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SAP DSN: The Bridge to Intelligent Spend Management

SAP DSN Membership: The Bridge to Intelligent Spend Management

A clear spend management strategy is critical for any business. The balancing act of managing and optimizing spend in today’s volatile marketplace is challenging. Implementing a real-time, intelligent spend management strategy is one of the best ways to minimize uncertainty. Companies that successfully develop an intelligent and effective strategy are usually able to better focus on innovation and growth.

Without an effective spend management strategy, companies suffer from a low level of transparency and control over their spending. This frequently results in unnecessary spending, increased supplier-related risks, inaccurate data, low cash flow visibility, and an inability to optimize their working capital strategically.

More specifically, regarding vendor invoicing and accounts payable, marketing research specialist Vanson Bourne and SAP quantified specific insights in a survey of 500 leading organizations:

  • 63% receive duplicate invoices, but few had insights on how many are paid before being noticed. If noticed, additional time is required to recoup those funds.
  • 88% are fielding calls from suppliers chasing payment status, most calling at least once a week.
  • 34% are charged late payment fees as a penalty.
  • Typically, 15 employees can be tied up in the invoice process, pulling them away from value-adding efforts.

An intelligent spend management strategy helps minimize or eliminate these issues so businesses can stay flexible and competitive in today’s quickly changing market. One of the best ways to get started is by integrating your business with the SAP Business Network.

The SAP Business Network

The SAP Business Network is the largest business network on the planet, with over 4 million companies conducting more than $2.8 trillion in business every year-larger than eBay, Alibaba, and Amazon combined. Many of your current customers, suppliers, and partners are already transacting on the network.

SAP Business Network Stats

With specific solutions for procurement, supply chain, logistics and more, the network is an all-in-one source for efficiently collaborating with trading partners. Recently, SAP made it even easier to sign-on and get started.

Introducing SAP DSN: On-Ramp to the SAP Business Network

The SAP Digital Supplier Network Membership is a unique, rapid-deployment supplier portal offering that seamlessly connects SAP ECC, S/4HANA On-Premises or Cloud, providing customers with many-to-many collaboration through the SAP Business Network for Procurement. It creates direct connections with suppliers, allowing buyers to digitally transact with suppliers and eliminate disconnected paper and email trails, without tedious one-to-one EDI configurations for individual suppliers.

SAP DSN Graphic

The SAP digital supplier network membership increases control without adding complexity, leveraging digital collaboration to reshape how companies work with their suppliers to make their relationships and every transaction more efficient and informed.

Benefits of SAP DSN

Some of the key benefits of SAP digital supplier network membership are:

  • Eliminating payment of duplicate invoices
  • Reducing the cost of processing invoices
  • Capturing missed early payment discounts
  • Avoiding late payments and associated late payment charges
  • Increasing visibility of cash-flows
  • Improving the employee experience

Suppliers also receive benefits, including having immediate, real-time answers to their top five questions:

  • Do I have a new order?
  • Did the customer receive my goods/services?
  • What is the status of my invoice?
  • When will I be paid?
  • Do I have leads to respond to?

SAP DSN In-Depth

An SAP DSN membership is the first step to an intelligent spend management strategy. It is the proven solution for digital supplier collaboration through the SAP Business Network, and it dramatically eliminates communication errors, improves accuracy, accelerates business processes, assures data quality, and reduces costs.

SAP DSN Digital Supplier NetworkIt enables B2B many-to-many collaboration through a digital network with the supplier community. It provides automated, data-rich, fast, accurate transactions and eliminates inefficient, manual, back-and-forth communication tasks, disconnected email trails, repetitive voicemail and phones calls, and complex EDI portals.

Once on the network, customers quickly realize benefits and ROI through increased accuracy, deeper data transparency, substantial overall time savings, improved vendor relationships, early payment discounts and more. All orders, POs, invoices, payments, documents, and data are integrated with your ERP, so everything is available for in-depth spend analysis and exceptional real-time visibility.

An SAP DSN membership is available as a stand-alone addition for any company running SAP ECC, S/4HANA Cloud, and on-premises. In addition, every RISE with SAP deal includes a Business Network Starter Pack that allows customers to get quickly connected to the SAP Business Network. Optima, as a selected implementation partner by SAP with extensive invoice automation expertise, ensures that the solution is integrated with each business’s unique processes and goals with minimal disruption, and maximizes the ROI of the solution.

What Does an SAP DSN Membership Provide?

An SAP DSN membership works for both the buyer and supplier to automate the purchasing process. In a typical procurement workflow, a buyer’s employee is alerted to generate a purchase order in procurement, which is then emailed to the supplier. Then the supplier ships the order and requests payment. Next, accounts payable fulfills payment, and it is then up to procurement to ensure the order was filled accurately.

It automates the following processes and communications saving 60-70% of the amount of time required for each order:

  • Purchase Orders
  • Order Confirmations
  • Shipping Notices
  • Goods Received Notices
  • Service Entry Sheets
  • Service Entry Sheet Responses
  • Invoices
  • Invoice Statuses
  • Remittance and Remittance Advices
  • Offers for Early Payment and Discount Tracking

Purchase orders and payment receipts are generated and stored in the company’s ERP and customized rules can be created to accept or reject documents and actions based on their content, eliminating errors. Supplier communications are also documented and stored with the transaction data. It streamlines and automates the buyer to supplier collaboration, minimizes errors, and allows employees to focus on value-adding work instead of tedious manual tasks.

This video demo from SAP gives a clear overview of how the membership solves purchasing and payment challenges.

With an SAP digital supplier network membership, companies can get started quickly and reap the advantages of the SAP Business Network for Procurement allowing them to quickly go digital with their suppliers with a focus on best practices. This flexibility provides immediately accessible benefits for growing businesses, as well as enabling larger firms to execute strategic implementations.

Measurable Value and ROI

SAP DSN Money BagThe benefits of the SAP DSN membership and the SAP Business Network include dramatically increased accuracy, configurable automated compliance rules, and reduced IT support needs due to the integrated, streamlined digital architecture. The increased efficiency, spend transparency, and flexibility quickly translate into tangible business benefits. SAP’s data shows that for every $500 million in spend, businesses will save $1 million by leveraging SAP S/4HANA and SAP Digital Supplier Network. In addition, most companies also realize:

  • 60% average reduction in operating costs
  • 50% – 75% faster transaction cycles
  • 4% – 6% increase in cash flow

All these contribute to substantial ROI, which will continue to build value as usage increases.

Conclusion

Many businesses are already taking advantage of an SAP DSN membership to start their journey into Intelligent Spend Management by leveraging efficient B2B digital collaboration with their suppliers. With its fixed scope, rapid-deployment, and baked-in best practices, it quickly saves time, reduces errors, and provides a measurable ROI.

If want to learn more about SAP digital supplier network membership, the SAP Business Network, and how they can impact your business success, download this overview. Optima is a certified SAP digital supplier network membership partner and can demonstrate how quickly it can be added to your environment. We can also determine how many of your existing suppliers are already taking advantage of the digital B2B collaboration through the SAP Business Network.

Contact us about SAP DSN