How SAP’s AI is Offering Cutting Edge Spend Management

“Like at home, identifying every dollar you spend and getting the most out of it is more critical than ever for your business,” wrote Jeff Collier, Chief Revenue Officer for SAP Intelligent Spend and Business Network, in a post on the company’s news page.

“As we continue to roll out SAP Business AI technology, the teams behind SAP solutions are working on ways to help you reduce the time spent on mundane tasks so you can focus on executing your strategy, unlocking spend potential, and unleashing efficiency. The first quarter of 2024 was among the most productive in my 18 years at SAP."

The five new AI capabilities debuted in various SAP spend management solutions are:

• SAP Ariba Category Management: "We’ve incorporated generative AI-enabled features that can assist category managers by generating recommendations in the solution’s category segmentation, market dynamics, and cost structure tools," explains Jeff.
• Scoutbee Discovery: SAP partnered with Scoutbee, a leading AI-powered supplier intelligence and discovery platform, to launch Scoutbee Discovery. This SAP-endorsed app can rapidly identify qualified suppliers that meet specific criteria and can help advance strategic business imperatives.
• Concur Request:  Generative AI to help provide intelligent cost estimates for trip planning.
• ExpenseIt: "Users can upload receipt images to the ExpenseIt solution, which taps AI to help automatically create a new expense with several key fields pre-populated," Jeff shares. "Plus, ExpenseIt can now itemise hotel folios using generative AI."
• Generative AI search: A new capability within Concur Support allows SAP Concur customers to type questions in natural language and get quick answers using generative AI, without submitting a support ticket.

Jeff spoke on how SAP’s market-leading spend and business network solutions are getting “even smarter”, and how they continue to work on unlocking greater value for its customers. He also spoke on the company’s motivation to carry on making these improvements, with the company having “many resources devoted to spend management”, and it continues to deliver innovation.

Strong customer feedback

Jeff also highlighted the customer feedback SAP had received from G2, a peer-to-peer review site headquartered in Chicago, which focuses on aggregating user reviews for business software.

High scores were seen across SAP’s suite of spend and business network solutions, with SAP Fieldglass and SAP Ariba both being noted as G2 Spring Leaders for Vendor Management and Procure to Pay, Purchasing, Strategic Sourcing, Supplier Relationship Management, and Contract Lifecycle Management, respectfully .

SAP Concur was noted as a G2 Spring Leader in Expense, Travel & Expense, and Invoicing.

G2 also announced its 2024 Best Software Award winners, with SAP Fieldglass and SAP Concur receiving high honours:

SAP Fieldglass came in at No. 26 in G2’s Best Software Awards across all products and No. 12 in G2’s Best Software Awards for best midmarket products.

SAP Concur came in at No. 4 in G2’s Best Software Awards for the account and software product category.

How SAP is creating success stories

Jeff’s post also highlighted the success of direct and indirect procurement, external workforce, and travel and expense management solutions across a range of industries. 

SAP has helped American Eagle Outfitters, a leading global specialty retailer offering high-quality on-trend clothing, accessories, and personal care products through its portfolio of brands. It needed to evaluate indirect purchasing processes and vendor relationships to maximise efficiency. Through the SAP Business Network for Procurement and SAP Ariba solutions, it was able to simplify processes and deliver compliant purchasing protocols across the company.

Oklahoma Gas & Electric Company (OG&E), which provide power to over 900,000 electric customers, was facing issues with the complexity of third-party and cross-department management of contingent workers. After transitioning SAP Fieldglass solutions to internal management, OG&E gained the visibility to make more informed financial decisions, like supplier negotiations.

Vestas Wind Systems, the world’s largest manufacturer of wind turbines, launched a large-scale quality initiative powered by SAP Business Network. Through this, it mitigated product defects in a highly complex supply chain. Now, using SAP Business Network, suppliers complete predefined quality tests and document them before confirming or sending an order. This enables Vestas employees to be warned in advance of any quality issues further up the supply chain, so they can take corrective action.

SAP helped to make expense reports for KUKA employees, who are based in Germany. The team worked together to develop a simple process using SAP Concur solutions, connected to SAP ERP, that allows employees to create hotel and entertainment expenses seven times faster with fewer errors and fewer rejected expense reports. ​​​​​​​

SAP is only getting started

Jeff also outlined what is to come by the end of the year, as the SAP Business Network is planning the following enhancements:

• Generative AI RFI/RFP responses in SAP Business Network Discovery: With generative AI-enabled responses for postings in SAP Business Network Discovery, suppliers will be able to respond to RFIs promptly and more accurately, helping to save time and reduce costs associated with manual labour and resource allocation.
• Catalogue enrichment using ChatGPT recommendations: This feature can enable suppliers to generate and improve product descriptions and overall catalogue quality based on prompts and keyword recommendations from ChatGPT.
• Intelligent error simplification using generative AI: This feature uses machine learning and a large language model to interpret and categorise invoice rejection reasons, allowing suppliers to reduce the number of failing invoices, improve rapid invoice submission and payment, and optimise cash flow.
  

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