SAP SE and Qualtrics have recently announced Qualtrics XM for Suppliers, a new solution that empowers organizations to identify key areas of improvement across the source-to-pay process to help secure critical supply, increase cost savings, mitigate risk and improve business agility.

Qualtrics XM for Suppliers combines data from an organization’s SAP Ariba, SAP Fieldglass and SAP S/4HANA solutions with real-time supplier insights and AI-driven intelligence from Qualtrics, an SAP company.

A majority, 66%, of chief procurement and chief supply chain officers said their procurement function is adept at mitigating risks with suppliers, according to a study conducted by Oxford Economics and SAP. Yet only 51% said they can quickly find alternative supply sources, and 46% said that gaining visibility into supplier performance is challenging.

Qualtrics XM for Suppliers helps organizations enhance existing source-to-pay processes by listening, understanding and most important, acting on supplier feedback at every touch point.

“When organizations prioritize listening, understanding and acting on stakeholder feedback, the business impact and ROI will naturally follow,” said Brian Stucki, Qualtrics executive vice president and CustomerXM general manager. “Qualtrics XM for Suppliers puts supplier feedback at the heart of buyer-supplier interactions and becomes an integral part of decision-making and relationship building. Procurement teams get a holistic view of the entire process through the lens of their suppliers to quickly close feedback loops, attain prescriptive recommendations on areas of improvement and advance spend innovation.”

As a leader in customer experience and creator of the Experience Management (XM) category, Qualtrics provides its expertise to the new solution with key features of the Qualtrics XM Platform, such as the Qualtrics iQ engine, to help deliver:

• Predictive analytics and intelligence. Instantly access supplier feedback and gain insight into predictive indicators to support informed spend decisions across the business.
• Automated and seamless workflows. Close experience gaps across the source-to-pay process with action plans that require no additional analysis and are automatically provided to procurement teams.
• Real-time insights to action. With visibility into supplier health and interactions across supplier touch points, from onboarding to crisis recovery, procurement teams know exactly where to implement change and which steps to take.

“This year has taught us that agility and resilience can only be achieved if you can anticipate disruption before it happens, enhance critical supplier synergies and know when to activate alternate sources of supply,” said Jason Wolf, senior vice president and SAP Intelligent Spend and Business Network general manager. “That’s even easier to achieve now with Qualtrics XM for Suppliers for SAP Ariba, SAP Fieldglass and SAP S/4HANA solutions.”

Qualtrics XM for Suppliers empowers procurement, finance and supply chain teams to help:

• Secure critical supply and deliver business resiliency by identifying and mitigating areas of risk to minimize business disruption and proactively responding to the feedback of the most critical suppliers.
• Accelerate savings by getting AI-driven insights and recommendations throughout the source-to-pay process to help identify experience gaps in the supply chain and influence more favorable contract terms that impact ROI.
• Innovate with speed by leveraging feedback captured throughout the source-to-pay process to promote supplier collaboration and use supplier expertise to identify process improvement areas.