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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Automation Anywhere
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
668
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (2nd), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (2nd), Process Mining (1st), Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (1st), Agentic Automation (1st), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (2nd), AI Legal & Compliance (1st), AI Finance & Accounting (2nd), AI Procurement & Supply Chain (1st)
GEP SMART
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Procurement Software (3rd), Contract Management Software (8th)
SAP Ariba Procurement
Average Rating
7.6
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Procurement Software (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

Nadeem K. - PeerSpot reviewer
Rpa Developer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Automation has freed teams from repetitive finance and supply tasks and supports global operations
In the current organization, we had trouble initially because I think the documentation and support could be better than what it is now. This is one difference between Automation Anywhere and other RPA tools such as UiPath. In UiPath, if you have an issue, you go to the UiPath website and search for it, and you get lots of help materials. In Automation Anywhere, you do not get exactly what you are looking for. You get a very large number of results when you search for something, and from this large result set, you have to filter out what you need, or only partial information will be available. User handbooks are available for each product. In that regard, I would say Automation Anywhere is lagging compared to other RPA tools. It is difficult to get hold of their customer support team. I want to clarify that it is not a matter of us building logic on Automation Anywhere and it failing. When it is a product-related issue, they have to give us support because we only know how to develop within Automation Anywhere. We do not know how to fix Automation Anywhere itself. Whenever we have an issue, trying to get in touch with them always takes three to four business days.
it_user1709418 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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

"The most valuable feature of our solution is the cognitive computing because that is coming onto stream a lot faster than you would think. What used to be in the middle of, "Can this be done or not?", is becoming, "It can be done." We are getting some incredible straight through processing rates with AR around healthcare and financial services."
"Our first automation removed manual work from employees, so they are now able to more quickly product quality work."
"With Automation Anywhere, what used to take us two days now takes us twenty minutes."
"AA helped our clients to achieve their goals faster and more efficiently, also reaching ROI very quickly."
"Automation Anywhere offers the capability of integrating the DLL files with meta bot and hence the developer can use DLL files to connect to applications likes outlook, SAP, etc"
"It is easy to learn and easy to deploy. That is the best part compared to the other RPA solutions available in the market. Automation Anywhere is easier than UiPath and Blue Prism."
"Before Automation Anywhere, the insurance companies used to transfer data manually from one app to another, but after introducing them to automation the speed and accuracy have been outstanding."
"Most of the features of Automation Anywhere (AA) are good, but one big feature which I really like is its OCR (optical character recognition) feature."
"The spend module is really amazing and lightning-fast. It can give even the most novice of analysts access to the information needed and the ability to tweak it the way they want to see it. It has a lot of flexibility."
"The one we use the most is the sourcing module... It's really easy to use. You don't have to train vendors. You can add a new vendor at any time, and that vendor will get an email saying, "You've been selected to participate in our RFP, and you do X to get your ID set up." That works really well."
"On the spend side, it's integrated with our accounting system and has bimonthly uploads of data. So we have pretty current spend information that we can access and build reports on."
"The most valuable features are the sourcing and tendering processes."
"We have absolutely seen ROI; we track all of our savings, but it allows us to do a lot more."
"The biggest selling point for us was having the contracts repository centralized for both systems. People are able to search for a contract. Typically, before they go out to bid or engage with a supplier, procurement folks come into GEP SMART and they search for a contract and check to see if there is an existing contract in place."
"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."
"It's user-friendly, in terms of the design of the tool."
"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."
"SAP Ariba Procurement has impacted my organization in many important ways that have been prolonged benefits."
"The PunchOut functionality is fantastic as it makes shopping very easy."
"Salesforce.com stands out as the leading ERP solution in the industry."
"We made custom enhancements to suite our business process."
"It is one of the best tools in the market."
"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."
"Ariba allows us to manage our suppliers seamlessly."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement when this application is used in a Citrix-based environment."
"I would like to see a comment feature that allows you to embed comments/notes into an action sidebar, without having to actually take up a line of code in order to write such a statement."
"The capability of understanding and extracting documents is not very good."
"It would be great if video analytics could be brought in as a third-party product integration or on the Automation Anywhere platform. I would like the video analytics to be integrated within the next two years. Right now, most people are using third-party tools. Video can be translated into an image and information can be picked up from that, then translated into meaningful insights to make decisions."
"Automation Anywhere is easy to use, even if you lack technical skills. People without deep technical expertise can easily develop scenarios."
"Automation Anywhere could assist in this transition."
"It may sound a little funny or weird, but one thing that we are thinking is we have to go to various websites and pick up relevant data from various websites using the bot."
"Automation Anywhere has some limitations."
"Tech support could use a little bit more work."
"The manuals, especially the ones for the suppliers, are currently available only in English. If these can also be translated into different languages, that would be excellent."
"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."
"We didn't like their dashboard initially, but they responded to that very well."
"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."
"One of the areas where they could do better is by creating more standard templates when it comes to IT cost. IT cost has various components to it and if I want a vendor to be able to reply about cost related to IT, I would have to create that template. If I want them to tell me the hardware costs, the software costs, the professional services costs, the cloud or subscription costs, etc., I would have to build that template myself. Once I built it, I could save it and use it again and again. But sometimes building a template takes a lot of time."
"Their contracts module is kind of clunky and It took a while for them to correct some of the basic functionality, some of the "Contract Management 101" functions, but it seems to be coming around. It wasn't working the way we'd expected."
"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."
"During the initial setup process of SAP Ariba Procurement, there were a couple of challenges integrating the same system on our SAP platform."
"SAP could make it easier for people to become SAP Ariba consultants within the SAP ecosystem."
"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."
"Gaining access to the sourcing project by the supplier needs improvement."
"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."
"I would like to see more reports coming out of Ariba and more insights because it has to work in connection with SAP. So unless I run SAP and Ariba, I have to run. I am not able to see the utility of Ariba."
"I would like the solution to be more automatic."
"The SAP portion of the procurement is not always obvious or user friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is affordable for us."
"Complaints are generally about the cost of IQ Bot, which is higher than its competitors. The base model’s pricing is comparable to other platforms with attended, unattended, and IDP capabilities as well."
"Licensing for Automation Anywhere (AA) is paid on a yearly basis. Out of all the RPA tools, it has the most value for money, e.g. what you pay is what you get."
"The Community Edition is a good offering from the company."
"Licensing costs range from $50,000 to $200,000."
"We were required to purchase licenses and bot runners, which determined the permissible run times for the bots."
"Its cost is good."
"In the Indian market, I feel that for mid-size companies, such as ourselves, that having multiple bots costs a lot. If Automation Anywhere wants to expand in the Indian market, they will need to look at their pricing."
"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."
"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."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The licensing cost depends on the customer."
"The license is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
University
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business162
Midsize Enterprise86
Large Enterprise566
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It depends on your use case. Is it simply to automate a couple of processes? Is it to augment a human team? AA is ver...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
From my experience using AA tool, it depends on the applications that you want to automate, because there some applic...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It is a highly preferred RPA tool. You can check my Automation Anywhere Review to know more.
Ask a question
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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

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)
SMART by GEP
Ariba Procurement
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
Exxon Chevron Macys
Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT)
Find out what your peers are saying about GEP SMART vs. SAP Ariba Procurement and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.