GEP SMART vs SAP Ariba Procurement comparison

"It's really simple to use. That's one of the reasons we chose GEP over some of the others. It's very Google-like. On the homepage, you just type whatever you need. And there are tabs that can come up if you're looking for a certain word or phrase..."

"I love it because everything is done within the contract module. The previous tool that we had really acted more as a repository, whereas this is the lifecycle. Once a business owner gets to the point where they want to enter into a contractual relationship with a party, from that point, including the drafting of it through to the signature on it, it covers the lifecycle. It's from the beginning to the end to even the archiving. It's all done within the tool, including e-signature."

"Spend gives us a way to put all of our spend in one area and use a category hierarchy to pull real-time spend data."

"The most valuable features are the sourcing and tendering processes."

"There are additional time savings in managing communications. If you have an open RFP and there are questions, you can manage all of the questions and answers in the thread inside that RFP. All the suppliers will get any notifications that you want them to get, and everything is within the body of the RFP so you don't have to worry about things in email, outside of the system."

"In terms of ease of use, GEP has done a lot of work through its enhancements over the years to make the user experience more intuitive. There is a more standard-Amazon-like experience, where manuals and tutorials are not really required, simply because the user experience and what's on the screen are pretty intuitive."

"One of the most valuable features is the opportunity-identification through the spend analytics. Another is around the RFX options to benchmark various pre-qualified vendors that are invited to participate."

"Among the most valuable features are the ability to send out purchase orders, create catalogs, and accept invoices through procurement. And the reporting function is robust."

"I like the guided buying features."

"Ariba allows us to manage our suppliers seamlessly."

"It is a stable solution."

"The best features are the ease of use and the workflow management that allows me to understand every step in the approval process so that I can forecast the time through my request and its approval."

"It is one of the best tools in the market."

"Salesforce provides me with the ability to create reports based on various parameters."

"While it captures all the fields and requirements, when any supplier updates or new supplier registration happens, then the supplier needs to update their bank details. Our IT team has made it so every half an hour the GEP SMART system will push the supplier to the Oracle Database. So, we have faced some problems, like bank details, etc. We addressed this issue with GEP. They are working on it to make bank details a mandatory field for any supplier and match our requirements. Their engineering team has taken up creating a customized process for us."

"There are certain things within the contracts module — how to upload the line items, for example — that could be done to make that utility a little more user-friendly, a little more like the sourcing module."

"Very recently, they implemented a customer success team to manage our expectations and communicate them to their technical team. That function is relatively new and some work needs to be done to build that connection so that it's a little more seamless."

"I want to see continued investment in analytics and reporting."

"The manuals, especially the ones for the suppliers, are currently available only in English. If these can also be translated into different languages, that would be excellent."

"We had a lot of challenges and disagreements with SMART. It's been a long road, for sure, on the contract side. There is a little bit of pushback on their part when we need stuff done. Things aren't done very efficiently. I'm still waiting on some changes that were requested well over a year-and-a-half ago."

"The loading of the contracts could be a little bit easier. I'd like to see a little bit more of AI brought in, to the point that it's actually reading the contract and automating some things, like expiration dates and renewal terms. That is an area for improvement."

"There are no mechanisms for them to check up on how they refresh their data. So oftentimes, when we go into the tool and we don't see something, we alert them and they say, "Oh, the data hasn't been refreshed, so we'll go ahead and refresh it," and then what we're looking for pops up. We should not have to be the ones to tell them they need to refresh. There should be a mechanism in place for that."

"They should make the solution more user-friendly."

"Salesforce is expensive, with a subscription-based model."

"SAP could make it easier for people to become SAP Ariba consultants within the SAP ecosystem."

"Ariba Procurement tends to integrate best with other SAP products and is harder to work with if you have non-SAP products in your architecture."

"I would like the solution to be more automatic."

"I would like to see more reports coming out of Ariba and more insights because it has to work in connection with SAP. So unless I run SAP and Ariba, I have to run. I am not able to see the utility of Ariba."

"My advice is to think wisely when it comes to estimating the number of licenses that you will require. If you settle on a number too early and you need additional ones, then the extra licenses might be quite expensive."

"If our organization could use it as a full-fledged solution, then it would be valuable and give a return on investment. However, since we are not currently using it as a full-fledged solution, even facing some bugs and problems with the synchronization with some of the internal software, we are not able to use it in a full-fledged manner."

"It is an expensive solution."

"The licensing cost depends on the customer."

"The license is expensive."