Optimize cost, manage risk, and fully realize negotiated savings
With strategic sourcing solutions from SAP, you can manage and optimize your entire sourcing, contracting, and spend analysis processes for all types of spend – direct and indirect materials as well as services. Integrated into your execution and procurement processes, these solutions can help you to:
- Aggregate and classify all purchases, company-wide
- Gain visibility, segment spend, and identify savings opportunities
- Standardize source-to-contract processes across teams and business units
- Drive materials cost savings and optimization across all spend categories
- Ensure that the savings you negotiate are fully realized
- Increase speed and drive up throughput across your teams
- Reduce risk by finding better suppliers and innovation partners
SAP strategic sourcing solutions

Sourcing for Indirect and Direct Materials
Create best-value sourcing agreements for indirect materials using SAP Source-to-Contract Suite or for direct materials using SAP Strategic Sourcing Suite.
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Product Sourcing Solutions from SAP
Equip sourcing and commodity management teams to establish high-value sourcing agreements that meet the unique needs of automotive and industrial manufacturing companies.
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SAP Ariba Contracts
Speed up contract cycles by 50% and reduce administrative and legal costs by up to 30% when you rid yourself of the paper and ink.
SAP Ariba Contracts
SAP Ariba Spend Analysis
Organize all spend data from across different systems and identify and prioritize sourcing opportunities more easily.
SAP Ariba Spend Analysis
SAP Ariba Discovery for buyers
A free buyer-supplier matching service, putting a world of high-quality suppliers at your fingertips to drive bids for your business up, and your costs down.
SAP Ariba DiscoveryStrategic Sourcing Resources
Frequently Asked Questions
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What is strategic sourcing and why is it important?
Strategic sourcing is a series of collaborative procurement processes that includes spend data collection and analysis; supplier management and category management; sourcing; and contract management. Strategic sourcing solutions are available in application suites as integrated solutions that help procurement professionals and organizations:
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Understand detailed spend profiles
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Discover the right savings opportunities
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Identify, onboard, and perform continuous management, evaluation, and qualification of suppliers to help support diversity, sustainability, cost reduction, and reliability objectives in today’s volatile marketplace
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Execute all negotiation activities and tasks, from tendering to contract negotiation, enabling compliance and collaboration among multiple company stakeholders, delivering sustainable savings, and reducing supply chain risk
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Operationalize negotiated agreements, helping ensure a consistent realization of their value
Strategic sourcing is important because its processes and capabilities help organizations increase compliant spend, achieve significant cost savings, and drive strategic value across the enterprise.
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What is the difference between purchasing and strategic sourcing?
The difference between purchasing and strategic sourcing is that purchasing is a business process that organizations use to acquire essential products and services in a timely, cost-effective way, while strategic sourcing takes a more holistic approach that involves collecting data, analyzing costing and prices, collaborating deeply with suppliers, conducting market research, and negotiating competitively priced contracts.
Purchasing focuses on obtaining goods at the lowest price, often by maximizing order quantity and discounts. Strategic sourcing seeks to create better procurement efficiency, minimize supplier risk, increase compliant spend, and achieve significant cost savings.
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What is the difference between sourcing and strategic sourcing?
The difference between sourcing and strategic sourcing is that, while sourcing is a tactical, transactional activity driven by near-term, specific requisition needs, strategic sourcing addresses the holistic sourcing needs of an organization using processes such as data collection and analysis, category management, and supplier discovery and evaluation, including tendering and contract management activities.
As a result, strategic sourcing can better help organizations identify cost-cutting opportunities; define and execute supplier selection processes; analyze supplier responses; and negotiate competitively priced contracts.
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How can strategic sourcing be improved?
Strategic sourcing can be improved by using solutions that help organizations:
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Understand detailed spend for everyday expenses
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Gain access to a reliable global network of suppliers
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Identify and qualify suppliers that can effectively support diversity, sustainability, cost efficiencies and, most importantly, reliability
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Develop a strategic sourcing program, including new supplier information and appropriate onboarding processes to help organizations find high-performing suppliers
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Support process and category best practices with knowledgeable resources
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Enable confident sourcing with proper market, commodity, operational, and contractual information
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Support quick, straightforward access to strategy and category expertise, helping organizations realize greater value in everyday procurement operations
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Customize Your Solutions
Enhance your source-to-pay processes with APIs, intelligent forms, and intelligent configuration management. Unlock the full value of your SAP Ariba solutions by integrating them with your existing back-end solutions and ERP.
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