PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--There are plenty of sites where Australasian businesses can find industrial products and office supplies and buy them with a few clicks. But where can they go when they need specialty items on an ad-hoc basis and purchase them in a compliant manner? SAP Ariba. The company today announced plans to roll out SAP Ariba® Spot Buy, its marketplace for managing non-contracted purchases, in Australia and New Zealand. And just as it has in North America and Europe, the offering promises to transform spot buying, matching buyer demand with seller supply in an efficient digital marketplace to drive a simple, more transparent process that delivers savings to buyers and opportunities to sellers.
As a consumer, if your refrigerator stops working, you get online, find a few suppliers, compare prices and with a couple of clicks, buy a new one and have it delivered and installed. But what do you do as a business when your assembly line shuts down because of an unanticipated part failure?
“Companies shouldn't have to distract category managers with these types of emergency needs who are better equipped to support larger and planned spend requirements using sourcing processes taking six to thirty weeks and aimed at delivering savings,” said Kurt Albertson, Associate Principal Advisor at The Hackett Group.
Business Buying Made Simple AND Compliant
With SAP Ariba Spot Buy, companies can deliver it. “Spot buys are a huge category of indirect spend that is largely undermanaged because companies lack effective tools to facilitate the time-sensitive supplier identification, qualification, and bidding involved,” said Tony Alvarez, General Manager, SAP Ariba Spot Buy. “SAP Ariba Spot Buy changes all of this.”
A unique offering that goes beyond simple catalogs for indirect goods, SAP Ariba Spot Buy provides the technology, content and expertise organizations need to gain greater visibility into their spend and fuel the compliance needed to get unplanned buys under control.
Pairing SAP Ariba’s business network and cloud-based procurement applications with expansive catalogs for indirect goods, SAP Ariba Spot Buy combines the convenience of a consumer-like shopping experience with business controls, enabling even the most casual users to quickly find and immediately buy thousands of contracted and non-contracted items in accordance with their company’s procurement policies and procedures. With SAP Ariba Spot Buy, companies can:
Find: If an item isn’t listed in a company’s catalog, users can search the SAP Ariba Spot Buy catalog – populated with more than one billion listings across over 20,000 categories to locate it.
Approve: Through configurable business rules and spot buy-specific workflow, purchases are automatically aligned with corporate policies and routed for approval.
Buy: Approved purchases trigger checkout, secure payment, and shipment of goods.
Eliminating the Middle Man
“In today’s digital world, buying things at work has to be as simple as buying things at home. But it also needs to follow our corporate rules,” said Cor van der Scheer, Procurement Processes & Systems Manager, AusNet Services. “With SAP Ariba Spot Buy, we can create a consumer-like shopping experience for our employees, enabling them to find the goods they need to do their jobs and with a few clicks buy them in accordance with company policies, all while maintaining visibility into and control over a large category of spend that has until now been very difficult to manage.”
But it isn’t just about buying. With SAP Ariba Spot Buy, selling organizations can connect directly to the world’s largest, most global network of business buyers who spend billions on indirect goods every year and offer their products when and where they are needed, opening doors to opportunities that may previously have been closed to them.
“It’s truly a win-win,” said Alvarez. “Corporate buyers can tap into a trusted network of vetted suppliers and create an easy way to find and buy one-off items without unleashing a maverick buying epidemic, and sellers can establish strategic relationships with corporate customers without any interference to grow their business.”
About SAP Ariba
SAP Ariba is how companies connect to get business done. On the Ariba Network, buyers and suppliers from more than 2.5 million companies and 190 countries discover new opportunities, collaborate on transactions and grow their relationships. Buyers can manage the entire purchasing process, while controlling spending, finding new sources of savings and building a healthy supply chain. And suppliers can connect with profitable customers and efficiently scale existing relationships – simplifying sales cycles and improving cash control along the way. The result is a dynamic, digital marketplace, where more than $1 trillion in commerce gets done every year. To learn more about SAP Ariba, visit www.ariba.com.
About SAP
As market leader in enterprise application software, SAP (NYSE: SAP) helps companies of all sizes and industries run better. From back office to boardroom, warehouse to storefront, desktop to mobile device – SAP empowers people and organizations to work together more efficiently and use business insight more effectively to stay ahead of the competition. SAP applications and services enable approximately 345,000 customers to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and grow sustainably. For more information, visit www.sap.com.
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