SAP Ariba

The City resolved that the Supply Chain Management division must conduct SMME training workshops in all seven regions, including education on migration to SAP Ariba and administrative mandatory evaluation criteria for bidders.

“A resolution is taken that the City must ensure... supply chain management Division would conduct SMME training workshops to educate committees and residents about supply chain management matters... Work shops must be conducted in all seven regions of the City. This... includes matters of migration of SAP Ariba, ensuring that administrative mandatory evaluation criteria are clearly understood by various bidders.”

The City of Tshwane was in the process of digitising its supply chain management function to implement SAP Ariba, causing many procurement issues and complaints at the time.

“At this time the City was in the process of digitising its supply chain management function to the implementation of SAP Ariba, which caused a lot of issues all around and was subject to many complaints at the time.”

The request for the vendor number was to ascertain whether the brother's vendor number had been correctly migrated and captured on the City's new SAP Ariba business network.

“My request was purely to ascertain whether his brother's vendor number had been correctly migrated and captured accordingly on the City's new SAP Ariba business network.”

SAP Ariba is a procurement platform designed to assist organisations with managing, sourcing, purchasing suppliers' contracts, invoicing, and payments in one connected system linking buyers and suppliers to the SAP Business Network.

“SAP Ariba is a procurement platform which assists organisations in managing, sourcing, purchasing suppliers' contracts invoicing, payments in a one connected system. It links buyers and suppliers to the SAP Business Network.”

City officials, including MR MNISI, assisted many suppliers with issues arising from migration to the new SAP Ariba system to ensure digitisation of supply chain management benefits were realised.

“We all had to assist in the migration of these issues as the benefits to the City were enormous. Put in simple terms, we rolled up our sleeves and we assisted in whichever way we could as a pure mechanism of ensuring that we digitised the supply chain management system.”

The main benefits of SAP Ariba for the City included better control over company spending, improved procurement compliance and approval workflows, stronger supplier management and risk visibility, faster, more automated source-to-pay processes, improved invoice accuracy with fewer manual errors, and better spend insight for decision-making and savings opportunities.

“The main benefits of SAP Ariba for the City were the following. Better control over company spending. Improved procurement compliance and approval workflows. Stronger supplier management and risk visibility. Faster, more automated source-to-pay processes. Improved invoice accuracy and fewer manual errors. Lastly, better spend insight for decision-making and savings opportunities, just to name a few.”

In November and December 2025, training sessions for supplier development took place to assist SMMEs on the SAP Ariba system as part of the City’s supply chain management institutional arrangements.

“MR MNISI”

The City was experiencing supply chain management issues, including irregular expenditure, which required implementation of the SAP Ariba system to curb these matters.

“Amongst this, what is key, Chair, is that the City was experiencing supply chain management issues, which are well-known issues. The City has found itself incurring issues of irregular expenditure of the past and we had to curb these issues. In terms of us curbing these matters, we had to come up with a system where we implement Ariba.”

The implementation of SAP Ariba was still persisting and its change management process was difficult to manage and for suppliers to understand.

“Chairperson, the Ariba implementation was still persisting. The reason I am bringing this on board is that this is an issue that is still persisting and the change management process was a difficult one to manage and for suppliers to understand.”