SAP Ariba Category Management

Some of the standout features are listed below: 1) SAP Business AI. It will analyze market dynamics and make suggestions on procurement strategies. This saves weeks of manual research within specific media categories that can fall between the cracks or be ever-changing, such as Post-Production or Social Media Influencers. 2) Built-in Market Intelligence. You can avoid a lot of heartache when trying to purchase in a volatile market by integrating external feeds that can flag changes immediately. For instance, if there are rising costs in the APAC region (random example), setting up the right external feeds will flag the data pointing to an upcoming price spike, enabling you to lock in purchases and/or contracts and positively impact savings. 3) Category Dashboards. I saved my personal favorite for last because it's all about visibility. You get a unified view of spend, supplier performance, even goal tracking for things such as DI targets or Sustainability. This is huge for advertising agencies because no matter the vision, you have to prove value to your CFO. The dashboards can make the agency's impact highly visible and quantifiable without leaving you on an island to pitch this by yourself.

Strategic alignment across procurement activities, ability to make faster decision with centralized insights

The connection of our sourcing data in one place that helps with audits, system access controls/clearance, and compliance in data governance that helps with the routine company standards of risk management. I like the infinite scale of data infrastructure that SAP can handle and having very seamless reliable workflows, especially when it comes to needing things to be done for high priority deals and projects.

Dislike is a strong word, so instead I'll highlight some potential pain points specific to advertising agencies looking to implement SAP Category Management: 1) You better have mature data. If any of your data is inconsistent, siloed, or for lack of a better word sloppy, you will spend an enormous amount of time having to clean and map the data properly in order for the tool to provide any accurate and strategic insights. Think about how much fragmented data you have (i.e. media platforms, freelance portals, local production). 2) Cost is always a factor. Remember that it's not a one-time piece of software you're buying. There are always substantial costs beyond an initial subscription price. Factor in implementation consultants, ongoing technical support, and training hours. This will help determine if implementation will actually generate savings based on your typical spend volume. 3) What kind of users do you have? All elements of SAP Ariba are known to be complex. If you have users that view a steep learning curve as a hurdle, you may not get the most out of this tool. However, if you're prepared to invest in change management, you can ensure that the advanced features aren't ignored, increasing your ROI.

The user interface and overall navigation presents some problems and may not be beneficial for all users. Total cost is a bit high and can be too high for some small to mid-sized enterprises

User experience gage can rate low if there is not extensive training provided. The system is complex at times and the onboarding process of learning the legacy system can be a challenge if there are limited company resources to refer to resulting in being a large learning curve to overcome. Another dislike is the limits on customization which can be said for most legacy platforms especially when you already have complex business processes in place that are a challenge to adjust in a nonstop organization.