SAP Companion in-app help gives SAP Ariba Guided Buying a boost

Yes, SAP Companion has been available for SAP Ariba Guided Buying for some time now. So why this blog article? Because it’s such a great fit that the topic was chosen as a virtual workshop for SAP TechEd in November. The replays of this workshop are available now and I would like to take this opportunity to explain in more detail what the workshop was about.

It’s really easy to turn on SAP Companion for SAP Ariba Guided Buying and provide awesome in-app help when- and where needed. Let me first explain about SAP Ariba Guided Buying:

What is Ariba Guided Buying?

SAP Ariba Guided Buying provides an intuitive shopping experience and guides employees to preferred buying channels, processes, and policies.

Guided buying captures your organization’s purchasing policies and uses them to guide casual users and functional buyers to the outcomes they need. Users know right away when a policy is violated, rather than finding out after submitting a request.

As a result, employees have one place to search for goods and services, collaborate with suppliers, and quickly make compliant purchases with little to no involvement from procurement departments.

For procurement teams, it gives you the power to capture and control more spend. To do this, the solution accommodates tailored workflows so organizational procurement guidelines can be automatically followed without the user having to read them first. Users are guided to preferred suppliers and items that meet the purchasing policies you’ve put in place.

SAP Ariba Guided Buying already has a very intuitive user interface

And last but not least, a self-service admin page gives procurement managers greater visibility into spend. One of the concerns of global commerce is making sure that security and compliance doesn’t suffer. Guided buying is available in more than 190 countries and 24 languages and can be deployed through 13 SAP Ariba-supported global data centers.​

Users know while shopping when a purchasing or budget policy is violated, rather than finding out after submitting a request. You set rules that may allow them to proceed with the exception or require a different purchase.

SAP Companion helps companies to

• Distribute relevant, consumable information when and where needed
• Notify users about changes live on screen
• Provide process assistance to increase adoption and productivity

If you’d like a more detailed explanation, have a look at this blog article: Introducing: SAP Companion – Your Adoption and Productivity Layer.

Additional explanations on screen provided by SAP Companion

Virtual Workshop content and exercises

The virtual workshop session at SAP TechEd was called AP180 – Integrating SAP Ariba Procurement with SAP Companion to Provide In-App Help. 

The recording can be played using this link or here in the session catalogue (after signing in to the SAP TechEd website).

Here is the process overview that we went through during the session:

If you want to follow along the exercises in the video, please register for the SAP TechEd and use the exercises provided on GitHub (linked from the session catalogue).

It’s really quite straightforward to go through the steps 1 and 2. Step 3 then covers the actual content creation under the assumption of an SAP Enable Now license being in place.

Useful topics for project planning

Because the initial setup is only the first step, I also went through some of the other important topics to think of when setting up SAP Companion for any solution.

The vast  majority of users will view the in-app help, but some people need to be able to create and edit it. Who will edit your in-app help?

Make sure to include these roles into your project plan to prepare a sustainable way of enablement content creation.

To make your in-app help a successful and valuable part of the implementation, be sure to include these topics in your planning:

• WHO
  • Authoring Team
  • Quality Check
  • Sign Off
  • Maintenance
• WHAT
  • Input from Project Team
  • Business Requirements
  • Process Management
  • Content Types
• WHEN
  • Project Plan
  • Availability
  • Target Audience
  • Post-Go Live

A dedicated consultant and services provided by SAP Training & Adoption will help your project be a success.

Some additional comments:

Please be aware that there is a delay between changing the SAP Companion configuration in the Ariba Guided Buying and when the configuration changes apply. It could take up to a couple of hours.

Remember that to edit the in-app help content, an SAP Enable Now license is required. Contact your sales rep or go to the SAP Store to find out more.

All the documentation you need can be found here: SAP Companion Integration Guide, SAP Companion Authoring Guide and Ariba Help GB-17952.

SAP runs SAP

To wrap up the session, my esteemed colleague Saurav Agarwal who works as a senior consultant for procurement IT solutions, shared his view of the internal SAP implementation of SAP Companion for SAP Ariba Guided Buying in an interview.

We recorded this video and it’s available in the recording of the session and here:

As easy as 1-2-3

I hope that after going through the steps of the virtual workshop you can see that the set up of SAP Companion for SAP Ariba Guided Buying is really as easy as 1-2-3.

The content creation is intuitive and easy to teach so that your authors can focus on the content and keep your users up-to-date.

Use the embedded standard content even without an SAP Enable Now license and benefit instantly!

I hope this blog helped to explain how you can drive adoption in your SAP Ariba Guided Buying project and provide relevant information at the users fingertips.

Take care,

Kristina