SAP is an extremely powerful tool for supply chain management. One of its key processes is procurement management, and optimizing every part of the process becomes essential to ensure competitiveness, as well as the agility and quality demanded by today’s market. Additionally, this allows organizations to fully leverage the system’s capabilities.
In this article, we will focus on the SAP MM module, specifically on the procurement process in SAP. We’ll share some practical tips to ensure timely sourcing, along with complementary solutions you can implement to significantly enhance this process.
Challenges in the SAP Procurement Process
Although the procurement process in SAP stands out from other solutions due to its ability to automate tasks and improve traceability, there are still limitations that can hinder full process efficiency.
One of the main challenges is the lack of complete traceability. The procurement process involves various users and multiple transactions, such as ME53N, ME23N, ME2M, ME2L, ME2N. However, tracking these transactions is not centralized, which results in a fragmented process flow and, consequently, makes auditing difficult.
Additionally, standard SAP tools do not typically offer mechanisms to measure process performance—for example, in terms of lead times—making it difficult to identify bottlenecks or delays effectively. They also do not provide functions to help expedite the process, such as notifications to approvers (internal) or vendors (external).
It is also common to find errors in purchase requisitions, such as overprice versus historical prices or incorrect account assignments. These errors cause delays in approvals, or worst, approve it without validation can cause additional costs, particularly because SAP’s standard toolset does not include features such as mobile approval or clear visibility or warnings about this issues. This slows down the process, especially when the approver is not available in the system.
Another limitation is the static nature of task assignments within the standard SAP system. Currently, task distribution is managed primarily by purchasing groups, with no ability to reassign tasks dynamically or individually based on workload or priority.
Moreover, there are no native mechanisms to notify suppliers or users about delays, errors, or pending actions. This issue becomes even more pronounced in processes like RFQs/RFPs, which are often managed manually, increasing response times and leading to poor interaction among the stakeholders involved in the procurement process.
This scenario not only slows down the process but also directly impacts service levels, increases operational costs, and can create friction both internally and with external stakeholders.
At Innova, we specialize in both master data management and the implementation of Source-to-Pay solutions within the SAP environment. Therefore, we will share a set of practical recommendations that you can directly apply in your system to significantly enhance the procurement process in SAP.
How to Optimize Procurement Management in SAP
To achieve a truly efficient procurement process within SAP, it is essential to focus on three key pillars: visibility, proactive control, and automation. This involves establishing well-defined workflows, relying on accurate data, and promoting collaborative management of the procurement process.
So, how can this be achieved? Below, we’ll share essential practices that you can implement in your procurement process to make the most of the MM module’s capabilities and achieve optimal operational performance in your SAP system.
Approver Visibility and Response Times
When a purchase requisition (ME51N) requires release, the requester or the procurement team often lacks visibility into who the responsible approver is and how long the request has been pending. As previously mentioned, one of the most common issues in SAP procurement processes stems from bottlenecks caused by the involvement of multiple stakeholders and transactions, particularly during approval processes.
While SAP allows the configuration of release strategies, it does not provide, out of the box, clear real-time visibility into who is holding up an approval or the exact stage where a requisition is stuck.
A highly effective way to improve release times is to implement periodic data review tasks that help identify inactive approvers or critical accumulation points. It is advisable to maintain a detailed log including key information such as: pending approvers, elapsed time, and the exact stage in the workflow.
These processes should be standardized and, where possible, externalized under unified guidelines. Leveraging external tools that automate these tasks and trigger automatic notifications (e.g., via email or SAP Fiori) once specific thresholds are met—such as overdue approvals—can significantly accelerate the process.
Structured Rejection Flow for Erroneous Requests
Another frequent issue in the SAP procurement process is the handling of incorrect or incomplete requisitions. Often, when a requisition is misassigned, buyers resort to inefficient channels such as email or phone, complicating process traceability.
It is therefore critical to establish a structured system for properly logging and managing rejections. This not only speeds up error identification and resolution, but also improves communication between requesters and buyers, reduces purchase times, and minimizes both financial and operational risks—ensuring greater transparency in procurement management.
The process becomes significantly more efficient when equipped with a tool that enables rejections to be managed directly within SAP, automatically notifying the requester, logging the rejection reason, and offering functionalities such as temporary rejection—allowing the requester to correct and resubmit the requisition without having to start from scratch.
Commenting by Buyer or Supplier in the Process
Communication between buyers and suppliers should be more fluid and comprehensive, encompassing not only standard data but also clarifications or exceptions that frequently arise in day-to-day operations. These clarifications, much like requisition errors, should not be handled through untraceable channels such as emails.
Therefore, it is crucial to ensure that comments are logged by stage, both on the requisition and the purchase order. For example, if a supplier requests a change in the delivery date, all stakeholders should be informed in real time—maintaining centralized communication that is visible to everyone involved.
Automatic Identification of Requisitions and Materials
Although SAP offers features such as outline agreements (ME31K) to streamline recurring purchases, duplicate or erroneous requisitions linked to existing contracts are still common.
To address this issue, it is essential to rely on automation tools. Manual validation processes are not only time-consuming but also unreliable. In its standard version, SAP does not allow an easy way to validation in this regard.
Therefore, it’s advisable to implement solutions that, upon saving a requisition, automatically verify whether the requested material is already linked to an active contract, and show to the buyer all the sourcing options such as a contract, vendor fixed or previous vendor (from the last PO).
It is also worth noting that much time is lost in SAP procurement on manual, repetitive tasks, such as assigning requisitions or reviewing purchasing conditions. These tasks can be automated through, for example:
- Assignment rules based on material groups
- Automatic detection of active contracts
- Predefined templates that auto-fill fields such as account assignment category, plant, or storage location
Supplier Evaluation and Notifications
To optimize procurement in SAP, continuous supplier evaluation is essential. SAP does not natively provide key performance indicators such as OTIF (On Time In Full) to assess whether a supplier has delivered on time and in full.
Thus, it is important to incorporate complementary tools that capture actual delivery data and automatically calculate such KPIs, enabling objective use of this information in future Vendors, contract renewals, or negotiations.
Furthermore, when a supplier misses a delivery date, the follow-up should not rely solely on the procurement or warehouse teams making calls. The process should be automated using alerts that detect overdue orders without goods receipts and send reminders to the supplier—ensuring traceability.
Tools like those offered by Innova can even associate these alerts with the order history, integrate them with OTIF indicators, and use them as an objective basis for performance evaluations, renegotiations, or applying penalties.
Imports
The final challenge we address in SAP procurement management involves international purchases. SAP’s standard version does not comprehensively cover the import process, especially in the later stages such as shipment, customs clearance, or port arrival.
This results in a lack of visibility over the current shipment status and estimated arrival dates.
To ensure full traceability, it is essential to assign stage-specific responsibilities and require periodic updates supported by documentation, such as photos or tracking codes. Integrating SAP with global logistics solutions enables automatic updates on shipment status—especially when combined with Source-to-Pay tools like those provided by Innova.
SITRACK: Enabling Efficient Procurement Tracking in SAP
Now that we’ve covered the key strategies for improving procurement management in SAP, we’d like to introduce one of our Source-to-Pay solutions designed to implement all the functionalities discussed: our Sitrack application for procurement tracking.
How does Sitrack address the challenges mentioned? Let’s take a look:
- Real-time visibility into every requisition, with reminders and notifications sent to suppliers for overdue deliveries—centralizing all communication in a single environment.
- Automatic detection of existing outline agreements to convert requisitions into purchase orders without duplicates or errors.
- Integrated OTIF (On Time In Full) indicators for ongoing, objective supplier evaluation.
- Customized rules to automatically assign roles and requisitions, balancing workload across the team.
- Structured management of rejections, allowing requesters to make corrections without restarting the process, with the ability to add comments within the system and track correction times.
- Documentation tools for every stage of the process, with comments visible to all stakeholders involved.
- Integration with logistics platforms such as Searates, enabling end-to-end modeling of each stage in the import process.
