Leading the list of enhanced Ariba tools are:
- 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 example, 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.
“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,”
said Sanish Mondkar,
Ariba Chief Product Officer. “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.” Spot buys – or unplanned purchases of unique items -- account for more than 40 percent 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. [Disclosure: Ariba and Dell are sponsors of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]
Selective leveraging
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 two percent and five percent on average.”
Nearly one 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.
Organizations can reduce the time it takes
to find the right suppliers from weeks to days or even hours.
New features added to Ariba Discovery allow selling organizations to 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.
Ariba and Dell Boomi will announce that they are teaming to deliver pre-packaged integration as a service offerings to help selling organizations drive new levels of efficiency and effectiveness across their operations.
Designed to simplify and speed integration to the Ariba Network, the Ariba Integration Connector, powered by Dell Boomi Integration Packs, enables companies to collaborate more efficiently and drive game-changing improvements in productivity and performance. The first connector integrates with Intuit QuickBooks. Additional connectors to enable sellers who own Microsoft Dynamics AX, Netsuite and Sage Peachtree solutions to quickly and easily integrate with the Ariba Network are planned to be released later this year.
From
the beginning, the Ariba Network has been built to be an open platform
to connect all companies.
“From the beginning, the Ariba Network has been built to be an open platform to connect all companies using any system to foster more efficient business-to-business collaboration,” said Tim Minahan, senior vice president, network strategy, Ariba. “With these new connectors, we are making it even easier for sales organizations of all sizes to fully automate their customer transactions and collaborations over the Ariba Network -- directly from their preferred CRM, ERP and accounting systems.”
The Ariba Integration Connector removes the barriers to system-to-network integration by eliminating complexity. An out-of-the-box solution delivered as a service, the connector provides a fast, easy and affordable way for companies to connect to the Ariba Network -- regardless of the back-end systems they use. The connector currently supports integration with Intuit QuickBooks Desktop 2009-2013, Premier and Enterprise for US, UK, and CA Enterprise and Enterprise Plus.
The connector is available and in use today. To learn more about Ariba’s Connection solutions and the benefits they can deliver to your organization, visit http://www.ariba.com/services/connection-solutions.
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