Ariba Plots New Course for Business Commerce
Ariba Plots New Course for Business Commerce
Company delivers enhanced collaborative tools and community-based insights through Ariba Network, enabling buyers and sellers to achieve new levels of productivity and profits
WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Collaboration is the new strategic advantage. Savvy executives recognize this. And with increasing frequency, they are turning to business networks to drive it. To support and accelerate their efforts, Ariba, an SAP Company, is delivering enhancements to the Ariba Network designed to fuel greater collaboration between companies, including new capabilities and network-derived intelligence that enable them to achieve new levels of productivity and profits. Ariba Chief Product Officer Sanish Mondkar will unveil the enhancements during Ariba LIVE, the business commerce event of the year, which kicks off today at the Gaylord National Resort and Conference Center in Washington, D.C.
"Just as consumers tap into personal networks like Facebook, Twitter and Amazon.com to connect with friends and family, share and shop, companies are leveraging digital networks to more efficiently engage with their trading partners and collaborate across the entire commerce process," Mondkar said. "This new, more social and connected way of operating is redefining the way business is done. But it demands a new set of tools and processes that are only possible at scale in a truly networked environment. Ariba is delivering these tools today."
The Networked Enterprise
Over one million companies in 190 countries transact more than $460 billion in commerce on an annual basis on the Ariba Network, a multi-enterprise platform that provides a more efficient way for companies to discover, connect and collaborate with customers, suppliers, and other trading partners. But networks are about more than just linking companies, people and processes. Their real power lies in what goes on inside them - all the interactions, transactions and commentary - and the massive amounts of unstructured data that they generate.
Leveraging an enhanced set of collaborative tools and the more than 15 years of transactional, relationship and community-generated information accessible on the Ariba Network, companies can gain new insights that enable them to make better decisions and transform their businesses. Buyers can buy better. Sellers can sell more.
Better Buying
Knowledge is power. Particularly when it comes to managing spot buys - or unplanned purchases of unique items that account for more than 40% of a company's total spend. Spot buys are challenging because they require quick turnaround, and buyers generally lack efficient or effective methods to source them. According to independent research firm The Hackett Group, "by selectively leveraging software tools in areas like supplier discovery and online bidding, organizations can reduce the time it takes to find the right suppliers from weeks to days or even hours and drive cost reductions of between 2 percent and 5 percent on average." Ariba unveiled an enhanced set of such tools today, including:
Ariba Spot Buy™ With the integration of Ariba Procure-to-Pay™ and Ariba Discovery™, buyers can quickly discover and qualify new sources of supply for one-off, time-sensitive or hard-to-find purchases.
Ariba Recommendations Through new services that push network-derived intelligence and community-generated content directly into the context of specific business processes and use cases, companies can make more informed decisions at the point of transaction or activity. "Suppliers You May Like," for instance, helps guide buyers to qualified suppliers based on a host of inputs, including buyer requirements, supplier capabilities and performance ratings, and how often other buyers on the network have awarded business to them.
"As a startup with extremely limited resources, using Ariba has been a huge advantage," said Ian Thomson, Head of Business Development for Koozoo, developer of a crowdsourced video app that displays smartphone videos from around the world. "We didn't have an existing supplier database and needed to find reliable suppliers for our products and custom-made solutions. Through Ariba Discovery, we identified a few great ones in a few days and lowered our unit cost from $17 to $1."
Targeted Selling
Nearly 1 million selling organizations across more than 20,000 product categories are connected to the Ariba Network. And they have access to the more than 13 million leads worth over $5 billion that are posted each year by more than half of the Global 2000 who are connected to the network as well. Through new features added to Ariba Discovery, selling organizations can get the right messages to the right audience and convert these leads into sales.
Profile Pitch - Sellers can create highly targeted profiles and messaging based on industry, commodity, territory and other factors to promote themselves to active buyers.
Badges and Social Sharing - Selling organizations can further raise their visibility by adding Ariba badges to their company websites and/or email signatures, defining vanity URLs for their company profiles and sharing their public URLs and postings on social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
"Joining the Ariba Network is a great investment if you are looking for quality customers," says Cal Miller, Vice President of Business Development for Blue Marble Media, a full-service film, video & motion graphics agency, specializing in B2B communications. "Using Ariba Discovery, we can get lots of visibility with middle and upper management-level executives at the right companies. It definitely gives us a leg up."
The future of business has arrived. And it is quite different from the past. Competition no longer lies within the four-walls of the enterprise. It's taking place between networks of trading partners. Companies are no longer judged solely on how well they balance the books, but on how well they buy from external suppliers, sell and support customers, and how manage cash flow across the entire value chain.
"Leveraging the Ariba Network - and the enhancements unveiled today - organizations can harness the power of network-derived intelligence to meet these metrics, maximize relationships with customers and suppliers and transform commerce into an efficient and insightful process and competitive weapon that drives sustainable advantage," Mondkar said.
To learn more about Ariba's solutions and the value they can create for your company, visit: www.ariba.com
About Ariba, an SAP Company
Ariba is the world's business commerce network. Ariba combines industry-leading cloud-based applications with the world's largest web-based trading community to help companies discover and collaborate with a global network of partners. Using the Ariba® Network, businesses of all sizes can connect to their trading partners anywhere, at any time from any application or device to buy, sell and manage their cash more efficiently and effectively than ever before. Companies around the world use the AribaNetwork to simplify inter-enterprise commerce and enhance the results that they deliver. Join them at: www.ariba.com
About SAP
As market leader in enterprise application software, SAP (NYS: SAP) helps companies of all sizes and industries run better. From back office to boardroom, warehouse to storefront, desktop to mobile device - SAP empowers people and organizations to work together more efficiently and use business insight more effectively to stay ahead of the competition. SAP applications and services enable more than 238,000 customers to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and grow sustainably. For more information, visit www.sap.com.
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