Buying Right: Ariba Models Sourcing ProcessesBuying Right: Ariba Models Sourcing Processes

Ariba Inc. last week unveiled across-the-board upgrades to its spending-management products and added new software that lets users manage the many business processes related to sourcing.

Ariba Category Management 1.0 lets customers model their sourcing processes and projects from scratch or by using pre-configured templates. Once a model is in place, users can capture, search, store, and retrieve all data related to particular purchases, whether from external suppliers, Web sites, or internal sources. The software, due in March, also provides managers with a dashboard to track day-to-day activities and offers a collaborative environment for groups of users to discuss procurement-related issues and finalize contract negotiations with suppliers.

"What's key here is the ability to provide a single point of contact for managing the entire sourcing process," says Aberdeen analyst Tim Minahan. "It allows individual managers not only to have access to the information they need on actions they need to take but to drill down directly into the process and make changes."

Ariba Buyer, the company's flagship product, is being upgraded to version 8 and will include new features such as a catalog search engine and improved multiserver architecture, which should provide greater scalability for handling a large number of simultaneous users. Ariba Enterprise Sourcing 4.0 features the ability to create and manage multilevel groups of line items; it also can export to Microsoft Excel. Both applications are due this year.

The tools will be integrated with each other, a key selling point for companies that want a strong, evolved strategic sourcing solution, says Current Analysis analyst Joseph Marino. "They have turned the entire thing into a much more seamless, integrated platform," he says. "It should be received well."