Procurement in SAP Business Suite 7 Innovations 2010
Contract compliance, supplier management, transparency, and increased Return on Investment have been key topics of recent customer conversations, so Procurement in SAP Business Suite 7 Innovations 2010 (I2010) will not disappoint. In this blog, I will present an overview of the new features and functions that will be coming soon to our on-premise Procurement customers in SRM 7.0 Enhancement Pack 1 and ECC 6.0 Enhancement Pack 5. In this Business Suite release, we strengthened our central purchasing hub to support the orchestration of local and central procurement, we further advanced the integration between SRM and ERP to expand ERP e-procurement functionality, and we improved supplier collaboration and procurement processes outside the company boundaries.
Some key highlights of this release include:
Central Purchasing Hub
- Central contracts for services
- Functionality improvements in the bidding engine
- Embedded contract analytics for central contracts
SAP ERP E-Procurement
- New Shopping cart for Employee Self-Services
- Additional scenarios for the one-client deployment
- Use SAP SRM without portal installation
- Preconfigured scenarios for Business All in One customers
Supplier Collaboration
- Offline bidding via SAP Interactive Forms software by Adobe
- Bid response processing within Supplier Self Services
- Enhanced supplier registration qualification and on-boarding
Furthermore, the improved user experience and productivity will enable procurement end users and other key stakeholders to participate in value-adding actions, such as contract management and supplier management, which lead to significant ROI and sustainable value generation from procurement.
Easy Adoption of Innovation through Enhancement Packs
Starting with the Business Suite 7 release last year, SAP offers Procurement customers a platform for adopting new functionality as it becomes available. The benefit of this platform is a foundation for scalability and continuous innovation. Customers can add new functionality to the platform through enhancement packs, which contain major new features and product innovations. In the enhancement pack model, customers can pick and choose the functionality they want to deploy using a switch framework to "flip the switch" for that specific functionality. Thus, customers on SAP Business Suite 7 can change, augment, or extend their procurement and sourcing capabilities without a major upgrade.
The following are the new Procurement features introduced in the latest enhancement packs in SAP Business Suite 7 Innovations 2010 - SRM 7.0 Enhancement Pack 1 and ECC 6.0 Enhancement Pack 5.
Services Procurement
Those who have followed the SRM roadmap know that we integrated SRM and ERP (MM-SRV) functionality to extend procurement capabilities to complex service scenarios. These complex services requirements are often specified in hierarchical structures that capture milestones, stages, groupings, or other material and service combinations. Procurement in Business Suite 7 I2010 allows those hierarchies to proliferate to other scenarios, functions, and users, including the representation of service specifications in the procurement catalog, contract compliance in invoicing, and central contract management.
- Use the Procurement catalog as a service repository for work order, purchase order, purchase requisition, RFx, central contracts and service entries
- Extend central contracts to services contracts.
- Create invoices in SAP ERP with reference to contracts or other purchasing documents
- Create purchase orders and requisitions in park-and-hold status in SAP ERP
- Support for sourcing of hierarchies with informatory lines and contract limits
- Create RFx with service hierarchies directly in a bid invitation.
- Create and change purchase requisitions with service hierarchies
Direct Invoice against a Contract
Central Contract Management
SRM 7.0 delivers a central contract repository for all procurement contracts. Maintenance and all information related to contracts, such as contract call-off history, can be accessed in the central document. Furthermore, the contract terms can be distributed to the local systems that need to execute on the contract to achieve centralized purchasing. With the addition of the service hierarchies, SRM expands the types of contracts that can be managed centrally to services contracts. New features in central contract management provide support for creating central contracts for services structures and role-based contract analytics.
- Central contracts for complex services
- Upload service structures to procurement catalog from the contract.
- Upload SAP ERP contracts with hierarchical service specifications to central contracts
- Central contracts with hierarchy specifications can be created directly or from a RFx
- Enhanced user interface to maintain distribution logic
- Central contract contains release history from SAP ERP invoices
- Embedded analytics for contract performance and contract management
Embedded Analytics - Contract Management
Strategic Sourcing
Business Suite 7 supports a closed loop, end-to-end process, between sourcing and procurement. Furthermore, sourcing can be performed centrally in SRM from requirements in one or more procurement systems (ie: centralized sourcing). In enhancement pack 1, SRM introduces new bidding capabilities for the supplier and more flexibility for handling service hierarchies. SRM provides new options for supplier bidding, more RFx settings at line-item level, and an enhanced RFx response comparison.
- Suppliers can submit offline RFx responses using SAP Interactive Forms software by Adobe
- The option to allow RFx response modification (eg: substitute, alternative, supplement) at the line-item level. Previously this was at the header level.
- Simulate different weighting scenarios directly in RFx response comparison
- Create RFx with services with hierarchy structures directly in a bid invitation
- Technical separation of RFx and RFx response. This allows suppliers to engage in the bidding in front of the buyer's firewall. Suppliers can now bid in Supplier Self Services (SUS).
- Support two-envelope bidding to separate technical and commercial bid, as well as tender fee
- User interface and and performance improvements in the sourcing cockpit
Offline Bidding Using Interactive Forms
Self-Service Procurement
Self-Service Procurement is one of the most common scenarios deployed by customers. Both novice and advanced users access the system to initiate their purchasing requirements. We had worked with our customer user groups to develop a wizard-based shopping cart to address the needs of the novice user. In the next enhancement pack, SRM will deliver a web-like user experience that will be familiar to those who shop online. In addition, the next enhancement pack will deliver greater procurement document handling and sourcing integration.
- Easier web-like shopping cart user interface in addition to wizard-based shopping (aka: guided procedure)
- Template function for purchase orders and purchase requisitions
- Better integration of subcontracting into procurement (eg: down payment chains)
- New material search in purchase orders and purchase requisitions
- Progress tracking for Purchase Orders
New Shopping Cart User Interface
Supplier Management
Supplier Management delivers improved support for registration, qualification, and creation of suppliers. With this enhancement pack, supplier managers can distribute the registered and approved business partner to their ERP or SRM systems. Changes and transfer status can be monitored in the supplier registration work center.
- New harmonized user interface (web dynpro) for registration of suppliers (ROS)
- Work center-based access to registration forms, credentials, master data, and distribution logs of supply base
- Option to upload attachments and notes entry during the registration process
- Ability to distribute business partners from supplier self-service to the SAP ERP application and the SAP Supplier Relationship Management application; includes change monitoring
- Supplier self-service for data change
- Registration for event-based e-mail notifications
- Enhancements in order collaboration - final entry flag for service entry
Simplified Implementation and Operation
This simplified implementation and operation section has attracted much excitement in our Enhancement pack 1 preview presentations. One of the main objectives of the enhancement pack 1 development had been to reduce the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and increase Time-to-Value. Accordingly, we now offer more simplified deployment and implementation scenarios, and options to reduce the dependency of additional components, such as Business Intelligence (BI), Process Integration (PI), and Portal.
- Local analytics functionality for procurement documents in SAP SRM ; reporting without BI.
- Ability to run the integrated, enterprise services-based scenarios, without an additional installation of the SAP NetWeaver Process Integration (SAP NetWeaver PI).
- A new navigation frame that allows customers to run SAP SRM without installing the SAP NetWeaver Portal component
- Automatic refresh of personal object work list (POWL) queries after creating or changing business documents
- Additional business scenarios supported in One-Client deployment: Strategic Sourcing and Complex Services Procurement
- Simplified implementation for Business All In One (BAIO) customers
New Navigation Frame without Portal
Additional Information
Look for more information on the Services Marketplace at http://service.sap.com/srm (login required) or the Help Portal at http://help.sap.com/srm.
