Wednesday 18th September, 2013

Next Tuesday, 24th September, Ariba will be taking centre stage at eWorld Purchasing & Supply, a leading UK event with a focus on new technologies and techniques within the procurement & supply chain functions. Ariba will be discussing the relatively new data-driven approach to procurement and spend management,  and will consider how businesses of all sizes, across industries can use the power inherent in the mass of data to, in their words,  transform their operations.

James Marland, VP Network Strategy, Ariba says; “Procurement success has typically been measured on objectives such as reducing costs, minimising risk and driving compliance. These objectives are now made more challenging with corporate business initiatives such as sustainability, localism and corporate responsibility. Balancing all these is hard to do if you aren’t informed. Innovative procurement professionals recognise this. And they’re tapping into business networks to access intelligence on market trends, supplier history, qualifications and risk factors and gain insights that will help them design and execute smarter strategies and deliver results.”

And networks are about more than just connecting companies, people and processes. Their real power lies in what goes on inside them - all the interactions, transactions and commentary  - and the massive amounts of data that they generate.

Consider the following: leveraging the hundreds of billions of dollars of financial transactions and structured, curated, audited, and cleansed transactional data along with relationship history that resides in business networks,buyers and sellers can make more informed decisions by detecting changes in buying patterns or pricing trends and provide confidence and qualifying information on a potential – yet unfamiliar – trading partner. And, when combined with community-generated ratings and content and a whole host of unstructured data such as texts, tweets, blog posts, web-based videos, and other social postings, they can glean not only real-time insights, but also recommended strategies for moving their businesses forward.

“It’s a new way of operating,” Marland says. “But procurement organisations that embrace it can ultimately transform their businesses.