SAP Purchasing Exercise

Enterprise systems such as SAP and Oracle contain transactional data. For the purposes of this exercise, please imagine that you work as a business analyst for a Fortune 500 company that has locations across the globe (e.g., Latin America, APAC, North America, Continental Europe, and UKMEA). Purchasing spend is conducted in the following areas: contract labor, hardware, software, corporate travel services, manufacturing, workplace services, professional services, and telecommunications. As a business analyst, you may be asked to conduct a procurement analysis using transactional data based on these and related fields. Before you begin your analysis of the procurement data, you will need to familiarize yourself with the basics regarding the procurement to pay process, managerial policy controls, and important performance metrics.

Using the SAP procurement script as a starting point, please answer the following questions.

1. Describe the procure to pay process including business owners.

2. Flowchart the procure to pay process.

3. What are some examples of controls (e.g., procurement policy and managerial controls) that could be put into place to ensure that the procure to pay process is followed correctly?

4. What are some examples of business intelligence reports that would be useful to analyze the nature of procurement spend across the locations identified above?

5. What are some examples of business intelligence reports that would be useful to analyze the extent to which procurement policies are not being followed correctly?

6. List examples of metrics that would be useful to analyze the performance of the procure to pay process.