Accenture: Journey to intelligent procurement with SAP Ariba and SUSE

When you hear ‘Accenture’ what comes to your mind? Probably not their procurement process. However, it is worth taking a closer look on how Accenture runs its processes. They just proved to be very successful in transforming their procurement process into an intelligent solution that guides people to the right channels. Sounds interesting? Then keep reading:

The challenge

With around half a million employees around the world, Accenture purchases high volumes of goods and services. In order to manage their spending, the new SAP Ariba’s Guided Buying capability on SAP Ariba Buying and Invoicing software-as-a-service (SaaS) was deployed leading Accenture’s Procurement and IT on a digital transformation journey towards a new generation of procurement and the development of an intelligent platform.

The project

Working for six months on the initial go-live followed by a twelve months global deployment to 68 countries, Accenture’s internal IT team in cooperation with several partners realized the SAP Ariba Guided Buying project. Special attention was paid to four main areas:

• Continuously increasing and enhancing content
• Ongoing enhancement of guided buying, digital buying, and the procurement user experience
• Digitization of procurement operations
• The move to intelligent procurement

The outcome

SAP Ariba’s Guided Buying solution was implemented to more than 68 countries Accenture operates in, followed by continued refinement and enablement focusing on strategy, digitize buying approaches and AI-powered automation as well as improved user experience and increased procurement savings.

Since implementing SAP Ariba, Accenture is leveraging new capabilities with an evolving, real-time platform through agile delivery of new capabilities. Also, SAP Ariba has transformed the buying process for Accenture employees, enabling users to be faster, more cost-effective and more compliant in their purchasing activities. Buying options, purchasing policy and content navigation are intuitive and integrated into the buying experience and enable Accenture to direct buyers to contracted prices. All in all, Accenture was able to save more than $20 million annually leading indeed to a new generation of procurement.

Learn more

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