Ariba, Inc.  - Procurement Software & Solutions-  Category Directory

(650) 390-1000

807 11th Avenue

Sunnyvale, CA 94089
www.ariba.com

Sales

$237 million

Business Description
Ariba provides Enterprise Spend Management solutions that allow enterprises to manage efficiently the purchasing of all non-payroll goods and services required to run their business. We refer to these non-payroll expenses as “spend.” Our solutions, which include software applications, services and network access, are designed to provide corporations with technology and business process improvements to better manage their corporate spending and, in turn, save money. Our software applications and services streamline and improve the business processes related to the identification of suppliers of goods and services, the negotiation of the terms of purchases, and ultimately the management of ongoing purchasing and communication activities. These goods and services include commodities, raw materials, operating resources, services, temporary labor, travel, maintenance, repair and operations equipment.

Our software applications were built to leverage the Internet and provide enterprises with real-time access to their business data and their business partners. They are designed to integrate seamlessly with all major business applications. Our software applications can be accessed via web browser.

Ariba Spend Management solutions integrate with and leverage the Ariba Supplier Network. The Ariba Supplier Network is a scalable Internet infrastructure that connects Ariba customers with their business partners and suppliers to exchange product and service information as well as a broad range of business documents, such as purchase orders and invoices. Over 60,000 suppliers of a wide array of goods and services are connected to the Ariba Supplier Network. As a result, Ariba customers can connect once to the Ariba Supplier Network and access many suppliers simultaneously.

One of the key differentiators of Ariba Spend Management solutions is the ability to integrate with multi-ERP (enterprise resource planning) software applications. Many large corporations use several different ERP platforms that cannot easily work with each other. For this reason, our software applications are designed to run on top of major legacy or backend applications for business processes, such as human resource management and accounting. This eliminates the need for manual transfer of critical information from Ariba products to SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle and other ERP systems. Ariba enterprise adapters can integrate with standard implementations of these systems, or can be configured to integrate with custom installations, to integrate Ariba software applications with multiple enterprise applications simultaneously.


In addition to application software, Ariba Spend Management solutions include implementation and consulting services, education and training. All of these additional offerings together with the Ariba Supplier Network are designed to improve the return on investment our customers receive through the use of Ariba software applications.


Ariba Spend Management Solutions

Ariba Spend Management applications fall into three solution sets. Each solution set is designed to address a business process related to corporate spending: the Ariba Analysis Solution provides strategic planning and analysis capabilities that leverage historical spending patterns; the Ariba Sourcing Solution enables the sourcing, negotiation and creation of contracts for products and services; and the Ariba Procurement Solution enables contract compliance for the purchase of goods and services and manages purchasing workflow on an ongoing basis. All of the solutions leverage the Ariba Supplier Network for advanced functionality and connectivity between Ariba customers and their suppliers and may include both software applications and services.

Customers may purchase our software products for a specified term or in perpetuity, depending upon their business requirements. Currently, the license fee for a software application license is generally based on the customer’s employee count, whereas prior to the second quarter of fiscal year 2001, license capacity was typically based on the annual volume of business document transaction capacity. Employee-based licensing allows customers to scale the total cost of their Ariba Spend Management system implementations as their organizations grow or as they expand the breadth of their implementations enterprise-wide with no limitation on transaction capacity. Ariba customers pay annual maintenance fees that may include maintenance, updates and access to the Ariba Supplier Network.

Ariba Analysis Solution

The Ariba Analysis Solution currently includes Ariba Analysis, which is designed to provide our customers with a single, unified view of their spending activities across all of their suppliers, divisions, and purchased goods or services. Analytical tools summarize data into meaningful dashboards to help purchasing and sourcing professionals identify specific groups of goods and services with the largest opportunities for savings. Savings opportunities are frequently identified for goods or services which employees purchase without proper authorization or from a fragmented supply base. By providing clear data and analysis, Ariba Analysis helps our customers identify and implement spend reduction programs. Ariba Analysis can be deployed as a hosted or an installed application.

Ariba Sourcing Solution

The Ariba Sourcing Solution includes Ariba Analysis as well as Ariba Enterprise Sourcing, Ariba Contracts and Ariba Category Management. Together, these products help streamline and automate the entire sourcing process, from defining and aggregating spending requirements to supplier selection and contract negotiation. With the Ariba Sourcing Solution, customers can facilitate widespread user adoption with robust permissions and template capabilities, use collaborative workspaces and automate complex sourcing events to execute better contracts faster, identify top suppliers across a broad range of categories, and implement best practices for sourcing on an enterprise-wide basis.

Ariba Enterprise Sourcing is an enterprise-wide strategic sourcing application designed for all spend categories. It assists professional buyers at every step in the sourcing process, from defining spending baselines and category requirements to finding suppliers and negotiating agreements. It helps buyers and suppliers capture purchasing trade-offs and optimize sourcing activities with flexible bidding options and decision support tools. Ariba Enterprise Sourcing can be used for nearly every type of good or service and can be deployed as a hosted or an installed application.

Ariba Contracts is designed to provide comprehensive enterprise-wide management of the entire contract lifecycle and provides buyers access to a centralized repository of contracted products and services. From Ariba Contracts, buyers can create, search, amend, and re-source contracts, as well as monitor contract usage and supplier price compliance. Ariba Contracts can be deployed as a hosted or an installed application.

Ariba Category Management enables sourcing and procurement professionals to collaborate closely, gain greater organizational visibility and control, and capture category knowledge for re-use. It helps teams make better decisions and increases buy-in, compliance, and efficiency by providing workspaces for process and knowledge management. Ariba Category Management can be deployed as a hosted or an installed application.

These modules are tightly integrated to allow our customers to leverage the results of their sourcing process to create sustainable contracts with chosen suppliers and negotiated terms. This tight integration helps to ensure ongoing compliance with favorable contract terms and sustain the savings achieved through the sourcing process.

Ariba Procurement Solution

The Ariba Procurement Solution currently includes four software applications: our flagship Ariba Buyer application, as well as Ariba Invoice, Ariba Travel and Expense and Ariba eForms. Ariba Procurement is a comprehensive set of solutions built around the success of Ariba Buyer to enable companies to manage their internal purchasing processes, supplier relationships and supplier catalogs, and to ensure purchasing compliance across their entire organizations.

Ariba Buyer is the cornerstone application of the Ariba Procurement solution. It is a robust, scalable and reliable application that enables organizations to manage purchasing transactions for any good or service. The automation of the procurement business process reduces processing costs, improves productivity and helps to ensure compliance with enterprise-wide contracts. Ariba Buyer links end-users throughout an organization with approvers, and links the procurement application to back-end financial, purchasing and human resource systems to access important procurement information, such as supplier product information, price lists, web sites and order status. Ariba Buyer allows customers to attain global user and supplier adoption, enforce purchasing compliance against corporate policies and contracts, and measure progress. All of these factors drive cost savings by reducing transaction expenses, decreasing cycle times and leveraging existing supplier relationships. Ariba Buyer leverages the Ariba Supplier Network to securely automate commerce transactions with suppliers on the Internet. Ariba Buyer is deployed as an installed application.

Ariba Invoice streamlines and automates invoicing and reconciliation, thereby eliminating or reducing traditional paper processes and greatly reducing cycle times. Ariba Invoice is designed to allow our customers to gain more control of the invoice processing cycle, automate data entry, matching, and exception resolution processes, foster stronger partner relationships with more prompt and accurate handling of invoices, and centralize invoicing data. Ariba Invoice is designed to decrease the traditional cost of invoice reconciliation, exception handling and supplier communication, while improving the efficiency of the payment process. Ariba Invoice is deployed as an installed application that leverages the Ariba Supplier Network.

Ariba Travel and Expense helps to manage the procurement of corporate travel and expenses. The application automates the manual processes required for travel purchases to increase expense policy compliance, decrease administrative costs, and reduce travel approval and expense reimbursement cycle times. Ariba Travel and Expense provides a set of features to generate expense reports automatically from travel cards or procurement cards and can route expense reports to functional travel and expense managers. Ariba Travel and Expense is deployed as an installed application.

Ariba eForms allows organizations to automate non-standard business processes outside of the core requisitioning process. Users are able to attach custom forms to existing Ariba software applications or create new software applications for nearly any type of operating resource request. Ariba eForms are created using XML (eXtensible Markup Language), a definition language that allows organizations to design forms that capture information from end-users and route the information for internal approval. Each Ariba eForm can have its own approval rules and can incorporate standard data from Ariba Buyer, including financial accounting and human resources information. Ariba eForms is deployed as an installed application.

The Ariba Supplier Network

The Ariba Supplier Network connects buyers and suppliers via the Internet and offers electronic payment, catalog and content management, business document routing and multi-protocol translation for numerous standard business documents. Businesses can use the Ariba Supplier Network to: search an open directory of trading partners, including over 60,000 suppliers worldwide; subscribe to and manage catalog content; and conduct transactions, including order management and fulfillment, invoicing and settlement communication. By using the Ariba Supplier Network, businesses can realize cost savings through greater process efficiencies, better employee and contract compliance, reduced inventories and fair pricing opportunities.

Our multi-protocol network allows buyers to send transactions from Ariba Buyer in one standard format. It then converts the order into the supplier’s preferred transaction format, such as cXML (Commerce eXtensible Markup Language), a format used on the Internet to describe commerce data and documents, EDI (Electronic Data Interchange), a format used to exchange data and documents electronically, electronic mail or facsimile. This feature gives suppliers the freedom to transact in their preferred protocols.


The Ariba Supplier Network also provides business advantages to suppliers. Suppliers can send product and service information, or electronic catalogs, through standard formats such as CIF (Catalog Interchange Format), a format commonly used to transfer catalog information electronically, and cXML. In addition, by using a technology called cXML PunchOut, buyers can link to a supplier’s web site to select a product while keeping the purchasing process within our Ariba Buyer system for internal approval, accounting and administrative controls. This feature is particularly useful for suppliers with extensive web sites, product configuration systems and large product catalogs. In addition, suppliers can utilize their existing investments in electronic commerce systems, including catalogs and product web pages. The Ariba Supplier Network is delivered over the Internet to suppliers and is accessible to our customers as part of their maintenance agreements.

Ariba Solutions Delivery

Ariba Solutions Delivery services include software implementation services as well as a broad range of strategic services. Since our inception, Ariba customers have leveraged our team of consultants who maintain deep knowledge of Ariba applications to lead or assist third party consultants during the implementation process to help ensure that Ariba solutions are implemented to effectively improve business processes and achieve the greatest return on investment.

During the past fiscal year, Ariba has broadened the expertise of the Ariba Solutions Delivery organization to include additional professionals with strategic sourcing expertise, business process re-engineering expertise, specific commodity expertise and best practices knowledge. These professionals work in concert with experts from third party consulting practices to improve their procurement processes.
 

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