Notes from Ariba Live - 2
This is in continuation to my earlier blog which covered Day 1 of Ariba Live: http://www.infosysblogs.com/supply-chain/2009/04/notes_from_ariba_live_1.html#more
On the second day of “Ariba Live Virtual 2009”, presenters continued to build upon the “Spend Management: Time to be Hero” theme from Bob Calderoni’s Day 1 keynote. It was the turn of Kevin Costello, President Ariba, to solicit belief in the theme, by assigning numbers to the savings opportunity available. Some numbers that Kevin put forth are really interesting. As per Ariba research, Fortune 500 companies alone could save close to $300 billion through improved Spend management initiatives. Include the other companies as well, and that figure should go up to $500 billion in North America alone. As Kevin put it, this is a stimulus package organizations cannot afford to ignore.
Day 2 of LIVE also had Ariba come out with information on new solutions and services. Supplier Risk Management and SPM program Management are new service offerings. A Supplier Information Management solution also gets added on to the bouquet of Ariba offerings. These Supplier Management related offerings underscore a couple of interesting trends:
- With supplier bankruptcies rising by 74% over the last year, Supplier Risk Management is becoming all the more relevant.
- Ariba is leveraging its supplier network data to increasingly offer “broker” kind of services. With services like Supplier Information Enrichment, Risk Management and Supplier Information Management, Ariba seems to be moving from selling software/consultancy and providing a market place for buyers and suppliers; to taking a more active role in supplier selection and supplier management for buyer organizations.
In a survey conducted by Ariba, increasing spend under management has been identified as a top priority. With the economic recession putting a squeeze on credit and cash, there has been increased focus to bring complex services inside spend management. Even the traditionally difficult to penetrate bastions, like Marketing and Legal, are now been brought into the Spend Management fold.
Having stakeholder support is critical for Spend Management programs, and the current economic conditions have brought a lot of senior management focus to such programs. Hopefully, the benefits achieved from these programs will make sure that they continue remain in the focus in better economic times too.
