To address ETIs and SMEs, now engaged in the digitalization of their purchases, specialized publishers have chosen to move forward in stages, cautiously. Their challenge, to take into account the specificities and expectations of companies in this market: to propose quick and easy-to-implement solutions, at a controlled cost, that is to say much less than that of projects carried out by the major accounts. The pioneers first proposed a version of their solution in SaaS mode, to limit initial costs and facilitate deployment, then adopted a modular approach, with a more or less fine level of granularity, allowing to limit the initial project to the strict need and then gradually expand the perimeter.
A pre-configured and packaged version for ETI-SMEs
More radically, another avenue explored by some of the historical publishers to offer a "light" version of their solution, degraded in terms of functionality, was quickly abandoned. "Beyond the effort to restructure their solution, they realized that ETI-SME functionality needs were similar to those of the large accounts," explains Bertrand Gabriel, Acxias' director in charge of development. A new path has therefore been opened, giving today the best answer: a pre-configured and packaged version for the mid-market.
Among the major publishers in the market, SAP launched 3 years ago Ariba Snap, a version adapted for ETIs of SAP Ariba, the market-leading solution in the purchasing-supply-finance areas. "While 80% of SAP customers are SMEs and ETIs, we develop cloud solutions that are right for them, both in terms of price and functionality," says Vincent Poirier, Business Development Manager for SAP Ariba. "This is precisely the case with Ariba Snap, which is also an efficient and easy solution for employees to use with an e-commerce-like interface."
Simplify implementation and speed up deployments
To meet the priority functional needs of companies in this market, Ariba Snap covers key operations in the Procure-to-pay process, ranging from request and order management to billing. But it is possible to activate other advanced features to achieve more advanced treatments, in terms of sourcing and consulting management in project mode for example. Ariba Snap innovates mainly with its pre-packaged content offering, which allows for rapid adoption and implementation: 2 to 3 months, compared to 9 to 12 months for solutions generally implemented by large companies. To simplify implementation and accelerate deployments in ETIs and even SMEs, SAP Ariba has notably made in Snap a set-up aligned with best practices for 8 main categories of indirect purchases, and the availability of the "spot buy" module allows the use of a catalog made up of several hundred thousand reference. In addition, 20 standard forms and 9 approval workflows are immediately available.
Among the publisher's clients, Burger King Quick Services had not initially challenged this pre-configuration with the classic version of SAP Ariba. In fact, "the Ariba Snap solution was spontaneously proposed to us by the publisher-integrator couple during the tender, presented as designed for medium-sized companies, and adapted to our context," says Laurence Nouyer, head of the central systems and ERP division at the company's information systems department. Finally, "while we were starting from a situation where our processes, in a highly decentralized organization and in the absence of a purchasing department, were not formalized or supervised, the Ariba Snap version made it possible to simplify the integration with our ERP and the adoption of good purchasing practices in a now secure operating scheme," she continues.
Wanting to stay focused on large accounts, SAP has chosen to rely on a network of certified partners for the marketing and implementation of this Ariba Snap version. At the forefront of these partners, Acxias offers different options for rapid deployment, on a more or less extensive scope in terms of functionality, purchasing categories or geographical locations. "His arrival in 2020 to complete the project in a few weeks with a sharp expertise, after a longer and more complicated start than expected with another integrator, gave new impetus and helped stabilize the solution," says Laurence Nouyer. The company has just renewed its confidence in Acxias, Corrective and scalable TMA of its solution.
Full article from The Watch Digital Purchasing : "A new digital era is opening up for ETI purchases"