Traditionally in Ariba upstream concepts of Workspace to manage contract documentation or sourcing projects as repository is well known. Though such feature could also be useful in downstream where documents are generally maintained at specific transaction level and there is no repository level view across P2P. SAP has extended the workspace from sourcing into Ariba Guided buying through new project form to cover it as procurement workspace. In this blog I will discuss this feature in detail as well as steps to enable the same in Guided Buying.
What are procurement workspaces and how they can be used with Guided Buying?
There are many stakeholders (requestors, buyers, store clerks, accounts payable etc.) involved in end-to-end procurement process and they create various functional documents during the transaction lifecycle. Procurement workspace projects act as a repository to store transactional & non transactional information by various stakeholders to manage complex procurement scenarios.
It gives a logical structure into which one can add guided buying documents and associated compliance, regulatory, or financial documents related to a procurement activity. With this project users can manage purchasing activities as part of a project.
How to Configure procurement Workspaces in Guided Buying?
Guided buying landing page is well received feature and procurement workspace enablement is as easy as adding tile with specific form provided for the purpose.
You can enable procurement workspace project tile in Guided Buying, powered by the
new project form /
functional document. This new guided buying form type is used to integrate between
Guided buying and Sourcing.
Below are the configuration steps to be done by Guided Buying admin such as enabling the parameter, creation of templates in Ariba Sourcing, creation of project forms & defining policies in Guided buying.
Configuration Steps
- Enable the feature (Set parameters in guided buying and Intelligent Configuration Manager (ICM) to enable procurement workspace projects.)
- Set entitlement and permissions:
- You must have "Ariba Procure To Pay" site profile entitlement in SAP Ariba Sourcing to enable procurement workspaces.
- Users must be members of the "Procurement Project Creator" user group to create procurement workspace projects.
- Create project templates: for your organizational processes in SAP Ariba Sourcing
- Create project forms: Use the forms builder to create header forms and optional project-specific forms to initiate procurement workspace projects
- Map processes to header forms: Define your process names and map them to header forms so that users can create procurement workspace projects.
- Localize process names: You can provide localized content for procurement workspace projects.
- Manage fields and display order: You can optionally change which fields display in project-related pages and their order. You can also change which field represents project status.
- Create process policies: Add process policies, which determine the behavior of functional documents. When users submit header forms, guided buying evaluates them using these policies and chooses the appropriate procurement workspace template.
- Ensure that documents are assigned to projects: Add guided buying validation policies that detect documents that aren't assigned to procurement workspace projects and instruct users to assign them.
- Create tiles for header forms: Finally, make your header forms available to users by adding Functional document tiles.
What can we do in Procurement workspaces projects?
Procurement workspace (PW) enables users to create complex procurement activities and link procurement transactions initiated from guided buying.
It offers the flexibility of creating a standalone project that can be associated with
tasks, teams and documents for collaboration, storing, tracking, approval, and completion.
Features: -
- Creation PW’s in GB
- Creation of subproject
- Creation of requisition within GB workspace
- Tracking downstream documents
- Adding a PR to Procurement workspaces
- Creation of Project Team
- Build custom form- Finance approval form (example)
- Build approval flow
- Store supporting documents
- Announcement to project and team member
- Send out notification to project team
- Copy previous project into the new project
- Reporting by using Pre-packaged reports /Operational reporting API for procurement
- Build a procurement validation policy
- Creation of RQX/RFQ once project is replicated to Ariba Sourcing
Summary:
Procurement workspace project provides a container to maintain all documents & transactional information under one roof. It is a great feature if one is fulfilling procurement activities for short or long term ongoing projects to track all the affairs related to the same.
References & Guides
For quick walkthrough, you can refer to below video
https://www.ariba.com/resources/bpc/webinars/procurement-workspace-overview#video
For detailed configuration set up, you can refer to below SAP documentation:
Configuring procurement workspace projects - SAP Help Portal
With the Blog, I have tried to highlight all the useful features of the procurement workspace functionality. Hope this will help you, in case you are planning to go ahead with this feature.
Happy Reading!!
Please feel free to ask any questions on this blog. I will be happy to take them and respond.
