For any that follow road cycling like the recently completed Tour de France or the just under way 2020 Tokyo Olympic road cycling events, you know that Slovenia has produced world-class competition cyclers.  In the past month Tadej Pogacar (2021 Tour de France champion) and fellow Slovenian, 2017 Tour winner, and now gold medalist Primoz Roglic have brought great pride to the Slavic nation.

Why mention this?  Slovenia did not always produce great cyclists.  It took decades of training and growth of the sport to begin producing results which have continued since that 2017 first Tour victory.  As with the Slovenian cycling growth, SAP Procurement has grown from humble beginnings as several separate solutions to its current path of uniform development and integrated business solutions.

The 2108 Release scheduled to become generally available to customers on 20 August continues the tradition of growth and improvement through a variety of innovations.  In addition to the information shared below, be sure to catch Jim Cameron’s blog post that discusses key Early Release activities that will further delve in to the details of key innovations in this product release.

Highlights of the SAP Procurement 2108 Release

SAP Supplier Financing with Ariba Network

SAP Supplier Financing is a connected financial network that matches suppliers with financing partners, simplifying the borrowing process by using Ariba Network data.

As a self-service solution, suppliers have access to personalized and pre-approved financial offers available to them on the network. Small to medium sized businesses can benefit from a simplified process with 100% online borrowing, flexible working capital solutions based on their needs and faster access to capital with pre-approved offers.

For a deep-dive in to the benefits and capabilities of SAP Supplier Financing with Ariba Network, check out this video.

Support for sending request for estimates (RFEs) to suppliers in SAP Fieldglass

This feature enables SAP Ariba Buying and SAP Ariba Buying and Invoicing customers to request estimates for a scope of service from one or more suppliers prior to selecting a supplier to purchase the service from.  Estimates are useful for Buyers to get an accurate quote for services or materials when the request is complex or details are unknown.  Buyers may use this information internally to garner approvals or make business decisions.

To see this innovation in action, view the video demonstration here.

Review activities in Purchase Requisition Approval Workflow

Review activities allows S/4HANA Cloud reviewers to monitor the progress of the PR Approval workflows. Reviewers can be defined in the PR Approval workflows without requiring any manual actions like Approve / Reject.

Capabilities include:

• Configurable deadlines for reviewer tasks.
• Approval workflow step conditions and agent determination rules.
• Reviewer task notifications.
• Approval details include the tasked  reviewers.
• Restarting of the reviewer task when approval workflow is restarted.

Learn more by visiting this innovation video.

Ability to audit security-related activity in SAP Ariba

A well-established log of business events aids in analyzing the activities taking place with an eye for identifying any malicious acts within the system.  This log provides forensic evidence with great value in cases of breaches, enabling customers to thoroughly investigate any security incidents that occur.

This feature introduces the SAP Ariba audit service, which logs selected user and administration actions performed in SAP Ariba applications.  Customers may use the SAP Ariba audit service to monitor security-related system information such as:

• changes to user records
• changes to application data
• changes to application configurations

The audit capabilities are available across all SAP Ariba applications.  For a quick view of this business-critical innovation, visit this link.

2108 Webcast Series and Release Information

Ready to get a preview of more information on the 2108 release?  As noted earlier in this blog, please be sure to check out Jim Cameron‘s blog post that provides access to webcast registration, release materials and key communications efforts.