Testing Documents with Ariba

I’ve seen a lot of stuff about how Ariba can help you control your spend and how great it is for managers to see the information about where they are spending money.  What I haven’t seen is how Ariba, and by extension CXML, can use technology to help actually drive down the cost of transactions.  More importantly, given that automation should be the end goal, where is the documentation for helping people understand better what makes a good implemention using a solution with Ariba/cxml.

Yes, there is the users guide.  That does provide insight into what is cxml and how Ariba does use it.  However, it seems weird to me that there doesn’t seem to be any real worlddocumentation or best practices around how one should test the various document scenarios to ensure the system is solid between Ariba and the supplier/buyer.   If you’re constantly troubleshooting, it really isn’t saving that much money and you are just annoying the buyers.

I see the basic document path like the following:  punch-out -> quote (order message) -> purchase order -> PO acknowledgment -> ASN -> invoice

Question that I’d be very interested in seeing some answers would be along these lines. I realize these are open ended but I’ve got to start somewhere.

As I’m doing an implementation what are some specific concerns with each document?  What are the common pitfalls?  How do I articulate that I both understand those pitfalls and my system can handle them to my next trading partner?  How do we both know when we’re really ready to move into production?

In the next little bit I’ll be trying to throw out what answers I have and maybe it’ll start something.