SAP Business Network 2105 Release - What's New?

[arunthiyagaraja]

This blog post provides an overview of key Innovations in the  2105 Release of SAP Business Network Solutions.

On May 21, 2021, we released  exciting new business network innovations for our customers including the introduction of SAP Business Network ,our first step towards our vision to unify today's fragmented supply chain into unified, collaborative and intelligent networks .In the 2105 Release the vision takes shape by bringing all new enhancements to the supplier experience on Ariba Network.

Let me share some of my key highlights of the SAP Business Network 2105 Release.

1. New Experience for Suppliers with the launch of the Unified Trading Partner Portal
   The Ariba Network supplier home page has been redesigned to elevate the experience for the suppliers with the launch of the SAP Business Network Trading Partner Portal, with simplified navigation, an overview of transactions and insights. The Trading Partner Portal also includes a new Transaction Workbench which is a highly customizable page that allows users to get a quick overview of transaction documents that need their attention. The Inbox and Outbox have been replaced with object-oriented menus, with objects logically grouped based on business process.

Watch the Video to learn more about the new trading partner experience

2. Improved Supplier Onboarding
   The registration experience introduces a more streamlined onboarding for both existing suppliers and net-new suppliers. With SAP Business Network it introduces a unified network experience for all trading partners starting with the suppliers.

The new supplier onboarding includes two different workflows: the first flow is when a buyer invites a supplier to establish a business relationship, the second flow is when a supplier initiates a relationship (walk-up). This makes the supplier registration process easier to navigate and understand.

In addition to the refreshed look and feel, a new universal registration landing page, buyer-branded invitation messages, improved navigation, augmented search for existing accounts and improved communications  are key aspects of the capability.

3. SAP Ariba Supplier Mobile App
   The supplier mobile  app has been enhanced with the ability to create new accounts and manage trading relationships including Sign up for a new Ariba Network account directly from the mobile app and to View, accept and dismiss the relationship requests from potential trading partners

• Services Procurement with Ariba Network ,SAP Fieldglass & S/4 HANA

This scope item enables an efficient process for the procurement of services between the purchaser and suppliers.

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   1. Supplier can receive  purchase orders with a mix of materials and services with the expected service delivery window, material quantity, service information related products or services and other information required to support the fulfillment of the order.
   
   
   2. Suppliers have the  ability to submit timesheets in SAP Fieldglass solutions which are posted to Ariba Network as service entry sheets (SESs).
   
   
   3. Buyers can receive electronic order confirmations from suppliers in Ariba Network which are in turn sent to the respective buyer in SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
   
   
   
   

• The new integrated capability between S/4 HANA , Ariba Network and Fieldglass provides an efficient and cost-effective streamlined procurement processes as collaboration between buyers and  suppliers ,ensures highly automated processes for the service procurement, Perform real-time monitoring of the service fulfilment, Monitor purchase order items with analytical list page & handle service provider on-boarding and service task management in scope and service.

• RFQ Enhancements on Ariba Network :Integration of Discovery Postings with Central Procurement.

With the Automation of Central Procurement Quotes with Ariba Network, this feature introduces the required data element changes in Quote Request and Quote Message cXML’s to seamlessly integrate Central RFQ (cRFQ) coming from SAP S/4HANA Cloud Central Procurement Hub via SAP Cloud Integration Gateway.

• Early Payment & Discounting Improvements for Suppliers

The early payment and discounting capability has been improved to help you more easily access, review, and accept offers. You can now download and print offers as PDF and choose to receive a daily digest of early payment offers.

• Supply Chain Collaboration: Configurable Attributes on Collaborative Planning Process.

This feature allows buyer administrators to define new attributes for planning items. Attributes provide information about Material part locations to further refine the data and plan at a more granular level based on business requirements. Configurable attributes streamline the collaboration between Suppliers and Buyers and brings agility and additional level data flexibility for the Enterprise planning structure.

Additional Capability to define Planning Views based on this configuration is planned for   later this year to further enhance the collaboration with the flexibility to configure the planning content displayed for each planning record, material and supplier. Customers can now tailor their planning collaboration on Ariba Network to perfectly fit their  business processes.

• Supply Chain Collaboration: Order Confirmation Approval Process Enhancements

With the enhancements to the order confirmation deviation approval process, now buyers can approve or reject deviations from an order after executing an approve and update action for an item from the same order. This capability ensures the fulfillment process is not interrupted in case of a delay in sending the change order to Ariba Network.

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   1. Suppliers are now able to skip the creation of order confirmation when the order confirmation deviation approval process is enabled.
   
   
   2. Buyers can select/deselect all deviations from a page to quickly approve them or reject them in a single step.
   
   
   3. A report with approved and rejected deviations is also now available for buyers. This information is required for audit purposes.
   
   
   
   

• SAP Logistics Business Network: Standard applications for Delivery and Shipment Tracking

Customers can now leverage the global track and trace option for SAP Logistics Business Network. We provided standard apps and tracking models to facilitate fulfilment tracking of inbound delivery information for purchase orders in real time and enabled extensibility for customers to add user-defined fields in tracked processes or to add user-defined event types. Customers can monitor the real-time execution status of shipments and freight documents from SAP S/4HANA and report events manually.

• SAP Asset Intelligence Network: Collaboration on Work Order Operations.

AIN Customers can connect multiple EAM back-end systems to the network and utilize all their assets and equipment for collaboration scenarios. Collaboration on Workorder Operations allows maintenance planners to share their work order operations with service planners and  provides contractors with access to all the information they need to execute work safely and efficiently.

• Ariba Network: Procurement data analytics for Ariba Network Buyers
  The new feature uses the power of SAP Analytics Cloud for an Embedded Analytics experience for Ariba Network Buyers. The analytics content allows Buyers to help measure and understand related spend trends and trading partner activity and to provide a consolidated view of multi-ERP data.
  
  
  
  1. Spend Trend Header level User stories for Purchase Order and Invoice spend
  
  
  2. Seamless integration with SAP Analytics Cloud for permission changes in Ariba Network
  
  
  3. Automatic SAP Analytics Cloud tenant creation and configuration
  
  
  
  

• SAP Logistics Business Network: Insights into logistics performance through KPI visibility

This capability allows shippers to get insights into your service providers' performance across the supply chain based on real-time performance monitoring, identify process deficiencies and performance bottlenecks by drilling down to the details of the performance from various dimensions and improve your service level response and performance by monitoring.

This video shows how logistics operation managers use intelligent insights in SAP Logistics Business Network to monitor, manage and streamline their supply chain execution in a real-time manner.

Intelligent insights, is a highly-customizable data visualization and reporting platform in SAP Logistics Business Network that presents real-time insights on your supply chain execution. For more information, see https://help.sap.com/viewer/product/SAP_LBN_II_OPTION/LBN/en-US

We hope you enjoy the new capabilities in this release .To learn more about SAP Business Network visit http://sap.com/businessnetwork