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jonesperson
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Continuing to drive forward with key innovations for customers remains a focus for the SAP Procurement team.  As part of the Q3 2208 release efforts we forge ahead on the journey to improve the customer experience in areas like supplier risk management, trading partner search, supplier data extraction, and many more!

Read more about new innovations in this blog and be sure to check out the entire list of over 100 innovations in the Release Readiness area of SAP Ariba Connect.

 

Highlights of the SAP Procurement 2208 Release

 

Supplier Risk – Residual risk calculation and management

Residual risk is best categorized as an output of the effectiveness of an organization’s controls against identified inherent risks of an engagement with a supplier.  The calculation updates in the 2208 release provide the ability for a buyer to control the effectiveness level method for residual risk calculation in each risk domain represented in an engagement. In addition, capabilities delivered include the ability to evaluate residual risk ratings for domains in an engagement, review engagement-level inherent and residual risk values to determine overall supplier-level risk ratings, and also use the calculated ratings from issues associated with a control to arrive at a residual risk for the risk domain.  A detailed demonstration of these risk identifying capabilities may be found here.


Supplier Risk – Residual risk ratings


 

Guided sourcing – Bid transformation scenarios

New support for bid transformation efforts via guided sourcing speeds the analysis and award process for sourcing activities.  Buyers are now empowered to create competitive sourcing events and include cost terms to calculate participant bids.  These terms help transform the bids using factors such as multipliers, adders, subtractors and the like.  Each of these new factors may be used individual or in combination to create added viewpoints on bid analysis and award options.  Catch a quick glimpse of this new capability in action here.


Guided sourcing – Bid transformation


 

Guided buying – Expanding capabilities to incorporate risk data

The ability to mitigate risk when purchasing non-catalog items or requesting a quote for an item is a powerful option now available to buyers.  A risk exposure graphic shows the level of risk associated with each supplier, displaying as low, medium, or high risk exposure.  This added visibility to supplier risk aids users in mitigating risk further by allowing configured policies which can trigger warning messages or invoke further purchasing/approval steps if the risk level for the supplier is too high.  Learn more about this capability by reviewing the demonstration here.


View of supplier risk profile in Guided buying


 

Guided buying – Search improvements

A number of improvements to the guided buying search capability are being delivered with the 2208 release.  The search results area has been redesigned to enhance the user experience when accessing different types of content.  Several examples of these changes include the search typehead now displays recent search information with the relevant buying channel to assist users in refining their search parameters dynamically.  The display of search results presents users with links to different buying channels which thereby segregates content, improving visibility to results.  These advances as well as others related to the search in guided buying may be explored further through this demonstration.


Comparison of search result items from catalog


 

For more information on SAP Procurement efforts, please visit:

  • Early Release Webcast Series here

  • Feature information portal (SAP Ariba Connect) available here

  • Help Portal Product Page for Procurement and Network

  • SAP Procurement Community: here

  • What’s New here