In our series of posts dedicated to supply management, we have seen how the way companies exchange information with their supply chain has evolved and what we should look for in a tool that helps us manage it. In this post, we are going to take a look at three of the main alternatives that can help us: SAP, Coupa and Tradeshift.
SAP’s strategy is to cover the entire S2P process with a product called SAP Procurement, which is integrated with SAP Ariba, SAP Fieldglass and SAP 4 / HANA Cloud, in addition to having the Ariba Network, its own B2B network.
SAP Ariba was born with the idea of being a collaboration network with suppliers, and from there, it has expanded its capabilities to allow us to manage all provisioning from the source (RFQ’s, RFI’s, auctions), contracts, electronic purchases and marketplaces to reception of invoices and payment management. For the management of temporary quotas and external collaborators SAP Ariba relies on SAP Fieldglass, and, on SAP 4 / HANA for direct purchases.
SAP Procurement is a robust product that counts with all the potential a company such as SAP brings behind it. Despite this, we can find some criticisms, such as being – as it is obvious – a too SAP-centric product, its high price, or the difficulty to integrate SAP Ariba or SAP Fieldglass with other applications of the SAP ecosystem (a point that SAP tries to correct through of its new Intelligent Enterprise concept).
Coupa is one of the alternatives best valued by customers. They have followed a similar strategy to the one of SAP: they started out focusing on electronic purchases but have been buying technologies from other software providers, which allows them to cover the entire S2P process from their own platform: sourcing, contracts, electronic purchases, even the receipt of invoices and payment management.
Among its strengths we find usability, its B2B network and its wide range of solutions to cover the entire SP2 cycle. Among its criticisms, its price and that the tools to manage invoices and payments are not as developed as the rest of its solutions.
Tradeshift has established itself as one of the best options amongst the emerging alternatives. Tradeshift Buy and Tradeshift Pay are its solutions to cover the entire PTP cycle (electronic purchases, access to marketplaces, receipt of invoices, automation of the Accounts Payable process and payment management) and facilitate access to advance payments. They have a ground-breaking vision with the development of a platform based on applications (their own and those of third parties) and stand out for the application of Artificial Intelligence for the automation of tasks.
Tradeshift has one of the most robust solutions for receiving invoices and managing the accounts payable process, it is easy to integrate with any ERP and it has one of the largest B2B provider networks on the market. It still does not have its own solution for managing direct purchases, however, thanks to its conception as an application-based platform, in its app store we can find an alternative to do so.
If you are looking for a tool to help you manage your procurement process and you need us to help you with your decision process, or if you want more information about these or other alternatives, do not hesitate to contact us. We will be delighted to help you.
