GEP SMART is a procurement platform, meant as an end-to-end unified procurement solution that provides synergy between finance and purchasing and process fluidity.
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SAP Ariba
Score 7.6 out of 10
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With advanced tools to automate manual processes and support close collaboration with suppliers, SAP Ariba helps streamline source-to-pay processes across organizations.
GEP SMART is well suited to equip procurement professionals to manage multiple RFx's at one point in time and help provide structure to the process. If an organization has an existing ERP and they want to acquire GEP SMART as a bolt-on, then integration is key. If there is any customization then it is more difficult to take advantage of the latest upgrades.
SAP Ariba is pivotal for our organization's supply chain requirements. The purchasing department needs it for vendor purchase order issuance and vendor order management. We can check procurement history for the last purchased price, standard price, price breaks, lead time for products, vendor, and alternate vendor details.
Complete Procurement of Inventory step easy through GUI-Ariba integration once Purchase order is created and it is sent to the SAP Ariba Supplier Network. Vendor confirms the order and sends notification of Inbound Delivery to the warehouse through ASN and the Inbound process, Goods Receipt Process, Unloading, Put away process easy.
SAP Ariba integrates the different SAP Sourcing platforms, services and their tools in order to optimize operations, saves cost and meeting customer requirements through its easy to use tools. Such as integration with SAP S/4 HANA, SAP EWM using Idocs for End to End sourcing and Procurement coverage.
As a part of the SAP Direct Sourcing suite, it helps allow customer manage their direct materials in the single dashboard and helping customer to have view of the comprehensive info about BoM and the structure. Based on requirements, buyers can run materials and/or entire Bill of Materials. When these are sent from ERP to SAP Ariba, managers can manage them in the direct spend dashboard. Can search for desired items in the dashboard and view details of BoM or deeper view of information of the material. Buyers can run sourcing, run details for materials, create material quotes, and create pricing using book quotes.
Our organization has yet to take advantage of upgrading to the latest version of GEP SMART. The version that we are on does not make use of the full screen for the different internal windows and pop-up windows. I find it cumbersome to scroll left-right and up-down on the smaller windows when there is much real-estate on the screen that could optimize the user interface.
GEP SMART provides technical support but our vendors seem to have some difficulty logging in to their profiles and updating their information. Occasionally, the salesperson delegates to another internal member so we'll have to set up the new member with their log in.
The digital signature process requires that the signers of the agreement be defined before the agreement is routed for approval. Sometimes our vendors have a pool of signers that could sign the agreements and it can become a small challenge to change the signers after it has already been defined in GEP SMART.
Integration with other tools is not very good. The APIs provided are not scheduled within the Ariba process and must use a middleware to send information back and forth between tools
Customer support for configuration questions. The response time can be weeks or months waiting time and the response back is often unhelpful.
Flexibility with company entities. With a large company with so many entities it is hard to structure and customize your suppliers into many entities. You often have to duplicate.
The tool is fantastic, but we are investigating a broader spend management solution at the moment which may mean we look in a different direction for this capability, most likely internally developed.
The application is highly usable, but there are some parts of the design that could be improved such as the layout and scaling on the pages, the amount of unused white space within the interface, and the consistency of the interface between modules.
While its great at usability. I would love ut have it more simplified. I would like to advocate for some personas who are non tech savvy or who have less or no experience in procurement. I sometimes feel that the valley of user learning fir such personas is quite steep and it may take them long time of learning to get adept to the platform.
The performance of the GEP SMART platform overall has been excellent. We do not hear complaints about system performance and have not experienced any slowdowns in adjacent systems due to the GEP implementation. Of all the (largely self-inflicted) change management challenges we've dealt with, system performance and platform reliability have not been on the list of concerns.
The support team is responsive, smart, and knowledgeable about their product and about our business needs. They are also flexible to respond to questions and find solutions to our requirements.
Customer support has always been top notch. From small configuration changes to overall process changes, support has the teammates in place with excellent knowledge and is able to provide solutions based on business challenges quickly. Their customer support through their Account teams continues to be hands on and very responsive to needs in a timely fashion.
Although we had encountered many bugs, GEP was able to address them quickly, and sent a technical person to sit in our hands-on training sessions to address bugs efficiently
We selected GEP SMART for its ability to offer a full end-to-end integrated source-to-pay solution, pricing, and ease of use. There was an implementation series offered by GEP, as well as flexibility, customization, account management team dedication, and the overall service and support.
It's important to note that user experiences may vary, and the perceived areas for improvement depend on the specific needs and expectations of each organization. Frequent updates and feedback from users often guide software developers in addressing these areas to enhance the overall user satisfaction with the platform
GEP SMART has improved our spend analytics speed by allowing analysis to be completed in minutes compared to days when we previously used Excel spreadsheets.
The SMART Sourcing (RFX) solution has greatly improved the consistency of our supplier quoting and information gathering process.
We saved nearly 10% of planned costs due to the large database of vendors we created within the company as a whole.
Saving in time due to shortening of procurement cycles. Procurement activities were never on the critical path and were accomplished with less Supply Chain resources than originally planned.
In the process we created a huge database of Vendors and Pricing which well be beneficial in our future projects.
It is an excellent tool and just what are business required and could afford.
