What is Ariba?

What is Ariba?

Ariba is a longtime leader in spend management software that was acquired by SAP in 2012.

Today, the SAP Ariba spend management solution portfolio is empowering companies to move faster and spend better. 


The solutions connect millions of trading partners worldwide to SAP Business Network to enable direct, intelligent connections that redefine how organisations communicate and get work done:

  • Buyers can manage the entire purchasing process to achieve sustainable sourcing savings and control spending while building healthy, ethical supply chains.
  • Suppliers can connect with profitable customers and scale existing relationships to simplify sales cycles and improve cash control.

What makes SAP Ariba solutions so different?

SAP Ariba solutions integrate with other SAP procurement solutions to provide tools, services, and expertise to reduce financial and operational disruptions, meet workforce and customer needs, and lower supplier risk and market uncertainty. 

1. Deeper understanding of spend: Manage the complexities of all kinds of spend by putting decades of SAP expertise and specific solution capabilities to work.

2. Real business process integration: Implement a smooth source-to-pay process that’s integrated with your pay processes, back-end systems, and trading partners to deliver optimal value.

3. Worldwide business network that connects you with everything: Evolve past portals to engage in collaborative commerce with a global community of current partners and millions of potential new suppliers.

4. Problem-solving today with an eye on tomorrow: Stay resilient with a future-focused platform of SAP solutions that can scale and grow with your company, no matter where it stands today or goes tomorrow.

Why SAP Ariba solutions?

When you’re working hard to keep your business moving forward in a world of rapid and constant change, procurement makes it possible.

Procurement and transformation
  • Procure to pay: Automate your entire purchasing lifecycle and give users one place to search for indirect goods and services.
  • Catalogs: Define, validate, and enrich catalogue content with enterprise-grade content management tools to give employees a simple way to buy.
  • Guided buying: Guide employees to use preferred suppliers, processes, and policies, resulting in more user adoption and compliant spend.
  • Spot Buy: Enable a cost-saving source for indirect goods, simplifying one-off or emergency purchases that are too costly and time-consuming to source.

Procurement solutions from SAP can help you:

  • Rethink the experience to remove obstacles and let intelligent technologies do more of the work
  • Link categories together globally, managing spend centrally while adapting to market requirements
  • Create deeper collaboration with trading partners while sharing data and insights securely
Direct and indirect materials sourcing
  • Strategic sourcing: Combine sourcing with contracting and supplier lifecycle management to reduce costs and risks.
  • Product sourcing: Equip teams to establish high-value sourcing agreements that meet the needs of automotive and industrial manufacturing companies.
  • Contract management: Speed up contract cycles and reduce administrative and legal costs when you rid yourself of paper and ink.
  • Spend analysis: Organise spend data from across different systems and identify and prioritize sourcing opportunities more easily.

Sourcing and contracting solutions from SAP can help you:

  • Manage and optimise your sourcing, contracting, and spend analysis processes for various types of spend
  • Speed up sourcing cycles and create competitive, best-value agreements for sustainable savings
  • Optimise cost, mitigate supply chain risk, and fully realise negotiated savings
Centralised information and risk management
  • Supplier information: Get a unified supplier record with a high degree of confidence in the data.
  • Lifecycle and performance management: Integrate with procurement to drive spend to preferred suppliers and scale compliance for your entire supply base.
  • Risk management: Make risk assessment and due diligence part of the source-to-pay process, and tailor risk views and alerts to your business and role.

Supplier management solutions from SAP can help you:

  • Source and procure the right products from the right suppliers at the right time and the right price
  • Reduce risk at each step, from onboarding and qualification to segmentation and performance management
  • Prevent savings leakage by making supplier qualification and segmentation part of the buying process
Automated receipt, processing, and payment
  • Network-based business rules: Alert suppliers about errors and prevent incorrect invoices from entering your process workflow or back-end system. 
  • Touchless processing: Capture and automate the processing of invoices, including PDF invoices, non-PO invoices, and invoices for complex services. 
  • Configurable workflow: Use preconfigured, best-practice workflows right away, and enjoy drag-and-drop functionality for simple and quick modification.
  • Stronger compliance: Employ two-way (PO-invoice), three-way (PO-goods receipt-invoice), and four-way (PO-goods receipt-contract-invoice) matching.

Invoice and payment solutions from SAP can help you:

  • Increase the accuracy of invoices to speed up both processing and payments
  • Pre-validate invoices so missing or incorrect information is addressed and exceptions are few
  • Free your staff from time-consuming processes to focus on strategic initiatives