Ariba user management, approvals and master data done the smart way
SAP Ariba is quite complex software giving customers high degree of freedom to create users according to their liking and respecting most of the requirements coming from the business and existing IT infrastructure. Despite very complex possibilities and flexible settings, the process of user creation and maintenance can feel cumbersome, lacking some crucial features and, let’s be honest, not very user friendly. Same thing is true about creation and updates of Ariba approvables lookup tables.
HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM…
It is not uncommon, especially in large corporations, that Ariba admins either from business or IT side get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of requests and changes they need to process to keep up with the latest developments in those areas and rollouts are not any easier. The bigger the company and Ariba usage, the bigger the issue. The fact that the import tasks are based on manually created csv files does not help. Easy to solve you say — give the rights to the people, countries, decentralize! Well, not so fast. Most of those who try this approach in large corporation environment fail miserably. To make sure that the import tasks won’t lead to one big mess in the system, admins needs to be pretty good in working with csv files and understand in detail all the intricacies of Ariba files structure. Do you think it is possible to train twenty people to this level, let them work in parallel with the imports and have a good night sleep knowing that everything will work just fine? That is very unlikely. At the same time Ariba does not allow you out of the box to effectively limit admin rights to manage only a particular localized set of data like specific modules, groups, countries, approval tables etc., meaning that most of the work remains in hands of handful ‘’lucky’’ ones — the central administrators.
LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL
Have you ever heard “When you find no solution to a problem, it’s probably not a problem to be solved but rather a truth to be accepted.”? Well maybe not in this case. What if I would tell you, there is a solution. Because there definitely is one. ADAPPT Solutions created software that can help to solve just that and much more. ADAPPTool is cloud-based software delivered as service meaning you need no additional hardware resources and data are accessible pretty much anywhere, anytime. It creates csv files precisely in the structure Ariba expects and loads them to Ariba automatically via Cloud Integration Gateway. It allows you to actually create local admins, who are limited in their rights to manage certain modules, countries etc. Thanks to a tagging system you can let certain ADAPPTool admins to manage users belonging only to certain module or country, let some of them manage only approval tables and even limit which part inside one specific lookup table belonging to a given country or organizational unit they can edit. You can allow them to assign only predefined groups and do so only for specific organizational units. ADAPPTool also ensures there are no invalid data in the loaded files that would be simply ignored, or even worse, result into an error. This would be definitely an issue for decentralization, but let’s admit it, even experienced admins can make a mistake once in a while when files are created manually. ADAPPTool doesn’t allow that. Apart from the fact that you can avoid any errors by creation of predefined data directly in the tool, it can be fetched also from directory services like Active directory from Microsoft or Ariba APIs (plants, suppliers etc.).
Decentralization brings benefits also to your internal customers themselves. Since the tool is available 24/7, no one needs to wait until the central admin 7 time zones behind wakes up to address the issue directly in Ariba. Local ADAPPTool admin can address this right away. Central admins can also avoid the familiar back and forth with the change requestor often necessary to finally figure out what is their idea about the resulting behavior or settings. No one also needs to ask about their current settings, because it is possible to check this anytime in the tool. Where Ariba gets plus points for complexity and wide range of possibilities, it loses points for user friendliness and overall UX. There is no way to get a nice comprehensive overview of particular Ariba user. You need to go through the “fun” exercise of clicking around, opening several places and tabs in Ariba UI or download several csv files. Ariba user management and information about individual users is very fragmented and there are way too many places to search for information about particular user. To see the basic information you have one tab, to see the rights assigning groups another tab etc. ADAPPTool fixes just that offering single 360° user profile overview showing all important information including user’s organizational data or assigned groups. This significantly simplifies user creation and editing. The tool can help with wide variety of user management issues. Let me give you an example. What if you have only one Ariba base currency like USD or EUR, but your company is present all over the world? Makes users limits maintenance complicated, right? Wrong! ADAPPTool can take exchange rates from Ariba API and creates the files sent to Ariba already with recalculated amount in the base currency. ADAPPTool local admins don’t have to care — they can set the limits in their local currency. Simple as that. But wait, there is more. What if you got a new employee? He should receive standardized access rights for Ariba. You have to create few csv files and load them to Ariba in a certain sequence, that is clear…Wait a minute — what if I’d tell you that this Ariba user can be created automatically? Yeap, ADAPPT API can do just that. If there is a new user created or updated in your directory, it is possible for ADAPPTool to pick this up.
Users created in ADAPPTool can be then, same as f.ex. any group coming there from Ariba API, used in any type of approval table (purchase requisitions, good receipts etc.) or in any particular approval node. No more confusion about not working approvals only to find out later that the user was not even created yet, there was a typo in his ID and so on. You can also manage your approval tables in much more effective and user friendly way. Use modern features like drag and drop to rearrange order of your approval tables rows or simply copy some of the rows and slightly adjust only to save even more time.
MASTER DATA
Additionally to frequently performed tasks connected with user management and approval tables updates, ADAPPTool allows you also to effectively manage your Ariba masterdata. Any file type supported by Ariba batch import task can be handled this way. ADAPPT API allows you to load your data from external sources like your erp system, adjust them comfortably in ADAPPTool’s clear interface and schedule their automated load to Ariba. Masterdata module is helpful also in case the data included in the batch import do not originate in external system and are manually created instead. Good example would be Ariba custom groups creation and maintenance. Instead of creating several csv files to create and map rights for such a group, everything is done within one form with clear UI, parent groups are selected from API which eliminates human error etc. When the new custom group appears in Ariba, it is fed back to ADAPPTool via Ariba API and can be assigned to your users. Easy.
GET IN TOUCH
To get a better idea how easy to manage can those processes be thanks to ADAPPTool, check short two minutes videos on Youtube dedicated to Ariba user management and approval lookup tables or visit ADAPPT webpage https://adapptool.com. Still not convinced? Feel free to reach out to ADAPPT via e-mail info@adapptool.com or book free live demo or consultation directly. Guys at ADAPPT approach each project individually and take advantage of the flexible nature of the tool to make sure that the final setup suits your needs as much as possible. Try it out and learn how much time you can save and spend on more meaningful tasks. If you ever wondered what are the best practices and the most effective way to approach Ariba user and approvals management, the search is over. It is never late to upgrade and change what doesn’t work. Make your life easier — migrate your existing users and approval tables now and relax.
