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SAP Ariba sets its sights on Europe

SAP Ariba & Mercateo are cooperating on Spot Buy solution in Europe

SAP Ariba is relying on the new B2B networking platform Mercateo Unite as the infrastructure for the Ariba Spot Buy solution in Europe. As a result, SAP Ariba customers can simply integrate suppliers for periphery requirements and also receive access to more than 50 million items through the integrated Mercateo shop. Users of SAP Ariba Spot Buy therefore have a broad arbitrarily expandable landscape of ranges and providers available for indirect materials without leaving the company’s own standard processes. The cooperation was announced at the “SAP Ariba Live” conference in Prague on 12 June 2017 and accompanied by the following press release from SAP Ariba on 13 June 2017:

PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC – June 13, 2017 – The world’s largest digital marketplace for industrial goods and services just got bigger. On the heels of successful rollouts in North America, Australia and Latin America, SAP Ariba today announced that it has selected Mercateo AG as its primary partner to launch SAP Ariba® Spot Buy in Europe. The strategic alliance promises to transform ad-hoc purchasing for enterprises across the Continent by matching buyer demand with seller supply in an efficient and trusted digital marketplace to drive a simple, more transparent process that delivers flexibility and savings to buyers as well as opportunities to sellers.

A Tough Spot

Every purchasing process has its challenges. But spot buying is particularly tough. Buyers generally lack the resources to qualify suppliers and manage bids for items that were needed yesterday and end up purchasing from the first vendor they find who can deliver what they need with extreme speed. That leaves significant savings on the table. And sellers miss out on opportunities to expand and win new business.

“In joining forces with Mercateo, we can help solve these problems, creating a unique, end-to-end experience through which buyers and sellers in Europe can more efficiently engage around non-contracted spend and make procurement awesome,” says Tony Alvarez, General Manager, SAP Ariba Spot Buy. “Mercateo has robust functional capabilities for both buyers and sellers. This philosophy and commitment to creating a neutral platform for commerce fit very well with our strategy, and we are pleased to be leveraging Mercateo Unite as our primary infrastructure for onboarding trusted seller content into SAP Ariba Spot Buy.”

A Simple, Powerful Solution

Pairing SAP Ariba’s business network and cloud-based procurement applications, SAP Ariba Spot Buy delivers a consumer-like shopping experience driven by business controls through which even the most casual users can quickly find and immediately buy thousands of contracted and non-contracted items in accordance with their company’s procurement policies and procedures.

“Mercateo and SAP Ariba share a passion for connecting buyers and sellers and enabling them to collaborate in new and innovative ways that drive their business forward,” said Dr. Bernd Schönwälder, CSO/CMO of Mercateo. “In sharing the passion for innovative technology and combining SAP Ariba’s procurement expertise with our supply side reach, we can help buyers get a handle on this hard to manage category of spend and control their costs while at the same time opening the door to new opportunities for sellers that fuel growth.”

With SAP Ariba Spot Buy and the Mercateo Unite multi-supplier infrastructure, enterprise buyers can access the rapidly growing number of Mercateo Unite suppliers as well as millions of items from Mercateo Shop on demand. Here’s how it works:

Find: If an item isn’t listed in a company’s catalog, users can search the SAP Ariba Spot Buy catalog 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.

A Win-Win

“Ariba Spot Buy has been a life saver for us”, says Shannon Simmons, Program Manager, Global Sourcing & Procurement Services, AIG, a buyer who is already using SAP Ariba Spot Buy.

Chris Dunlap, Global Indirect Spend, HP, Inc. has been pleased with the service since rolling it out as well. “With SAP Ariba Spot Buy, we’re able to move more spend through no touch channels which is really important for us,” he says. “And it’s a pretty easy experience. People can find things that they couldn’t before, they are able to comparison shop and they are finding the prices are as good or better than what we have negotiated in our regular catalogs.”
But SAP Ariba Spot Buy isn’t just for buyers. There are benefits for sellers too as they can easily reach out to a global network of buyers who spend billions on indirect goods and services every year and offer their goods when and where they are needed.

With more than 2.8 million companies in 190 countries transacting over $1 trillion in commerce on an annual basis, the Ariba Network is the world’s largest, most global business-to-business trading platform. With Ariba Spot Buy, SAP Ariba connects the demand of buyers on the network to the most expansive supply of global goods to create digital commerce.

To learn more about Ariba Spot Buy, and the value it can deliver to your organization, visit: www.ariba.com. Suppliers interested in participating in Ariba Spot Buy can also contact SAP Ariba at spotbuysupply@sap.com