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 (NYSE: 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.
Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts
are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities
Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as “anticipate,” “believe,”
“estimate,” “expect,” “forecast,” “intend,” “may,” “plan,” “project,”
“predict,” “should” and “will” and similar expressions as they relate to
SAP are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. SAP
undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any
forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject
to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to
differ materially from expectations. The factors that could affect SAP's
future financial results are discussed more fully in SAP's filings with
the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), including SAP's
most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are
cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking
statements, which speak only as of their dates.
© 2013 SAP AG. All rights reserved.
SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as
their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG
in Germany and other countries. Please see http://www.sap.com/corporate-en/legal/copyright/index.epx#trademark
for additional trademark information and notices.
Note to editors:
To preview and download broadcast-standard stock footage and press
photos digitally, please visit www.sap.com/photos.
On this platform, you can find high resolution material for your media
channels. To view video stories on diverse topics, visit www.sap-tv.com.
From this site, you can embed videos into your own Web pages, share
video via email links, and subscribe to RSS feeds from SAP TV.
Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews.
For customers interested in learning more about SAP products:
Global
Customer Center: +49 180 534-34-24
United States Only: 1 (800)
872-1SAP (1-800-872-1727)
