Guided buying capability

A simple user experience guides employees to buy from preferred suppliers while complying with your procurement processes and policies.
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Get this built-in capability with SAP Ariba Procurement solutions

Increased user adoption

The guided buying capability provides a single self-service gateway for procurement requests and low-dollar, high-volume purchases. You can configure tiles, categories, forms, and permissions for each user to make the guided buying experience intuitive and user-friendly. The capability makes collaboration simpler, too. Supplier collaboration and price quotes are facilitated through integration with other SAP Ariba solutions, and users can access category experts based on their needs and location. 


What’s more, an exclusive help community channels targeted content to users and encourages knowledge sharing. 

Improved compliance to reduce costs

Available at no additional cost with SAP Ariba Procurement solutions, guided buying helps employees intuitively follow procurement guidelines and best practices. Users can see immediately if a purchase would violate a policy, rather than finding out after submitting a request. In addition, you can set rules that either allow or disallow the exception. 

Supplier-risk functionality highlights risk levels for noncatalog requests and requests for quotes. Meanwhile, with cost savings resulting from stronger compliance and supplier collaboration, you can allocate more funds to strategic initiatives.

Features

Real-time guidance

While buying, users are alerted if a purchasing policy may be violated. If they are required to choose a different item, SAP Business AI can recommend options that keep them in compliance.

Cost savings

Through greater compliance, less savings leakage, and easier supplier collaboration, significant savings can be allocated to more strategic organizational initiatives.

Supplier management and collaboration

Integration with other SAP Ariba solutions facilitates both supplier management and collaboration on one-off purchases, with the ability to select preferred suppliers as well as request quotes via SAP Business Network.

Internal collaboration

Based on what the user is buying and where the user is located, guided buying gives instant access to the category expert in that user’s purchasing unit.

Persona-based dashboards

The guided buying capability can be flexibly configured to align forms, permissions, and system behavior for each user, presenting them with customized tiles and categories to streamline purchasing.

Help community

Exclusive guided buying help community provides the framework to provide targeted help content to users and make it easy for them to collaborate efficiently during their purchasing process.

Simpler, compliant spend with guided buying facilitated by AI

The guided buying capability in SAP Ariba Procurement solutions uses AI to deliver item recommendations that are tailored, cost effective, and compliant. 

In the video, see how buyers use AI to:
  • Select from constantly updated item recommendations based on purchase history
  • Quickly compare selected items with similar items recommended by AI
  • Use a single guided buying interface for a simpler and smarter buying experience

Explore more capabilities of SAP Ariba Procurement solutions

Spot Buy

Simplify and save money on one-off or emergency purchases previously considered too costly and time-consuming to source.

SAP Ariba Catalog

Provide user-friendly procurement catalog content to help employees buy from the right suppliers at the right prices

SAP Ariba Invoice Management

Increase the accuracy of invoices to speed up both processing and payments.

Frequently asked questions

Guided buying is a procurement principle that aims to ease the employee purchasing and employee spending process. Guided buying provides a one-stop portal for employees within an organization. It is a persona-based strategy. This means that an admin of the company can appoint certain profiles to various individuals throughout the organization as needed. These profiles have a certain amount of access and limitation based on users and their level in the organization, as well as the types of purchases they’ll be making regularly. Then, individuals can make preapproved purchases on a rolling basis with almost no involvement from the procurement team. 

 

Guided buying increases compliant spend by steering users to preferred suppliers while incorporating guardrails so users follow procurement policies without having to know them in advance. The procurement department can also offer tailored help content in situations where users need more guidance.

Guided buying is a persona-based user experience that makes it simpler for users to find what they’re looking for. Users outside of the professional procurement group have one place to search for goods and services in a consumer-like way and can make purchases using a simple interface.

 

Guided buying in SAP Ariba solutions is a free capability that steers users to compliant procurement processes. Available with the SAP Ariba Buying or the SAP Ariba Buying and Invoicing solutions, it’s also integrated with the Spot Buy capability in SAP Ariba solutions.