SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced that SAP Ariba solutions has helped Middle East agribusiness Al Dahra save 10 percent to 15 in procurement, while helping the region avoid a potential food shortage during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Middle East and North Africa region is among the world’s largest food importers, according to a recent report by the Brookings Institution.

Over the past two years, Al Dahra has doubled its workforce from 2,500 to more than 5,000 employees and now operates in 15 countries across four continents. As part of its digital transformation roadmap, Al Dahra digitalized its end-to-end procurement processes with SAP Ariba solutions, increasing cost savings, better managing categories, and enhancing compliance and transparency.

“Al Dahra’s massive global growth meant we needed to build on our economies of scale and enable our local teams to engage with global buyers to drive procurement process improvement,” H.E. Khadim Al-Darei, Al Dahra’s Vice-Chairman & Co-founder said. “Despite the COVID-19 era disrupting the global agribusiness supply chain, our digital transformation with SAP Ariba solutions has enabled us to mitigate risks, maintain food security, and drive agribusiness innovation. SAP Ariba solutions are the cornerstone of our future Procurement Center of Excellence, one of the key strategic initiatives for 2021 and beyond.”

With access to Ariba Network, the world’s largest digital business network connecting more than 5 million companies, Al Dahra can tap into new suppliers and host competitive e-auctions, RFQs and RFPs.

“Al Dahra’s digital transformation is streamlining its source to pay process, helping the company discover new sources of supply and strengthen its relationships with existing preferred suppliers,” said Carlos Mercuriali, senior vice president and general manager of SAP Intelligent Spend Management, EMEA South. “As a result, Al Dahra has achieved significant cost savings, increased its spend under management and delivered value to shareholders – and more importantly, kept communities fed.”

Digitalization has helped Al Dahra ensure proper governance for sourcing and procurement, maintain a seamless payment process, and manage recurring purchase items through catalogues. Moving forward, the company is exploring further SAP solutions for invoicing, supplier management and performance, and analytics.

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