Being a professional buyer can be a very stressful job. It is very hard to deal with numerous requisitions from multiple sources and with various priorities and still be able to keep track of all of them, not miss deadlines, and source from the best suppliers. The same holds true for supervisors and managers when trying to quantify their teams’ performances, to monitor any outstanding situations and to help their teams to meet the targets.

ExceleratedS2P, as a source to pay specialist who understands the differing priorities and needs of the procurement process, together with its sister company Cordis Solutions and its specialised personnel has created a new application that is capable of tackling all issues mentioned before. The tool aim is to make the buyers and their managers’ lives easier by improving efficiency and productivity whilst increasing adherence to controls and process compliance.

The approach ExceleratedS2P and Cordis Solutions utilise to build applications always focus on the latest technology and design guidelines available from SAP to provide the best possible User-Experience while making sure such experience is consistent across all applications. The solution provides a responsive and adaptable Fiori-like User-Interface for both an Operational Application – to be used by buyers on their daily activities – and a Reporting Application – to be used by both buyers and managers to monitor progress, balance work and make educated decisions.

The Operational Application – Buyers Workbench – is directly connected to SAP ECC backend using RESTful interfaces (OData Services) exposed by means of an SAP NetWeaver Gateway instance, allowing the buyer to see real-time information and update such information directly from the application. The Buyer Workbench helps buyers to organise their activities throughout the day by prioritizing all assigned requisitions based on procurement best practices in combination with company guidelines, making it very simple to identify which items should be actioned first. On top of allowing buyers to update strategic fields in the requisitions and track the sourcing process, the application can be used to create Purchase Orders and Requests for Quotation either for a single instance or massively.

The Reporting tool was designed as a series of Chart Reports with drill-down capability to give managers and buyers full visibility over the company sourcing process. The standard set of charts include a Leader Board – to help track the performance record of business units, teams and buyers –, a Weekly Changes Report – to help users visualise the variance of created requisitions between 2 given weeks – and a Long-Term Trend analysis – to help managers balance work among buyers and make informed choices. Similarly, to the Operational Application, the Reporting Tool also uses RESTful interfaces to retrieve information from the backend. Nonetheless, in this case, the backend system should not be an SAP ECC instance but an SAP BW instance and the queries created in such system are exposed as OData Services.

Please do not hesitate to contact us in case you would like to know more about the Buyers Workbench Application or any other Cordis Solutions’ products!