SAP aims to simplify spend management with copilot

New services for Ariba and Business Network

SAP also introduced the new software service SAP Ariba Intake Management that's designed to drive more adoption of Ariba, as well as a new subscription service for SAP Business Network to help suppliers on the network find buyers.

Ariba Intake Management provides a single interface for procurement inquiries and status visibility, Swaminathan said. The application orchestrates information from Ariba and can integrate across a company's systems through the SAP Business Technology Platform, SAP's development and integration environment.

"This is for an organization that has both seasoned users and new users as every CPO [chief procurement officer] is struggling to drive procurement adoption," he said.

Ariba Intake Management is expected to be available in the first quarter of 2025.

The new Business Network Service, Promote, is designed to help suppliers differentiate themselves and find buyers, according to SAP.

Millions of suppliers are doing business on the Business Network, so standing out can be a challenge, Swaminathan said. Promote enables suppliers to gain insights on how to define their profiles to improve how they get selected in a request for proposal or sourcing process. Right now, only buyers have visibility into the RFP or sourcing process, he said.

Suppliers can determine, for example, how many situations across the network's transactions resulted in a particular supplier recommendation, allowing them to adjust their profile accordingly, he said.

"This could be not having the right sustainability certificates, for example," Swaminathan said. "There's a lot more visibility for the supplier to understand better how to play well with the network."

Promote is a subscription service that's expected to be available in the first quarter of 2025, with pricing to be determined.

More details needed

Procurement is a popular use case for generative AI and the added capabilities to SAP Ariba will help customers with sustainability, contract efficiency and buyer-supplier relationship management, said Ray Wang, an analyst at Constellation Research.

Ariba Intake Management makes particular sense, Wang said.

"Given the transaction volume in SAP Ariba, anything to improve onboarding will be helpful," Wang said.

The focus on generative AI features for Intelligent Spend applications is expected, but customers need to approach them carefully, said Jon Reed, analyst and co-founder of Diginomica, an enterprise industry analysis firm.

"GenAI is not cheap and SAP's GenAI pricing is not always easy to grasp," Reed said. "Also, to get good enterprise results with GenAI, we need to see how this plays out on live projects with customer data."

However, procurement and spend are process-heavy areas in an enterprise, and steps toward automation as well as ease-of-use for casual users and new out-of-network suppliers are steps in the right direction, he said.

"If SAP's GenAI features for spend management and the SAP Business Network help customers toward these goals, they will be welcomed," Reed said.

Jim O'Donnell is a senior news writer for TechTarget Editorial who covers ERP and other enterprise applications.