SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sales contracting has gone social. Ariba, Inc. (Nasdaq: ARBA), the leading provider of collaborative business commerce solutions, today announced the launch of Ariba® Contracts™ on salesforce.com's AppExchange, the leading marketplace for business applications. Built using Force.com, salesforce.com’s social enterprise platform for employee-facing social apps, Ariba Contracts on Force.com is uniquely designed to help companies drive a real-time, collaborative sales contracting process through which they can speed cycle time and deal closings and improve revenue and relationships. The application is immediately available for test drive and deployment on the AppExchange, the world’s most popular marketplace for business apps, at http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/.
Comments on the News
"Sales interactions can quickly grow complex and extend across organizational boundaries involving many people. Social mechanisms have proven adept at allowing participants in any process to tackle such complexity and bridge applications, data environments, and groups," said Dana Gardner, principal analyst, Interarbor Solutions. "The trick is enabling the social mechanisms in a way that fosters collaboration but balances that with access control and governance. The combination of Ariba Contracts on Force.com, AppExchange and salesforce.com's installed base and collaborative cloud functionality will prove an effective social grease on the wheels of managed sales processes."
“Few things are more social than the sales cycle,” said Tim Minahan, chief marketing officer, Ariba. “You’ve got to engage with multiple stakeholders both internally and externally, and to be effective, the process needs to be transparent. Unfortunately, transparency generally ends when the contracting cycle begins. And that’s when it matters most.”
“As corporate counsel for a fast-growing enterprise, I manage a high volume of contracts that often need to be customized and always need to be turned around quickly,” said Mark Mallah, corporate counsel, LiveVox Inc., a provider of the Private VoIP Cloud™ and integrated contact center applications. “With Ariba Contracts on Force.com, I can eliminate inefficiencies in our contracting process and increase the speed of our cycle time so that we can close deals more quickly.”
“A social revolution is under way, creating a massive shift in how businesses collaborate, communicate and share information,” said Ron Huddleston, senior vice president, ISV Alliances, salesforce.com. “Companies like Ariba leverage the social, mobile and open capabilities customers need as they reinvent themselves as social enterprises.”
Enabling the Social Enterprise
In the past, sales were driven primarily through face-to-face meetings. And deals were closed with handshakes. But selling today is a different game. Marketing is happening online. And with increasing frequency, negotiations are moving there too.
With Ariba Contracts on Force.com, commercial organizations can drive a fully automated contracting process in which multiple people can collaborate in real time to ease the process of creating and managing contracts across categories and functions, including sales, finance, marketing, real estate, legal, procurement and IT.
Ariba Contracts on Force.com delivers the mobile, social and open tools that companies all sizes can use to achieve these benefits, including:
- The social capabilities of Salesforce Chatter like profiles, status updates, and real-time feeds available within Ariba Contracts on Force.com, which employees can use to collaborate on and execute customer contracts in a fully automated fashion.
- The mobile capabilities of Force.com, which enable Ariba Contracts to be instantly mobile-enabled, so contracts can be accessed and approved on mobile devices such as the Android, Blackberry, iPad and iPhone.
- Proactive alerts and task-driven dashboards that eliminate process bottlenecks and increase productivity of users.
“Salesforce customers using Ariba Contracts on Force.com cannot only outperform their peers across all functions within the contracting process, but seamlessly extend their sales process across the entire organization,” Minahan said.
Additional Resources
Ariba Contracts on Force.com is available and in use today. For more information on the application and the value it can deliver to your organization, please visit:
https://www.ariba.com/solutions/acf
About Salesforce.com Force.com and AppExchange
Force.com is the trusted social enterprise platform for building and running any employee app in the cloud. Force.com powers the Salesforce CRM apps, the more than 200,000 custom apps used by salesforce.com customers such as Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE, and Sprint Nextel and the more than 1,200 ISV apps built by partners such as BMC, FinancialForce.com and Fujitsu.
Enterprise apps built on the Force.com platform can be easily distributed and marketed through the salesforce.com AppExchange http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/.
The salesforce.com social enterprise platform delivers the most trusted and comprehensive cloud technologies for social, mobile and open apps. It includes Force.com, the cloud platform for employee apps, Heroku, the cloud platform for customer apps and Database.com, the cloud database to integrate the social enterprise.
Salesforce, Dreamforce, Force.com, Heroku, AppExchange, Database.com and others are trademarks of salesforce.com, inc.
About Ariba, Inc.
Ariba, Inc. is the leading provider of collaborative business commerce solutions. Ariba combines industry-leading technology with the world's largest web-based trading community to help companies discover, connect and collaborate with a global network of partners – all in a cloud-based environment. Using the Ariba® Commerce Cloud, businesses of all sizes can buy, sell and manage cash more efficiently and effectively. Over 500,000 companies around the globe use the Ariba Commerce Cloud to simplify inter-enterprise commerce and enhance results. Why not join them? To get on the path to Better Commerce visit: www.ariba.com/commercecloud/
Copyright © 1996 – 2011 Ariba, Inc.
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Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act 1995: Information and announcements in this release involve Ariba's expectations, beliefs, hopes, plans, intentions or strategies regarding the future and are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. All forward-looking statements included in this release are based upon information available to Ariba as of the date of the release, and we assume no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results could differ materially from our current expectations. Factors that could cause or contribute to Ariba's operating and financial results to differ materially from current expectations include, but are not limited to: the impact of the credit crises on Ariba’s results of operations and financial condition; delays in development or shipment of new versions of Ariba's products and services; lack of market acceptance of Ariba's existing or future products or services; inability to continue to develop competitive new products and services on a timely basis; introduction of new products or services by major competitors; the impact of any acquisitions, including difficulties with the integration process or the realization of benefits of a transaction; the impact of our disposition, including the potential disruption of our ongoing business; the ability to attract and retain qualified employees; long and unpredictable sales cycles and the deferrals of anticipated orders; declining economic conditions, including the impact of a recession; inability to control costs; changes in the company's pricing or compensation policies; significant fluctuations in our stock price; the outcome of and costs associated with pending or potential future regulatory or legal proceedings; the impact of our acquisitions and dispositions, including the disruption or loss of customer, business partner, supplier or employee relationships; and the level of costs and expenses incurred by Ariba as a result of such transactions. Factors and risks associated with its business, including a number of the factors and risks described above, are discussed in Ariba's Form 10-Q filed with the SEC on August 5, 2011.