Case Study: NEOM achieves 80% faster supplier onboarding and 70% higher procurement efficiency with SAP Ariba

NEOM Building a Futuristic, Cognitive Urban Area That Reimagines Urban Life

NEOM is a purpose‑built region in northwest Saudi Arabia designed to be a cognitive, carbon‑zero urban model. To deliver on that vision while scaling rapidly, NEOM needed to replace manual, paper‑based processes with a unified digital foundation to handle finance transparency, fast employee onboarding and reimbursements, end‑to‑end procurement with 8,000 global suppliers, and the ability to spin off 100+ new organizations.

NEOM deployed SAP S/4HANA and a suite of SAP cloud solutions (including Ariba, SuccessFactors, Concur, BW/4HANA, Analytics Cloud, and Conversational AI), creating a real‑time, intelligent enterprise. The results: procurement efficiency improved ~70%, supplier registration time fell ~80%, expense reimbursements now take 1–5 days instead of months, ~40% of suppliers are on Ariba, 100% of employees use the procurement chatbot, and NEOM can spin off new companies in about four weeks—delivering faster reporting, unified data, and markedly greater operational effectiveness.

NEOM

Abdi Jibril

Director of Corporate Applications