Ariba will launch a new integrated spend management suite for
analysis, sourcing, and procurement to allow companies to manage
their full spend life cycle from planning to payment.
The new Ariba Spend Management suite marks the company's official
move away from focusing solely on procurement to honing in on
enterprise spend management, which puts strategic spending at the
core of a company's procurement strategy.
The new "closed loop" solution is designed to allow companies to
better identify trends, track expenditures, negotiate with
suppliers, and manage procurement across the enterprise to reduce
overall spending, according to officials.
"Companies today don't have spend visibility," said Sundar
Raghavan, Ariba director of product marketing. "They have multiple
systems, and they cannot understand where their money is spent.
They can't negotiate better contracts with their suppliers. There
is no way to enforce contracts."
The new suite features three new applications for invoices,
contracts, and analysis as well as upgrades to Ariba's procurement,
sourcing, and workforce management applications. The new Ariba
Analysis application is designed to enable buyers to collect and
analyse complex spend data so they can make informed purchasing
decisions and develop purchasing plans to reduce spending
throughout the enterprise, Raghavan said. The application will
gather data from Ariba's Buyer procurement application and
third-party systems to provide spend coverage across all buying
categories.
The suite also features a new contract application that integrates
with Buyer and Ariba's sourcing application to ensure that savings
identified by strategic sourcing activities are regularly deployed
throughout the enterprise. Finally, the new invoice application
automates the invoicing process to help companies reduce
reconciliation cycle times.
By filling the gaps in its product suite, Ariba can now help
customers address the entire plan-to-pay process, from spend
analysis right through to the release of a payment instruction,
said Beth Barling, senior analyst at AMR Research. The analysis
piece, in particular, will provide significant value to customers
in terms of understanding and reviewing current spending
levels.
The suite will be available at the end of March.