SAP's Tony Harris on streamlined supplier onboarding

In this exclusive video, SAP Chief Marketing & Solutions Officer Tony Harris discusses the size and growth of SAP Business Network.

SAP Business Network is designed to power transparency, resilience, and sustainability, by connecting people, processes, and systems across multiple enterprises, to digitise transactions and create transparent, resilient, and sustainable supply chains.

Harris says that the network involves a total of US$4.9tn in spend annually, and has seen a 14% growth in transactional relationships over the past year. He also discusses the focus on innovation, particularly in the area of generative AI.  

“The figure on spend is not cumulative," he says. "This is what we do every year, and that number is generally only going up.”

He adds: “The other thing is the innovation around supplier onboarding. A network is only a network when you've got both buyers and suppliers, and we have millions and millions of suppliers, and this only continues to grow."

Harris reveals that SAP has streamlined the supplier onboarding process to make it simpler and faster for buyers, "so that they feel like they've got more control". The company has also customised the invitations that go out, "which is a great step in the evolution of the products as well”, says Harris.

Read more about the announcements at SAP Spend Connect 2023 and the new Spend Control Tower.