Anyone have experience with ARIBA?

I can only speak from the supplier/vendor side.

We have a major customer who brought on Ariba earlier this year. Works well enough; reduces the dependency of email and/or fax for orders, confirmations, PO acceptance, payment confirmation, payment notification, etc. Quite easy transition from our side; Ariba facilitated conference calls and webinar to bring our folks set-up/implementation and familiarization to the system.

Some duplication from our side - as we have duplication of entries into the Ariba cloud-based system and our ERP. One chaffing issue: We are being charged as a vendor to participate!

Reduced costs for the implementing customer, increased costs for the vendor.

My two-bits.

I'm in the middle of setting my company up as a vendor on Ariba now, which was prompted by getting a new, major client who manages it's vendor workflow with it. It's definitely overkill for the type of relationship with have with the client, as are other systems of this nature that I've had to work with (e.g., Kelly Services and Allegis). I find most of these systems to be confusing to use and time-consuming to set up. It seems like a lot of work for no real payoff, as all we need is a P.O. to work against, and then we need our client to pay our very simple invoices against that P.O. All of that can be done very efficiently within a traditional A/P system. So, what prompts the need for all of this is beyond me. Long story short, to echo what John said above, it definitely results in increased costs for the vendor. Whether there's a positive ROI for the customer, I can't tell you. I'm doubtful, however.

I have broad experience with these kinds of systems. I have implemented Ariba P2P as well as several staff augmentation related systems. Ariba can be complex, depending on your needs. But the basic functionality is more geared toward products rather than services. Items that can be purchased via a catalog are the prime example of where Ariba is simple to implement and use. However, services can be put on the requisition as well. Some of their other modules are a better fit for services (ie contracts) but can be cumbersome to implement. The systems that Patrick is referring to are specifically for consultants and contract labor. While each individual vendor may only need a simple PO and invoice, with many companies using multiple providers of these workers, it is important to have them all run through one portal. It makes time entry and approval more efficient and helps with compliance related controls. It provides a significant ROI for the client. If controlling contract labor and consulting is your main priority, you should consider systems like Fieldglass or PeopleFluent.

I would be happy to discuss options with you further offline.

The Ariba sales people make it sound like the vendors love getting paid this way. You could lose smaller vendors that don't want to pay to participate. Why not poll your specific vendors and see if any of them are already working with Ariba in relationships with other and solicit feedback from them.

I personally find these systems redundant and overkill and expensive to implement. It is a solution for very large organizations that mostly have not been able to get their hands around and improve upon existing simple models and these solutions won't fix an ailing AP department if scale isn't the real issue behind why you think you need this tool.

Hello

I am an Ariba expert and implemented P2P & Upstream modules in major company at international level.
Ariba on-demand (only version that Ariba continues to sell) can be quite complex to implement but the ratio implementation price/ application quality is quite good.

There are several prerequisites your organization needs to meet to ensure Ariba implementation in your company is adapted to your need. For example: make a little survey on your main suppliers to see if they are already enrolled on the Ariba Network. And for the ones that are not already on it, make sure they will not stop working with you because of the fees charged by Ariba to send POs via Ariba Network.