Last week at SAP Connect, SAP introduced new capabilities and partner innovations across SAP Ariba, SAP Fieldglass, and SAP Concur that help organizations turn spend insights into faster, better-informed decisions.
SAP Connect in 2026: Advancing the Autonomous Enterprise
Procurement leaders operate in a very different environment than they did just a few years ago. Beyond cost and compliance, they must now strengthen resilience, manage supplier risk, support workforce strategies, and help businesses respond faster to changing market conditions.
Yet, many of the systems supporting these responsibilities remain disconnected. Supplier intelligence lives in one place, workforce information in another, and spend data often requires significant preparation before it can drive decisions.
At SAP Connect, we announced a series of innovations across the SAP Ariba, SAP Fieldglass, and SAP Concur portfolios designed to help organizations address those challenges: new AI assistants for spend analysis and contingent workforce management, embedded supplier risk intelligence through a new partnership with Moody’s, a new solution extension with ORO Labs that orchestrates procurement across complex enterprise landscapes, and new SAP Concur capabilities that simplify high-volume administrative work.
Together, these innovations point to a broader shift toward Autonomous Spend Management, a domain within the SAP Autonomous Suite. AI connects information, insights, and execution, while people remain in control of the decisions that matter most.
Better spend decisions start with better visibility
Many procurement organizations still struggle to turn spend data into actionable insight quickly enough to support decision-making.
According to the 2026 Economist Enterprise report, Procurement at a Crossroads: From Optimism to Realism, sponsored by SAP, digital transformation is now the top strategic priority for procurement over the next 18 months, and improving spend analytics is one of its biggest drivers, cited by 53% of executives. These findings reflect growing pressure to improve decision-making and business impact.
Earlier this month, SAP announced the availability of SAP Ariba Spend Analysis and Insights, giving organizations a new way to bring together spend data across SAP Ariba, SAP Fieldglass, SAP Concur, SAP Cloud ERP, and other systems into a single foundation for analysis and action.
Building on that foundation, we announced the new Spend Analytics Assistant at SAP Connect. Planned for general availability in Q1 2027, it helps procurement teams identify opportunities for cost savings, compliance, supplier consolidation, and risk mitigation. Rather than searching through reports, teams see highlighted areas that merit attention, along with supporting context to help them prioritize and act, so they spend more time on decisions and less on data preparation.
Bringing supplier risk into everyday decisions
Supplier risk is now a strategic concern across every industry, yet risk data often remains disconnected from the sourcing and purchasing decisions where it matters most.
At SAP Connect, we also announced a new partnership with Moody’s that embeds supplier risk monitoring directly into SAP Ariba Supplier Lifecycle and Performance. By bringing financial health, operational risk, and regulatory status into the same environment where supplier performance and relationship data are managed, procurement teams can evaluate risk as part of everyday decision-making rather than periodic reviews.
The partnership also strengthens the foundation for AI-powered procurement. When risk information is embedded directly within procurement workflows, it becomes part of the business context used to help identify emerging issues and support earlier intervention. This gives teams a more complete view of supplier relationships and greater ability to respond before potential disruptions affect operations.
General availability is planned for Q4 2026.
Connecting procurement across complex enterprise landscapes
The disconnection that slows procurement decisions often extends beyond data; it also shows up across the systems themselves. For many organizations, procurement unfolds across a mix of SAP and third-party applications, each supporting different parts of the process. Coordinating work across that kind of landscape, without disrupting the systems teams already rely on, can be one of modern procurement’s more persistent challenges.
To solve this, SAP announced a new solution extension developed with ORO Labs: SAP Ariba Procurement Orchestration by ORO Labs. It provides a purpose-built orchestration layer that connects procurement experiences, workflows, and systems across complex environments spanning both SAP and third-party applications.
For employees, this means a more unified experience and a simpler way to initiate and navigate procurement work. Low-code/no-code workflows let teams adapt processes as business requirements and policies change, without disrupting underlying systems. Organizations can also apply agentic AI within these workflows while preserving the controls, approvals, and human oversight that enterprise operations depend on.
The solution extension works alongside Joule Work, with Joule Work serving as the primary engagement layer. General availability is planned for November 2026.
Making external workforce management more proactive
For many organizations, contingent workers have become an essential part of how they scale skills, execute projects, and adapt to changing business needs. Managing those workers, however, often requires coordination across procurement, HR, hiring managers, suppliers, and compliance teams.
We also announced the new Contingent Workforce Assistant, designed to bring greater visibility to that process. Planned for general availability in Q4 2026, the assistant helps organizations manage the contingent worker life cycle by surfacing issues such as onboarding delays, pending approvals, compliance requirements, and other exceptions before they affect assignments. By bringing relevant information into a single experience, teams can address issues earlier while maintaining governance and auditability.
This proactive approach addresses one of the persistent challenges in workforce management: identifying issues early enough to act before they become operational problems.
Simplifying travel and expense management through targeted automation
Not every productivity challenge in spend management requires a major transformation initiative.
In many organizations, the greatest source of friction in travel and expense management comes from routine administrative work, such as retrieving receipts, locating invoice images, preparing audit documentation, and reviewing user permissions. Individually small, these tasks collectively consume significant time across finance, audit, compliance, and expense management teams.
To address this, SAP Concur announced new additions to SAP Micro-App Hub. Building on capabilities already used to support tax, audit, compliance, and reporting, SAP plans to introduce new micro-apps that help organizations export employee expense information, simplify access-governance reviews, and retrieve vendor invoice documentation in bulk.
The approach is intentionally practical: rather than redesigning entire processes, the micro-apps target specific operational pain points. Customer adoption of the existing micro-apps points to strong demand for this focused automation.
Additional micro-apps are planned for general availability in Q4 2026.
Turning spend intelligence into action
Most organizations have plenty of spend data. The persistent challenge is turning that information into timely decisions and meaningful business outcomes.
The innovations announced this year at SAP Connect address that challenge from multiple angles, improving visibility into spend, bringing risk intelligence closer to procurement decisions, connecting procurement processes across complex enterprise landscapes, improving external workforce management, and reducing administrative effort across travel and expense.
Better decisions require better visibility, stronger context, and fewer barriers between identifying an issue and responding to it. This is the goal of Autonomous Spend Management: applying agentic AI across every spend process so disconnected workflows operate as one intelligent, governed system.
This matters more as procurement takes on a larger role in driving resilience, growth, and business performance. For organizations that can identify opportunities faster, respond to risk earlier, and spend less time on manual coordination, spend becomes a source of advantage rather than a cost to control.
Baber Farooq is chief marketing officer for Spend Management at SAP.
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