Every year, SAP has a massive conference in Orlando for clients, prospects, partners, media and probably also to cross-train SAP employees in what the Walldorf-empire is up to. The range of products and the size of the venue is immense -- in fact, you could probably roll half-a-dozen ISM shows into the SAPPHIRE format and there would still be room left.

SAPPHIRE is a well-run event, with few expenses spared -- this year they had Van Halen as their closing act (something I had to pass on, unfortunately). There aren't many other software companies out there who can match that level of wow factor.

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Two members of the Spend Matters team had an exceedingly booked and intensive time at Sapphire this past week. Between the two of us, Thomas Kase and I probably saw a dozen demonstrations, had over twenty formal meetings with SAP team members and partners and spoke informally to over two dozen more customers, SAP solution managers and partners. Even by our usual hectic standards, it really was a completely packed and chaotic few days of learning and interaction. In the coming weeks, we'll continue to share our learnings about SAP's latest procurement, network and supply chain direction -- digging into current and planned product releases as well as new solutions and overall market and solution directions (you can read our initial dispatches here, here, here, here, and here).

Somewhat ironically, on a late night flight back from Orlando, I was reading a good book spanning the history of World War: Adam Hochschild's To End All Wars. In it, I was struck by a passage that could be apropos to what SAP may have up its sleeve -- even though the right hand might not always be talking to the left -- in the procurement and supply chain business applications, cloud and mobile arenas:

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One thing we took away from Sapphire is that networked-based business models are going to factor prominently into the value SAP sees itself generating for customers beyond providing just business applications. These networks may take the form of information-rich environments that cross companies and tiers of supply chains to drive predictive risk analytics (e.g., Supplier InfoNet). Or they may enable new levels of operational efficiency by allowing suppliers to connect a single time to a network to maintain basic vendor information without having to register with (and continuously update) multiple supplier portals and supplier management platforms. Regardless, SAP's network vision is real, even if they haven't yet finalized all of the details of their strategy. And it's clear that Hubwoo, at least for the foreseeable future, is going to have some part in it.

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Have you ever wanted to buy a set of color toner cartridges and a drum unit and compared the number of clicks necessary to research, find, analyze and buy the (typically) five items you're looking for on Amazon compared with a trusty SAP SRM install (we're talking SAP SRM without the help of a Simplifying IT, Hubwoo or IBX/Capgemini front-end)? Well, if you haven't, you're probably not aware of one of the reasons maverick purchasing remains common in earlier eProcurement implementations -- SAP and otherwise. Compared to Amazon, many P2P implementations are cumbersome, clunky and make it difficult for the casual user to find what they're looking for. Granted, while we don't even consider Amazon the best shopping experience anymore, it's light years away from where most SAP SRM, Ariba Buyer, Oracle eBusiness suite and PeopleSoft procurement implementations are, usability-wise. Simply put, it's faster and easier.

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One of the new products that Spend Matters has been most impressed with in the broader procurement and supply chain sector in the past year is SAP Supplier InfoNet (you can read our initial impressions of it in this series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4). Yesterday at Sapphire, we took a quick look at the most recent version of InfoNet, which marks the first GA version. This version, which officially launched today, leverages SAP's HANA (in memory database) technology. It features an expanded set of now 160,000 different news sources (wires, papers, financial, government information, etc.) integrated with both internal (i.e., company) and network supplier performance-related information.

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I arrived in Orlando late last night to attend SAP's annual Sapphire event. Along with my colleague Thomas Kase, I'll be covering the show and sharing the latest about what we learn in the coming weeks. There is quite a bit happening at SAP of late, including a new facelift for SRM (which is being introduced right around the same time Ariba is giving a similar shot of Botox to P2P/Buyer). In SAP's case, we can say the enhancement is very significant, having looked briefly at a walk-through earlier this year.

During and after Sapphire, we'll provide some more detailed thoughts on this new optional enhancement to SRM, which, if successful, could reduce the reliance that SAP shops have had on third parties such as IBX/Capgemini, Hubwoo, Simplifying IT, Wallmedien, jCatalog and others, for streamlining the search, requisitioning and shopping experience (catalog management, however, is not likely to be an area where others in the ecosystem lose business to SAP itself).

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In recent years, SAP's investments in the supplier management area have ranged from exceptionally innovative (e.g., Supplier InfoNet – which you can read about here, here, here, here, here) to more foundational areas. One of the core areas where SAP has put quite a bit of development focus in recent years has been the foundational supplier management capabilities of its On Demand Sourcing product suite. In a recent Spend Matters Compass report, Supplier Management Market Observations: Recent Trending, Musings on SAP's Core Offering and General Deployment Pitfalls (for all Solutions) to Avoid, we take a look at a recent version of SAP's On Demand Supplier Management solution, noting that from a procurement perspective, SAP checks the box with what we would consider core supplier management features including supplier self-service (or the potential for self-explanatory, self-service, based on how a user chooses to configure their system).

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This post is based on a recent Spend Matters Perspective: Sourcing, Contract Management, and Supplier Management Cloud -- Business Users Benefit From Savings Enablement. You can download the full research report for free via the previous link (registration required).

Contract management technology can bring significant benefit to procurement, legal and sales organizations. Not only can effective contract management technologies help organizations implement savings programs more quickly by closely linking the sourcing and contracting process -- including having T&Cs from within an RFx cascade into a contract after an award decision is made -- but they can also allow companies to monitor compliance and re-source contracts before expiration. More advanced use cases of contract management drive further value by linking buyer compliance to supplier terms and invoices, including proactive compliance tools in both eProcurement and direct purchasing systems that flag/reject PO issuance and/or invoices if certain contract conditions are not met.

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Supplier Enablement and P2P Roadblocks -- Catalog and Content Management (Part 1) -- One of the areas where companies often fail when it comes to bringing as much indirect spend under management as possible is catalog and content management. These tools enable the P2P experience by focusing on supplier self-service, multi-catalog search, configuration, and what we'll term "virtual punch-out," which includes distributed content search, aggregation and presentation of information (not to mention the application of specific rules to this distributed data). Providers in these areas can enable technically savvy business users (not IT) to administer the overall content and catalog management program once it's up and running. (Part 2)

Examining SAP Supplier InfoNet (Part 1) -- In the early years at Spend Matters, I remember being impressed by the concept of Open Ratings, a vendor that sat between the software and content worlds. Open Ratings' solution attempted to predict whether or not a supplier would remain financially viable based on a combination of financial, credit and related inputs. Although their execution was not always perfect -- and they were held hostage by some of their content providers over third-party data until D&B, one of their major content sources, finally acquired them -- it is clear that Open Ratings was the pioneering solution voice in the supply chain risk management sector. (Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5)

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