Boost Your "eAppeal" – and Your Business – with Order Automation

Accepting orders electronically over the Ariba® Supplier Network™ offers an easy, cost-free way to grow your business while saving time and money. What's more, using electronic ordering doesn't require a big IT investment. With just a small effort, you can start reaping huge benefits from this valuable capability.

Similar to the way faxing revolutionized order processing in the 1980s, order automation is the wave of the future—allowing you to streamline your order flow, realize significant process efficiencies, and deliver the superior service that sets you apart from competitors.

How Will Online Ordering Benefit My Business?
Moving from faxed orders to an electronic format as basic as email or web retrieval offers you a wide range of benefits, including:

• Comprehensive information in a single location. A convenient online dashboard tells you everything you need to know at a glance. Instant access to PO, invoice, and revenue activity for each customer makes it easy to quickly prioritize action items. Real-time information on new, changed, and non-invoiced orders as well as unpaid or rejected invoices is available at the click of a mouse, while an "in-progress" column alerts you to orders that need follow-up. You can even customize dashboard settings to meet your preferences and business needs.



A convenient dashboard provides instant, accurate information to help you manage customer transactions and relationships more effectively.


• Immediate notification of every order you get. Rather than risking missed opportunities if the fax machine fails or paper gets lost, you can use online tracking to ensure that you receive an email with all details each time a customer submits an order.


• Enhanced customer relationships and preferred supplier status. As more buying organizations launch eProcurement initiatives, the appeal of suppliers with eCommerce capabilities grows. You can support your customers' eProcurement initiatives—and become a preferred supplier in the process—through tools such as automated order confirmations and ship notices to apprise buyers of their order status, or PO-Flip™ to create accurate invoices directly from orders. (Note that customers must have Ariba eInvoicing for you to use PO-Flip with them. You can find out if they have it by going to "Administration/Customer Relationships," clicking on the right customer link in "Current Relationships," and checking the buyer's preferences under the "Invoice Setup" section.)


• Greater efficiency and lower costs. Using online ordering typically reduces supplier processing costs by 40 to as much as 75 percent and minimizes the time and effort required, allowing you to redeploy staff to more mission-critical tasks. In addition, the ability to create an electronic repository of orders for audit, archive, contract, or other business purposes eliminates the need to track and store large volumes of paper documentation.


• Increased accuracy. Online ordering eliminates the time required to correct mistakes that arise from manually transcribing faxed orders or using optical character recognition (OCR) to scan documents into backend systems. Calls and emails to clear up problems and errors are no longer needed, reducing staff costs and phone bills.


• Faster, better order routing. Automated order routing makes it much easier to get documents to the right action owners in a timely manner. You can quickly create email rules that allow you to route POs by order type, change orders vs. new orders, and more. And the immediacy of electronic transmission erases the lag time formerly required to physically move paper orders from one person and location to another.

How do I get started?
Using Ariba online ordering is remarkably simple. To begin, log into your account at supplier.ariba.com and go to the configuration dashboard, as shown below.

To change your order routing methods to email or web, complete the "Electronic Order Routing" section.

You also have the option to set up email notifications of orders you receive as well as other order-related information.



Depending on the preferences you set, orders will automatically begin to appear in your email inbox and/or be waiting in your Ariba Network account (under "Inbox" on the home page) for you to take action on them whenever you log in.

Where can I learn more?
You can get clear, step-by-step instructions on how to view and manage your purchase orders online as well as how to electronically submit order confirmations and ship notices by watching "Handling Purchase Orders," an eight-minute Ariba training video.