Ariba Sourcing

Since SAP bought Ariba, when you as a customer asks about a procurement/sourcing solution to a SAP/Ariba salesman, the first question will be: on-premise or on-demand?

If your answer is on-premise, the proposed solution will be SAP SRM and Ariba for on-demand.

The main components of the Ariba Sourcing on-demand solution are,

• Buyer, the core of the solution that contain all the administrative processes and mechanisms. This is typically called downstream.

The other components are called up-stream and they focus on the strategy to put in place and the analysis of the governance of the procurement activities.

• Sourcing, RFPs, RFIs, auctions… provides the perfect place to promote competitive prices from your providers.
• Contract Management, for formalization of the awarding,
• Analysis, that contains the reporting services, enable the control of the expenditure classifying your company with respect the typical expenditure of your industry.

One of the more demanded services is the Ariba network, that enable you to access to a suppliers network with the Ariba free buyer-seller matching service.

You are not asking for a sandwich, you are asking about a thousand dollars software solution, but since these solutions are more and more configurable packages sometimes you face fanny situations.