SAP announced on September 24, 2026, that it was positioned in the Leader Category of the 2026 IDC MarketScape for AI-Enabled Direct Spend Vendor Assessment (IDC #US54900426, September 2026). The recognition covers SAP's direct materials procurement and sourcing portfolio, which SAP describes as connecting sourcing, engineering, planning, and supplier collaboration within its Business Suite.
In the same announcement, SAP outlined current AI capabilities in its direct spend suite, including supplier and item recommendations, invoice data extraction, category strategy insights, supplier risk scoring, and Joule capabilities embedded across the product. SAP stated these are production capabilities already deployed for customers.
SAP also announced a forward-looking plan to expand AI across the direct spend life cycle with agentic experiences covering market intelligence, supplier discovery, RFx orchestration, negotiation support, contract authoring