SAP Ariba 2022 Q3 Release: Supply Chain Collaboration updates

SAP Ariba's Supply Chain Collaboration (SCC) solution is one of the best options to improve flow, increase visibility, and react quickly to issues that may disrupt your supply chain. And the Q3 update makes it even better. Here are our consultants' top 5 favorite SCC updates for Q3.

We’ve already hit the highlights of the SAP Ariba 2022 Q3 release, on both the upstream and the downstream side, as well as the two mandatory updates. Now we are taking a closer look at the Supply Chain Collaboration updates.

As we discuss in detail in our blog on Supply Chain Collaboration (SCC), it automates every step of the supply chain process to improve flow, increase visibility, and react quickly to issues that may disrupt operations

Just FYI: None of these SCC updates require Ariba’s support to enable them, but some do require customer configuration. That means your Ariba administrator, whether in-house or as outside support, will need to configure and activate that update, it will not turn on automatically.

Details of the Ariba 2022 Q3 Supply Chain Collaboration updates:

Product(s): Ariba Network, Supply Chain Collaboration, Business Network
Feature Name: Delivery execution widget on buyer homepage
ID: BNA-316
Integration: Automatically on

What you need to know: Adding the delivery execution widget onto the new Ariba Network buyer homepage allows you to see the delivery execution metrics of your supply chain at a glance. It will display perfect delivery, on time delivery, and in full delivery key performance indicators (KPIs) for the previous month over your entire supply chain. KPIs are calculated by the underlying delivery execution analytics story. To view the full story in the analytics dashboard, just click “view all”.

Product: Supply Chain Collaboration
SAP’s Feature Name: Improvements for order confirmation of scheduling agreements and scheduling agreement releases
ID: CSC-23151
Integration: Automatically On

What we like about this feature: This enhances the confirmation and confirmation deviation approval process for scheduling agreements and scheduling agreement releases.

That means the logic to retain the previous confirmation when a new version of the scheduling agreement or scheduling agreement release is received has been improved. Now, when only the delivery date of the schedule line changes in the new version, the confirmation is not retained for this schedule line; the supplier must provide a new confirmation.

In addition, open quantities for confirmation are now downloaded at the schedule line level, instead of at the line item level. This change applies to scheduling agreements and scheduling agreement releases as well as to regular orders.

Product(s): Supply Chain Collaboration
Feature Name: Buyer workbench tile and supplier template for managing change requests
ID: CSC-26669
Integration: Customer configured

What you need to know: This feature provides more tools for buyers and suppliers manage purchase-order change requests. A new tile for the buyer workbench helps buyers send and monitor change requests to their suppliers. A new upload/download template enables suppliers to reply to multiple change requests from their buyers.

This does NOT support change requests to scheduling agreements or scheduling agreement releases. Also, a supplier can make only one response or proposal per change request and a buyer can make only one response or proposal to a supplier’s response per change request.

Product(s): Supply Chain Collaboration
Feature Name: Buyer workbench tile and supplier template for managing change requests
ID: CSC-27541
Integration: Customer configured

What you need to know: Now buyers will be able to create custom attributes, and include these attributes in customization projects for order confirmations, purchase orders, and ship notices. Custom attributes contain additional information relevant to buyers and add to the standard Ariba Network fields. Buyers and suppliers can use these custom attributes to improve collaboration along the supply chain.

Buyers can also add custom attributes to the ship notice excel template for upload/download and to the workbench tiles for items to confirm, orders, and items to ship.

Product(s): Ariba Network, Ariba Discovery, Ariba Payables, Supply Chain Collaboration
Feature Name: Trading partner portal and workbench for buyers
ID: SA-23239
Integration: Automatically on

What you need to know: This redesign of the Ariba Network buyer homepage enables it to become a true trading partner portal. It is also now part of the SAP Business Network. The new buyer homepage features simplified navigation consistent with other SAP cloud solutions, a more powerful search bar, an instant overview of transactions in a new tile-based design, and a new my widgets section that is customizable with various insights and promotional widgets. You can also now access the workbench, a customizable page that gives you a quick overview of transaction documents that need your attention based on your filtering criteria.

Why you should keep track of SAP Ariba’s Quarterly Releases

SAP Ariba’s quarterly updates aren’t always at the top of our clients’ radar – but we think they should be.

That’s because the whole point of Ariba is to make the procurement process as simple and seamless as possible. The updates, often prompted by input from customers, aims to further improve modules, solutions and processes to improve the user experience.

The challenge is the sheer number of updates. In the 2022 Q1 update, released on Feb. 18, 2022, there are approximately 97 new features. In the 2022 Q2 update, released on May 20, 2022, there are approximately 83, and in this Q3 release there was a whopping 101 new features!

Follow all of our update blogs to keep up with the features that we think are the best for most companies.

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