A leading global pharmaceutical company operating in 65 countries, with tens of thousands of suppliers and thousands of regulated products, ran decentralized legacy SAP ECC environments with independent Procure-to-Pay processes in each country. It faced fragmented systems, regulatory complexity including government invoice validation in Italy and Mexico, inconsistent master data, and an architecture that could not scale.
The approach was data-first: a master data management program cleansed and deduplicated tens of thousands of supplier records before any migration. A global P2P template with a configurable localization layer handled country-specific tax and e-invoicing rules, SAP Ariba and the Ariba Network enabled guided buying and touchless invoicing, and a phased rollout tackled the most complex countries first.
Results include up to 70% touchless invoicing in mature regions, 40–60% faster invoice cycle times, 100% e-invoicing and tax compliance, and a 15% reduction in procurement operating costs, along with global spend visibility. The case study closes with the lessons learned: data first, global standards with local flexibility, supplier adoption, and a phased rollout.
The full case study is available above as a PDF. See also "SAP Ariba Functionality Overview: Source-to-Settle Spend Management" in the Resource Library.