SAP Embeds GenAI Throughout Spend Management and Business Network Solutions

During its Spend Connect Live conference in Las Vegas on Oct. 15, SAP announced updates to its spend management solutions to help companies collaborate strategically, increase productivity, manage compliance, and gain business insights.

SAP is embedding its generative AI copilot Joule across the SAP Ariba source-to-pay solution portfolio, making it easier for customers to manage routine inquiries, such as status updates, summarization, and frequently asked questions.

GenAI will be further infused in SAP Ariba solutions to recommend buying bundles and provide comprehensive supplier summaries, according to SAP.

SAP Ariba solutions cover direct and indirect procurement, travel and expense, and external workforce and services spend for greater insight, control, and savings, the company says.

Joule will debut in SAP Fieldglass solutions and SAP Business Network in the fourth quarter of 2024. According to SAP, Joule will manage 80% of the most frequently performed tasks in the portfolio of spend management and business network solutions starting in Q4 with a phased approach.

Joule will help SAP Fieldglass solutions customers perform time-consuming hiring tasks and service requests with speed and accuracy, SAP says. Joule can recommend best-fit templates to generate job postings and statements of work with prefilled information, such as start date and the number of skilled workers needed.

Joule embedded across SAP Business Network will facilitate tasks in logistics and asset management. GenAI will analyze, categorize, and transform unstructured invoice rejection errors into structured, actionable insights to reduce the cost of resolving exceptions. GenAI capabilities within the SAP Business Network Discovery solution will also help match suppliers with new business opportunities.

SAP also announced this week that its SAP Ariba Intake Management solution—which will help businesses handle employee requests and process orchestration, starting with procurement—is expected to be available in the first quarter of 2025.

With SAP Ariba Intake Management, employees will have one place to go for procurement inquiries and visibility on status, the company says.

“The solution collects employee requests, orchestrates processes across heterogenous landscapes and applications, including all necessary stakeholders, and provides visibility on status while shielding employees from process complexity yet keeping them informed,” SAP states in a media release. “This simpler, more intuitive user experience is designed to help drive adoption and improve compliance.”

In addition, SAP announced that in Q1 of 2025, SAP Business Network will launch a new promote subscription with value-added features to help suppliers differentiate themselves, attract new buyers, and grow their businesses.

“With millions of companies conducting nearly $6 trillion in commerce annually on the SAP Business Network, promote presents a sizable opportunity for suppliers to accelerate growth,” SAP says.

Lastly, SAP has unveiled an analytics add-on for external workforce management. The new analytics add-on with AI capabilities for SAP Fieldglass solutions helps procurement, vendor management, and HR professionals to quickly implement more agile multichannel talent strategies. This add-on enables business users to benchmark and predict external talent scenarios.

The analytics add-on for SAP Fieldglass solutions lets users:

Review performance against more than 50 external workforce key performance indicators.
Access global market intelligence, including rates, talent supply and demand, and time-to-hire trends.
Track sustainability initiatives, such as spend with diverse suppliers and worker health and safety, while observing cost overruns, worker fatigue, and on- and offboarding compliance.

“With SAP Business AI as the foundation of our intelligent products, customers can improve productivity and gain insights from their spend data no matter where it sits,” Manoj Swaminathan, president and chief product officer of the Intelligent Spend and Business Network at SAP, said in a statement. “Whether it is managing cost, mitigating risk, or supporting Scope 3 emission reduction, SAP empowers companies with the right solutions for agile and effective spend management and supply chain functions.”