Welcome to SAP, Drexel's New e-Procurement Platform
This page will provide information, including milestones and introduction materials, for Drexel’s transition to SAP, a new e-procurement platform to replace Smart Source, which is currently hosted by Jaggaer. The transition will occur over the next few months. This change follows a comprehensive competitive bidding process and strong feedback supporting this transition from the Drexel purchasing community and is part of Accounts Payable (AP) & Procurement Services' ongoing commitment to improve efficiency, ease of use and cost-effectiveness in the University’s procurement activities.
What Is SAP?
SAP is the market leader in enterprise resource planning, analytics, supply chain management, human capital management, master data management, data integration and experience management. They have over 440,000 customers in 180+ countries, more than 230 million cloud users, more than 100 solutions covering all business functions, and the largest cloud portfolio of any provider. SAP’s integrated applications connect all parts of a business function into an intelligent suite on a fully digital platform.
What's Next?
- Planned Town Hall Demo: In partnership with Ernst & Young, AP & Procurement Services will host a recorded town hall on Monday, Oct. 21, at 10 a.m. with an overview and demo of the new system. You can register to virtually attend via Zoom. Questions can be submitted in advance to ariba@drexel.edu.
- Training: Training schedules and material will be posted here soon to assist end users with the transition.
- Contracts: If your department has any master agreements or other recurring contracts that should be incorporated into SAP for launch, please email them to sourcing@drexel.edu with "SAP Contract for [Vendor Name]" in the subject line.
- Flow for Open Purchase Orders (POs) That Will Be Converted From Smart Source to SAP: Please note that no action needs to be taken by PO owners for the actual conversion process.
- More About the Conversion for Open POs:
- Only the remaining balance of open POs, with partial cleared invoices, will be converted to SAP.
- Purchase Order attachments will not be converted over to SAP.
- Historical Purchase Orders that are closed will not be converted to SAP.
- Users will still have display access to view their old requisitions/purchase orders in Smart Source.
- The Sourcing team will be reaching out to confirm which purchase orders should remain open and convert over to SAP.
- Transition Date: We currently anticipate a conversion from Jaggaer to SAP Ariba in late 2024-early 2025. Due to the accelerated implementation schedule, some SAP features not related to core system functionality will be optimized post-launch. Please stay tuned for updates.
SAP Implementation Timeline
- Planning: May – July 2024
- Design: July – August 2024
- Source to Contract (S2C) Deployment: July – November 2024
- Procure to Pay (P2P) Implementation: July – December 2024
- S2C & P2P Go-Live: December 2024
- Cutover: December 2024
What's Changing?
| Task |
Current State |
Future State |
| Contract Review |
Contract review occurs outside the system through multiple possible channels |
Contract review follows a clearly defined path within SAP Contracts, providing greater visibility, predictability, and efficiency; robust contract warehousing capabilities, including identification of master agreements; finalized contracts flow into requisitions |
| Requests for Proposals |
RFPs conducted via email using Word, PDF, and excel documents |
RFPs conducted through SAP Sourcing within the e-procurement platform, centralizing distribution and receipt of materials, warehousing RFPs for future use, and providing greater automation of previously manual tasks; tactical sourcing features to secure competitive bids for smaller purchases not requiring a formal RFP |
| User Experience |
Self-guided catalog and form selection; policy compliance review is primarily manual |
Guided Buying features create a more intuitive and informed user experience, backed by incorporation of Drexel policies within SAP |
| Mobile App |
There is no mobile app for our current system, Smart Source |
Ability to view, track, and approve purchase requisitions from mobile devices via iOS and Android app |
| Invoicing |
Invoices are submitted through the digital mailroom to be uploaded into Smart Source |
Suppliers will be able to upload invoices through the SAP Network and will appear in real-time |
What Do Our Suppliers Need to Know?
- Supplier onboarding activities will occur in PaymentWorks, not SAP—details on how the onboarding kicks off from SAP to follow.
- Suppliers must create an account in SAP:
- Account creation will involve establishing login credentials similar to creating a consumer shopping account on a retail website.
- Supplier onboarding information (e.g., W-9 forms, payment information, etc.) will NOT be required in SAP, only in PaymentWorks.
- SAP accounts enable suppliers to gain visibility to purchase orders (POs), create invoices from POs, and check on payment status.
- Suppliers will be required to submit invoices through their SAP account.
- Linked below are some useful tutorials addressing common questions suppliers may have regarding typical actions that they will perform through their SAP account:
How Can I Learn More?
The following links contain further information about what to expect from this implementation as well as overview videos for each topic below.
AP & Procurement Services will share additional details as they become available and looks forward to further engagement with you as they continue to work toward process improvement, clarity and efficiency in the purchasing experience.