In this blog post, we will delve into the world of SAP Ariba Category Management. As one of the pioneering solutions in the procurement and supply chain space, SAP Ariba has successfully revolutionized the way businesses manage their procurement processes. This article will take you through an in-depth technical understanding of how SAP Ariba category management can be integrate using various BTP tools and Ariba spend visibility integration.

About SAP Ariba Category management:

SAP Ariba Category Management is a cloud-based solution that enables organizations to define and manage purchasing categories and provides actionable market intelligence, category insights, and various tools and templates for developing and operationalizing category strategies that drive business value and performance. This business solution is built on SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP).

Technical Architecture:

Below High-level Architecture diagram shows the integration between various BTS services and SAP Ariba including spend data integration for both Ariba spend data Market intelligence provider.

Pre-requisites:

SAP Ariba Category management use SAP Business Technology Platform with this cloud solution to gain visibility, extend applications, and integrate your source-to-pay processes.

Customers must have the SAP Ariba Category management license, Once obtained the license this needs to be access via Global Account with BTP Technology platform.

In the BTP Global account, customer need to setup 2 sub-account, one for test and another one for production use. For each of your SAP BTP subaccounts, you need to configure a separate Identity Authentication service (IAS) tenant.

For each of your SAP BTP subaccounts, you need an identity management system supporting SCIM, like Identity Provisioning service (IPS). Then Enable Cloud Foundry on your SAP BTP subaccounts.

In the BTP cockpit, you need to subscribe to relevant Category management entitlement, once you successfully enabled, you can see below entitlement in the BTP cockpit.

You also need to assign all the required administrator roles to yourself or to the administrator. Also, assign the roles to the end-users.

You can explore your subaccount to view the destinations which have been created by default. You will see many destinations created for different Cloud Solutions which require configuration.

Once enabled the above BTP subscriptions, then you can see the relevant SAP Ariba Category Management admin apps which including Manage Taxonomy, Manage Configurations and workflow administrations.

Integrations Required for SAP Ariba Category Management Setup in BTP:

1.Identity Authentication Service(IAS) and Identity Provisioning Service (IPS):

IAS and IPS is mandatory and basic setup for any products built in BTP. Identity Authentication provides authentication and single sign-on for users in the cloud. The Identity Authentication service is an identity provider that can be used to store users or connect with existing corporate identity providers. The service is the source for user information.

The Identity Provisioning service helps you to provision user identities and their authorizations to various cloud and on-premise business applications. The service allows you to read users and groups from Identity Authentication user store, and provision them to the other business applications.

SAP Ariba Category Management integrates with SAP Cloud Identity Services to consume user information that resides in the Identity Authentication user store via Identity Provisioning Service.

See Setting Up User Replication for SAP Ariba Category Management and Setting Up Connection with the Authorization and Trust Management Service

2.SAP Master Data Integration service:

SAP Master Data Integration service is a multi-tenant kernel service for master data integration. It harmonizes master data across a hybrid landscape. The SAP Master Data Integration service is a central hub to which applications can integrate to synchronize their master data.

SAP Ariba Category Management integrates with the SAP Master Data Integration service that allows administrators to publish purchasing categories from SAP Ariba Category Management to the SAP Master Data Integration service.

Users from other applications can utilize the centrally located purchasing category master data from their platform by establishing a connection with the SAP Master Data Integration service.

To set up master data integration, you must have a subaccount for the SAP Master Data Integration Kernel Service on SAP BTP. This service cannot be access via the same sub-account used for category management subscription.

In the above MDI service subscription, you need to configure a Distribution Model in SAP Master Data Orchestration for Purchasing Categories and Setting up SAP BTP Destination for SAP Master Data Integration after Establish a connection with the master data integration API.For more detail you can refer help documentation SAP Master Data Integration Setup | SAP Help Portal

MDI API:

3.Procurement data warehouse:

The procurement data warehouse supports ingestion of spend data from SAP Ariba applications such as SAP Ariba Sourcing including guided sourcing capability, SAP Ariba Buying and Invoicing, and SAP Ariba Spend Analysis to the embedded SAP Analytics Cloud. It provides data transfer, storage, loading, and reporting, and it drives visualization through advanced analytics dashboards.

SAP Ariba Category Management integrates with the procurement data warehouse system to consume spend analytics information for purchasing categories. The integration enables users to view and analyze spend analytics information for categories in the SAP Ariba Category Management user interface.

You can refer the SAP help document link Procurement Data Warehouse Setup | SAP Help Portal to complete the procurement data warehouse set up

4. Intelligent opportunity analyzer:

SAP Ariba Category Management integrates with intelligent opportunity analyzer, which allows users to identify, create, manage, and monitor sourcing opportunities for categories. The solution leverages spend analytics information from the procurement data warehouse system. The intelligent opportunity analyzer solution also allows users to review and analyze category spend data from the advanced analytics user interface.

5. Setting Up Connection with SAP Ariba Sourcing

Establish a connection with the SAP Ariba Sourcing with guided sourcing capability that allows users to seamlessly create guided sourcing projects for initiatives or opportunities from SAP Ariba Category Management.

Sourcing Project management API needs to be called to create the Guided sourcing event in SAP Ariba. You must have access to the SAP Ariba Developer Portal to this application.

Also Create a HTTP destination for SAP Ariba Sourcing in the Destinations editor (SAP BTP cockpit).

You also need to establish a connection with SAP Ariba Open APIs to display contracts and sourcing projects information associated with a category in SAP Ariba Category Management.

6.Setting Up Connection with Market Intelligence Providers

Establish a connection with a market intelligence data provider to receive either news feed or market dynamics data, or both, for the purchasing categories mapped to the custom domain product classification of the data provider. You must configure the destinations separately for news feed and market dynamics. For this one also , you need to create a HTTP destination in the Destinations editor (SAP BTP cockpit).

For more detail on setting up the market intelligence, you can refer at Setting Up Connection with Market Intelligence Providers | SAP Help Portal

Publishing Spend Data to Procurement Data Warehouse

SAP Ariba Category Management consumes spend data from SAP Ariba Spend Analysis or spend data loader through procurement data warehouse for spend analytics.

Once completed the configuration activities in BTP cockpit, you need to publish the spend data from SAP Ariba spend analysis.

To load the spend data from SAP Ariba Spend Analysis to procurement data warehouse, the spend analysis deployment lead must add the data (facts and dimensions) to a load operation in SAP Ariba Spend Analysis and schedule a load operation to load the data into the data load schema. After loading the enriched data, the spend analysis deployment lead must switch database schemas, to upload the data to procurement data warehouse.You can also refer spend loaded guide Data Load Process | SAP Help Portal for more detail

Now the system is ready after publishing the Ariba spend data. Next activity is Ariba category management administration which required for manage the taxonomy, creating the purchasing categories, etc. You can refer help documentation link at SAP Ariba Category Management Administration Guide | SAP Help Portal for more detail

Also make sure to assign below role for the Admin and business users for managing the admin and other category manager activities.

Roles for Business Users

To allow administrators and users to access the various applications in SAP Ariba Category Management, you have to manage roles and role collections in SAP BTP cockpit.

Assigning Administrator and User Roles

When you subscribe to SAP Ariba Category Management, the system automatically creates the below mentioned roles and role collections. Each role is based on a role template that enables specific rights.

• Category Management Administrator – CategoryManagementAdministrator
• A new role collection to be created for workflow administration – WorkflowAdmin & WorkflowContextAdmin
• Opportunity Analysis Administrator – CategoryManagementOpportunityAdministrator
• Category Manager – CategoryManagementManager & CategoryManagementViewer

• Category Management Viewer – CategoryManagementViewer
• Category Strategy Approver – CategoryPlanApprover , WorkflowParticipant & CategoryManagementViewer
• Opportunity Manager – OpportunityManager OpportunityViewer, CategoryManagementOpportunityManager & CategoryManagementOpportunityViewer
• Opportunity Viewer – OpportunityViewer & CategoryManagementOpportunityViewer