Sequel 5: Making better Sourcing decisions with the Active Bidders Reports innovation SAP SRM 7.0 EhP2

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Stepping into the Sourcing specialists’ shoes…..

Decision making is the theme for today’s post highlighting the nuances of the feature/innovation we are going to talk about in this blog.

Taking the right sourcing decision at the right time is a mere nice to know generic statement for a Strategic Buyer/Commodity Manager.

The strategic buyer had to do a lot of proactive work before the decision was made whilst at the RFx /Auction creation stage or even at a stage when the buyer had to moderate a Shopping cart that needed some kind of a strategic direction from inside the SAP SRM Sourcing ****-pit.

This simply means that a lot of work had to be done pre-Sourcing event stage to help get all the data available to solicit the right external partners to provide the best goods/service at the best parameters that a Strategic buyer set in the Sourcing event.

Before SAP SRM 7.0, even having most of the requirement set addressed via the RFx / Auction object was limited. 7.0 took the game to the next level by having features that had most of what was required to host a successful sourcing event. Now with the power of SAP SRM 7.0 EhP2, the UI tool-set that helps make informed decisions are becoming a reality and I am a firm believer that with the subsequent releases of the product, we would see UI becoming similar to the eased UI that we use in other form-factor devices like Smart Phones / Tablets etc.

1.0 Overview & Challenges

In today’s blog we would be discussing about the new Making better Sourcing decisions with the Active Bidders Reports innovation SAP SRM 7.0 EhP2.

For most customers “time” and “bandwidth” of the Sourcing professional has become a rare commodity, as agility is driving the entire aspect of decision making at a rate that is no more slow/moderate. Everything including the Procurement process is moving/changing at a staggered pace, reason being that Economic Recovery & Growing supplier risk are some of the named trends that are changing the equation in the game.

So to stay ahead of the competition, the tool has to have the ability to connect processes seamlessly, be highly agile and deliver the need.

For a Sourcing professional/specialist, the challenges are many; the biggest KPI is “Sourcing Decision” & the aim has always been to provide them tools that provide information just at the right time, when it’s needed inside the Sourcing process.

The challenges that typically this innovation goes out addressing are around

1. Purchasers lacked information about suppliers when determining bidders for bid invitations. 
2. Not having a 360 degree view of all the information that was required to make the right sourcing decision
3. Disparate reporting data, not all in one place makes it more of a proactive effort to achieve something that could have been made so much easier.

2.0 Help me understand this feature / innovation?

1. Embedded Supplier analytics are provided in a side panel with in RFx transaction to select most relevant bidders for required products & categories.
2. An Active Bidders report is displayed in bidders tab of RFx for the given products/categories in RFx items. The report provides suppliers and bidders history for the products in RFx item. This report does not require BI and contains the following info:
   1. Supplier Name, Product Category, Location, Total RFx Responses, Accepted RFx Responses, Accepted RFx Response Value, Currency, Active contracts, Expired Contracts, Total Contract Value, Currency
3. Additionally, following reports from BI can be accessed directly from the side panel :
   1. Bidder Overall Score
      1. Bidder overall supplier evaluation scores are presented in the form of a bar chart.
   2. Score Based On Evaluation Criteria
      1. Bidder scores based on certain evaluation criteria (for example, quality, delivery, pricing, and overall supplier rating) are presented in the form of a bar chart.
   3. Bidder Spend
      1. The Spend volume from each bidder is displayed as a percentage of the overall spend in the form of a pie chart.

Business Value

I personally see the following benefits & business value of switching this feature

1. Embedded supplier analysis to make a more informed choice of bidders during RFx creation.

3.0 Snippets of how this looks inside SAP SRM 7.0 ehP2

• Create RFx.
• Enter Line Items.
• Click on Bidders Tab.
• Active bidders for the items- report is displayed.
• Statistics of past documents for each supplier is shown.
• Number of RFx, Accepted RFx, Number of active contracts, Contract value etc. are shown

4.0How do I achieve it?

• Switch: SRM_702_ACTIVE_BIDDERS is revertible , switch it on to use it

Summary

1. Thanks for tuning into these sequels, am sure that with SAP SRM 7.0 EhP2, you will have more power in your hands as an SAP Procurement consultant to help deliver those go-to customer implementations. In our next blog, we will discuss more about the RFx Response Comparison & POWL reports for SRM analytics & more

5.0) SAP Procurement social_media outreach channels

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6.0) SAP Procurement handles & Hash-tags to follow