If you’re in direct, and are a mid-sized-plus organization, you are running off of a major ERP which is most likely SAP or Oracle. If you are in the EU, and the DACHS region in particular, let’s face it, it’s SAP. And while you make it work for direct (because that is, after all, what it is designed for), and your engineers don’t complain no matter how convoluted the process is (as long as there is a repeatable workflow that lets them do their jobs), the buyers probably don’t care for it, and the end users likely don’t have a clue how to use it (and never will).

You need another solution for indirect. While once upon a time that was Ariba (as nothing else out there really integrated with SAP [and, by the way, Ariba didn’t really integrate with SAP either as the first integration was accomplished through middleware]), given the age of Ariba, and the focus on (really) large organizations, that’s likely not the case anymore for most organizations (especially in the mid-market).

That’s where BeNeering comes in. Founded in 2007 by technologists, engineers, and AI experts to help their customers simplify and automate operational procurement with SAP, they have grown from a scrappy start-up with a just a couple of employees (and no sales and marketing, which was only added in the last couple of years) to a solution provider powering over 300,000 users across 40+ large customers operating in 85 countries (and did so just through referrals).

The core of the BeNeering Digital Procurement Platform, which natively integrates to SAP through low level interfaces (for real-time push and pull to and from SAP, ensuring all data and process state is maintained in your ERP), is the following capabilities:

• Catalog Management
• Services Procurement
• Guided Buying
• “AI” Intake (Chatbot) Assistant
• Simple Sourcing
• Supplier Portal

Catalog Management

BeNeering is a full catalog management solution where buyers can create their own hosted catalogs, import a vendor’s catalog, or integrate a third party punch-out catalog which can all be accessed separately or as an integrated, federated, catalog with integrated, federated, search. The buyer can define as many validation rules as they like for a supplier’s catalog and (re-)run them all before accepting a supplier’s catalog, or update, for publication.

One one or more items (or standard services) are selected from the catalog and added to the basket, the requester can submit the purchase requisition. If everything is a standard/preferred product from an an approved catalog, within the requester’s budget, and below the approval limits, the request will automatically be translated to a purchase order which will be processed touch free by BeNeering through its deep SAP integration that will handle everything and track the entire process to the goods receipt, and even associate the request with the invoice when it enters SAP through the organization’s invoicing system. At any time, the requester or the buyer can see where it is in the process and the complete document flow across SAP through the BeNeering portal.

Services Procurement

The platform contains with one or more services specific forms for buyer to request pre-defined/standard services (against contracts) or unplanned services (against budgets). Every form will collect standard fields such as service names, required by/delivery date, department/group code, currency, service code, (master) contract, supplier, etc. Specific forms, such as for IT services or hospitality will have additional fields to select service types and resource options in the first case and catering items, office location, and exact time in the second case. And, as with the catalog, all of the relevant SAP fields for proper classification, indexing, contract and supplier and material group association, and routing will be pre-filled in for (and not editable by) the user. Finally, the platform supports service entry sheets or timesheet confirmation processes with suppliers being able to add contract items directly to SES.

Guided Buying

Since the BeNeering platform also supports inventory integration as well (provided the inventory is also maintained in SAP), the platform can offer a true buying guided solution across inventory, preferred vendors and catalogs, (pre-defined) services on contract, standard request forms, and sourcing event (creation) all depending on what the user is searching for. And, of course, even if the user requires multiple items and services of different types from inventory, established contracts, preferred vendor, and open bid, all but the last can be added to the cart (and the smart checkout functionality will split the cart up as appropriate, guiding the individual POs through the right process) and the latter can easily be initiated from the search bar or AI Chatbot assistant.

“AI” Intake Chatbot Assistant

The AI Chatbot assistant takes an unstructured request, asks questions, and guides the user to the right catalog (item), service request form, or dynamic form for a new product/service request which will be built-up step by step by the AI as it asks questions, elicits the right information, identifies the appropriate fields, and finds the right cost centres, codes, product/material groups, framework agreements and other descriptors to populate the key fields that will be needed by a buyer who needs to process the request.

Simple Sourcing

If the product or service a requester requires is not in the catalog, then the user can initiate a simple sourcing event provided that they know the category and estimated dollar value (and it’s within their budget/request limit, or they get approval if it’s not within their request limit/budget), define the currency, and verify that they have searched the catalog and supply forms.

In this simple sourcing event, they describe their requirement (product name and type, required delivery date, units, required quantity, etc.), select the delivery location, invite onboarded/approved suppliers, add any necessary attachments that detail specifications, and send it out. The suppliers receive it in their portal and can choose to bid on all, some, or none of the items, and once the bids are in, or the deadline is passed, the buyer can see the quotes from each supplier and either award all to a single supplier or cherry pick the suppliers by line item. Since this is for simple sourcing (which will generally be small projects), there is no support for complex price breakdowns, what if scenarios, etc. It’s a essentially just quick quote/basic RFQ functionality, which is all that is typically needed for many smaller/tail indirect purchases in an average organization. (And if the organization has more strategic buyers, or a lot of regular requests for the same product/service, the application can be configured with demand consolidation and then the buyer can consolidate all requests for the same product or service in the queue into one before the request goes to a supplier if this would allow for better pricing due to volume or a better response rate due to less price [update] requests.)

Supplier Portal

The supplier portal gives suppliers the ability to:

• maintain their core organizational and user data
• access their POs and generate acknowledgements
• access sourcing events and place bids
• maintain their catalogs and submit one or more to the buyer for approval

Profiles are standard profiles and all input and revised data will pass through the validation rules defined by the platform to either the partner SRM solution for onboarding/validation/update or straight through to the SAP SRM module, as appropriate to the customer and their SRM solutions and configuration.

With respect to services purchase orders, the supplier can add specific service categories or resources it needs to compete the service, which will then allow a buyer to create appropriate timesheets (in BeNeering) for services tracking.

With respect to sourcing, they have a standard interface where they can bid on each line item, add attachments, and asynchronously message with the buyer.

With respect to catalogs, the supplier can upload as many as they want, edit them in the BeNeering system, submit them to the buyer when they are ready, where they go into an inactive state until accepted by the buyer (who can also reject them in which case they are just in the upload library on the supplier’s side).

Summary

The real power from the platform is the automation of the majority of most requests to receipts from end-users (if they are requesting approved products and services within their limits), and the vast majority of purchase orders to receipts (once a buyer has given approval for a request for a non-standard/off contract product or service or above a spending limit). On average, they automate over 90% of PRs/POs for their clients.

All of these capabilities can be accessed through their menu options, their widget based dashboard that allows quick entry into these capabilities, or through the search bar which searches across all of the platform modules. In addition, the platform can also support other capabilities that can be built/integrated on a customer-by-customer or project-by-project basis. For example, some customers have built/integrated:

• reservations, where requesters can reserve product in inventory for an upcoming use
• process/requests/sourcing checklists (to make sure a requester has followed the proper process, done their research, and gathered the appropriate information)
• budget requests (which are then routed to either the head buyer if it is a request for reallocation of existing budgets, or an external system if it is for a new budget)
• supplier onboarding requests (which are then routed to the ERP or a third party Best of Breed supplier onboarding system, which could be their partner’s solution, if the requestor needs to request from a specific supplier)
• timesheets (for supplier personnel to fill out for maintenance, hourly rate contracts)
• other capabilities that can be captured in a form-based workflow
• etc.

Setup/administration is relatively simple since BeNeering will reuse all user roles, workflows, etc. that are already in place with SAP. No having to replicate everything in your standalone indirect e-Procurement application. Plus, lead buyers can work in SAP or BeNeering as all of the data is maintained in SAP.

For those who also want more strategic procurement capabilities, BeNeering also partners with:

• Ap solut Squando for supplier lifecycle management (built on BTP)
• Portal Systems AG for contract management (built on Microsoft 365 / Sharepoint)

All-in-all for a mid-sized or large organization sweating with SAP, BeNeering offers a modern, all-inclusive, efficient, mostly touchless, platform for day to day tactical and operational indirect and tail-spend Procurement that will be easy, and efficient, to use for all organizational employees and buyers alike. It’s definitely a solution that any organization who needs an indirect and tail-spend Procurement solution that needs to natively integrate to their SAP backbone should check out.