Are you satisfied with ordering non-stock items and services through Guided Buying and would you like to extend this process to include stock items from your S/4HANA system? This is possible!
By making stock items available within your organization through Guided Buying, users can make use of a single, centralized purchasing system. This prevents users from having to work in multiple systems or placing orders outside of the established procurement channels. Ultimately, this leads to savings on both ordering and inventory costs.
Ariba offers the capability to export stock items from S/4 as a catalog to Guided Buying, including all relevant information such as storage location, stock status, lead times, and pricing details. The search functionality and display of stock items work in exactly the same way as for non-stock items.
Once an item is added to the shopping cart, it is immediately clear that it concerns an internal request for stock items. Items reserved from inventory are not included in the total cost of the request. By default, the costs for a stock reservation are not displayed, but these can be made visible if desired. This can be used to determine the approval workflow for stock items
In the screenshot below, the current stock levels are shown.
After a reservation has actually been fulfilled, the number of unrestricted use will be reduced accordingly. The updated stock levels in S/4 are synchronized with Guided Buying at a frequency determined by your organization and are then visible to the user. It is also possible to retrieve real-time stock data directly from S/4. In a future blog post, I will elaborate further on this option.
Benefits:
- All purchases are made through a single system
- End users have insight into current stock levels
- Internal lead times are visible
- Storage locations are visible
- Stock and non-stock items from different suppliers can be combined in a single request
- When stock levels are insufficient, non-stock items from suppliers can be added to the same request
- The standard approval workflow applies
Limitations:
- A reservation cannot be modified; it can only be cancelled
- When a request containing non-stock items is modified, it is not possible to add stock items
Interested?
Are you interested in learning how integrating stock items into Guided Buying can streamline your procurement process and contribute to cost savings?
Please contact Compera, we will be pleased to assist you.