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 ability to perform online auctions and RFPs has real savings implications which are incremental to traditional approaches and otherwise would be difficult to obtain.
For the companies that I have worked with, Ariba Sourcing has automated processes and standardized the sourcing process. It ensures that sourcing projects are performed consistently across your Purchasing or Procurement groups.
Gaining access to the sourcing project by the supplier needs improvement. There is room for improvement when multiple users at the supplier have accounts on the Ariba Network. These suppliers will typically struggle gaining access to your sourcing event, which could cause confusion and could require additional resources on the buyer side to troubleshoot and plan for.
10 years.
No.
SAP Ariba Sourcing is scalable for most sourcing events, but has limitations for larger sourcing events that involve more than 100 suppliers.
Technical support is excellent at SAP Ariba. The help desk is normally very knowledgeable about technical questions.
My clients have used different solutions including ePS, Scanmarket, and SciQuest (Jaggaer). While SAP Ariba is known for having the most functionality for sourcing projects, it also can be the most complex. To avoid complexity and keep processes as simple as possible, most companies could be successful saving 20% or more from SAP Ariba Sourcing by only utilizing about 60% of what Ariba Sourcing offers.
Initial set up with SAP Ariba Sourcing is straightforward. However, there are strategic decisions that must take place as part of the configuration. Namely, what strategic sourcing process will you want to build for your sourcing projects or what approval flows do you want to create as part of your sourcing steps.
The subscription pricing will vary based upon the number of buyer users that you want to set up. Also, pricing considerations will be determined to some degree based upon the number of sourcing projects and the spending that you plan to perform per year within the solution.
My clients have also chosen other solutions for P2P (Procure-To-Pay) and S2P (Source-To-Pay), including Jaggaer, ePS, and Scanmarket.
Focus on adopting as much as possible from the solution out-of-the-box. Trying to customize every process that you currently have in a cloud-based environment can add unneeded complexity to your business for years to come.
