SAP Business Network: A Digital Network for Industry-Specific Buyer-Supplier Collaboration

⇨ Companies require a multi-directional, collaborative platform that enables transparency, resilience, and sustainability in their supply chains.

⇨ SAP Business Network offers a comprehensive platform designed specifically for industry requirements that facilitates business growth by providing seamless connections with trade partners.

⇨ SAP Business Network for Industry is an innovative initiative that integrates SAP's specialized industry knowledge into its transformative business network.

Companies require a multi-directional, collaborative platform that enables transparency, resilience, and sustainability in their supply chains. This is where the SAP Business Network steps in, offering a comprehensive platform designed specifically for industry requirements that facilitates business growth by providing seamless connections with trade partners. The SAP Business Network uniquely enables collaboration across processes such as indirect and direct procurement, supply chain management, logistics, asset collaboration, finance, and talent management.

During SAP Sapphire 2023, SAP unveiled five novel enhancements to the SAP Business Network, to facilitate a swift and effective onboarding process for trading partners and foster their business expansion. These advancements are set to streamline the process for buyers to discover and vet potential trading partners.

The following are the key components of the announced enhancements:

Intelligent Supplier Insights: This feature enriches suppliers with critical information regarding their sales performance on the SAP Business Network. Leveraging a user-friendly dashboard, suppliers can access and interpret data from 14 key performance indicators.

Streamlined Integration: Enhanced integration capability facilitates quicker, more cost-efficient onboarding of multiple customers simultaneously, eliminating the need for unique integration configurations for each customer. This improvement will help buyers incorporate trading partners into their network more swiftly, thereby increasing value realization speed.

Marketplace Catalogs: The new marketplace catalogs feature empowers suppliers to display their products on the SAP Business Network. Through the portal, buyers can search, compare, and initiate inquiries, thus providing trading partners with an extended reach to prospective global customers.

Intelligent Lead Matching: This enriched service links trading partners with potential buyers ready to make purchases, negating the need for cold calling. The right match can be found on the SAP Business Network Discovery, previously known as SAP Ariba Discovery.

Company Profile Enhancements: Trading partners can differentiate themselves from competitors by showcasing their credentials and sustainability ratings. With an increasing emphasis on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors among executives, this feature brings value to all. Our partnership with EcoVadis, a provider of verified sustainability ratings, was also highlighted as part of this initiative.

SAP also introduced SAP Business Network for Industry, an innovative initiative that integrates SAP’s specialized industry knowledge into its transformative business network. This integration of business network capabilities with SAP’s sector-specific expertise results in a distinct supply chain solution. The preliminary emphasis is on sectors such as consumer products, high tech, industrial manufacturing, and life sciences.