Service Procurement 

 

Purpose

E-procurement has produced great opportunities for saving costs in the purchasing process. However, companies generally fail to extend cost saving measures to services, even though services amount to more than 50% of annual purchasing volumes.

The Service Procurement business scenario within SAP Supplier Relationship Management (SAP SRM) covers a wide range of services such as temporary labor, consulting, maintenance, and facility management. With SAP SRM 3.0, the existing service procurement functionality is improved to cover the whole process of Service Procurement.

 

Prerequisites

 

You have configured your SAP Enterprise Buyer system according to the information given in the Business Scenario Configuration Guide: Service Procurement  in the SAP Service Marketplace under service.sap.com/ibc.

 

Process Flow

 

Service Procurement enables companies to manage resources and monitor costs over the whole range of services. The procurement of services is both more complex and less standardized than the purchasing of materials. At the point of purchase, a service cannot be defined in quantity, duration, or price. The service remains undefined until confirmed by the supplier.

Service Procurement is intended for employees that work with SAP Enterprise Buyer –both the shopping cart and the confirmation- on a regular basis.

You can use Enterprise Buyer according to your specific needs. The supplier policy of your company determines the suppliers’ degree of integration in the operational business process.

To integrate small and medium-sized suppliers in your procurement process, you can implement the Supplier Enablement business scenario using SAP Supplier Self-Services (SAP SUS). SAP SUS supports the whole process, from accessing the catalog to the exchange of messages.

In all previous Enterprise Buyer releases you could order simple services as free-text or limit items. Now, new SAP SRM functionality focuses on Temporary Labor & Consulting Services, with improvements to the shopping cart and a new time entry form for temporary labor.

To support the procurement of temporary labor, Enterprise Buyer has a new easy-entry screen with service-specific fields in the “extended form” shopping cart. This screen facilitates the comfortable and flexible procurement of services. To enter your service request, you can use free-text entry or refer to product master data. The easy-entry screen offers service-specific fields for the service provider and performance period. You define the performance location on header level. You can also specify limit positions for expenses and overtime.

The requester specifies a supplier and then selects a favored service provider that is an employee of this supplier. You can select a service provider that is already maintained as a partner in Enterprise Buyer, or you can select a special job description profile from the catalog. If there is no entry for the supplier, the incomplete purchase order is sent to the sourcing cockpit. The purchaser can enter the source of supply manually or through tendering.

The limit positions within the shopping cart for temporary labor enable you to set a provision for unplanned services (expenses or overtime) that are not precisely definable in amount or duration during the planning phase of a procurement project. This combines planned and unplanned positions that belong together in a single temporary labor shopping cart. Confirmations for services can be created and invoiced within a predefined limit. The type of service can be specified at the time of service entry. This guarantees cost monitoring.

When the shopping cart has been created and approved via workflow by the manager responsible, the purchase order can be sent out to the supplier by mail, fax, e-mail or as an XML-file.

Once the service has been rendered, one of the two following scenarios may apply:

 

 

Scenario with loose supplier integration

The service provider sends the time recording sheets to the purchaser as an attachment or via XML data exchange. The purchaser manually records the time in Enterprise Buyer.

The time entry form in the confirmation facilitates detailed time recording for services and limit positions (expenses and overtime). Times can be recorded at any time, as agreed between buyer and supplier. Several confirmations can be generated for one purchase order. The purchaser can also add items from catalogs or contracts to limit items. If the added item is a service, time recording is re-enabled. You can also change the name of the service provider, if the ordered service provider had to be replaced.

An invoice can be created after the manager responsible has approved the confirmation.

Scenario with Close Supplier Integration

This scenario assumes a high level of supplier integration. Supplier Enablement enables the supplier to receive sales orders from Enterprise Buyer, to report provided sales orders over the Internet and to invoice them.

The shopping cart is created in Enterprise Buyer. If the applied supplier is a SUS supplier, the requester can select the service provider from the employee list maintained in SUS.

The SUS supplier receives the sales order by Internet. The supplier can now accept the order or make changes. This process can be repeated until both sides agree.

Activities can be confirmed at any time during a project as agreed by buyer and supplier. In the case of limit items, the service provider can also add items from a catalog or from the product data that is maintained in SUS. Contract data must be stored in a catalog.

The requester accepts or rejects the confirmation in SAP Enterprise Buyer. A rejection results in a new confirmation. The supplier can create an invoice as soon as the requester in Enterprise Buyer has accepted the confirmation. The invoice again has to be approved in Enterprise Buyer by the requester or manager responsible. If it is accepted, the SUS supplier is paid.