Five things you might not know about SAP Ariba

The world’s largest marketplace for business-to-business transactions, SAP Ariba, is about to get even bigger when it launches in China at the end of 2016. SAP Ariba has been around since 1996 and today it has more than 2 million companies – including over 500,000 in Asia.

Here are five things you might not know about SAP Ariba:

1. Seven colleagues came up with the idea over sandwich at Quadrus Café in Menlo Park, California, when they were discussing the tremendous waste of time and money involved in corporate purchasing.
    
2. Buyers and suppliers from more than two million companies and 190 countries use SAP Ariba to discover new opportunities, collaborate on transactions and grow their relationships. In a 24-period, these companies will exchange more than 71,000 purchase orders and more than 224,000 invoices, while saving $82 million in supply costs.
    
3. It holds regular global commerce conference - SAP Ariba Live – at locations around the world. Recent venues have included Las Vegas, Madrid and there’s an event in Singapore at the end of this month.  Attendees have access to expert advice, enabling them to simplify interactions with trading partners, make smarter business decisions and extend collaborative business processes – and they can also listen to speakers as varied as Boris Becker, Robert Herjavec and Greg Williams, Deputy Editor of WIRED.
    
4. More than $1 trillion in commerce gets done every year.
    
5. Customers include Cirque du Soleil, which has been simplifying its back office landscape and adding more value across its supply chain – all by making critical procurement information available in one place. Eve Loiseau, Procurement Project Specialist, Cirque du Soleil, explains: “Ariba helps me do my job because it’s one platform, one place where you have all the information. We’re much more efficient for sourcing activities. Our sourcing people can actually concentrate on where they can add value."
   

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