Sequel 3: What is the Sourcing Graphical search in SAP SRM 7.0 ehP2, what’s in it for me?

[tridip_chakraborthy]

1.0 Overview & Challenges

We would be discussing about the new Sourcing Graphical search introduced with the ehP2, this might not be something that you would appreciate, unless otherwise you have gone through the pain of being a sourcing professional / strategic buyer that had to pull out pages of data of how they had to handle the follow-on for the SOCO Shopping Carts/replicated Purchase requisitions work stream.

To sum up the challenges, here are some of the operational issues faced by sourcing professionals that would stand-up and appreciate this innovation.

1. Purchasers had to re-create searches each time they started the Sourcing application.
2. Purchasers had to input several fields to define their search criteria leading to usability complaints.
3. Overview of pending requisitions and easy access to most urgent / important requisitions was needed

2.0 What is new & what’s in it for me?

• You can use the graphical search in the Sourcing Cockpit to filter and search requirements based on selected categories.  The graphical search will represent the results in a pie-chart for a clearer view of sourcing events and nested search allow you to shortlist requisitions quickly and easily.

• The graphical search allows you to list, search, and assign sources of supply for external requirements based on the following grouping categories:
  • Priority, Delivery date, Product category, Preferred supplier, Purchasing group, Purchasing organization

• You can click a pie-chart segment to search the requisitions in that category and to process the documents accordingly.

• You can then personalize these searches by saving groupings, filters, and default criteria for future use.

Personally for me having met so many SAP Procurement customers, usability during the commencement of the Sourcing process was ideally the biggest challenge & I have witnessed customers doing it the wrong way outside of SAP with spread-sheets, written notes or even scampering from the source systems to help gather all the information before they made an informed sourcing decision based on priority/any other parameter that called for attention.

Business Value

I personally see the following benefits & business value of switching this feature on:

1. Purchasers can get better visibility into the requirements and arrive easily at a work list
2. Easier to perform repeated searches using saved searches.
3. More user friendly approach to process volumes of incoming requirements.

More….

Adding to this, there would be flexibility in decision making and ensuring that the sourcing professionals’ valuable time and skill is used into more core areas of negotiation & developing sourcing strategies. Though it looks like a tool that would benefit the operational buyer, I still feel that it’s also a valuable start condition for a strategic buyer to visualize the work-load of his team and also govern the process of streamlining the pain areas that result in long process lead-times for request intake & subsequent processing.

3.0 Snippets of how this looks inside SAP SRM 7.0 ehP2

I am truly excited having worked on the earlier versions that I can see what I get and stay closer to the concept of WYSIWYG real-time

A picture is a thousand words….so check it out for yourself…..

You can narrow down your search based on the Grouping Category & the filters provided.

4.0 How do I achieve it?

Activate Switch: SRM_702_SOURCNG_GRAPH_SEARCH is revertible.

1. You can activate the switch in customizing for SAP SRM under SRM Server ->Analytics à Activate/Deactivate Sourcing graphical search

Summary

1. Thanks for tuning into these sequels, am sure that with SAP SRM 7.0 EhP2, you will have more power in your hands as an SAP Procurement consultant to help deliver those go-to customer implementations. In our next blog, we will discuss more about the RFx creation from shopping cart before approval (Quick quotes) and some more innovations from the Streamlined sourcing processes Innovation bundle…so stay tuned. Before you head-out, please be aware about the various outreach channels for SAP Procurement

5.0) SAP Procurement social_media outreach channels

Hope to see you sign-up and follow our via all our Social Media Outreach channels

6.0) SAP Procurement handles & Hash-tags to follow