ARIBA EYES ASIA AS GROWTH ENGINE FOR FURTHER EXPANSION

By Samantha Tan Chiew Ting

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 11 (Bernama) -- Ariba Inc, a US-based software and information
technology services company, is eyeing Asia as one of its growth engines for
further expansion.

Its executive vice president, Ahmed Rubaie, said Asia, an important and critical
region for the company, contributed about eight per cent of total global revenue
and was growing handsomely.

"Ariba also plans to acquire business-to-business exchanges in Asia, including
in Malaysia, as its plans to expand its geographic reach," he told Bernama in an
interview here Saturday.

On Ariba's revenue target from Asia, he said the company did not set any.

He said the company was growing at 15-25 per cent and Asia was growing faster
than other markets.

"The growth for Ariba will be driven by emerging markets, including China, India
and Malaysia," he said.

Rubaie said most of the company's customers in the US and Europe, which came out
from the recession and started to recover, also had similar plan as Ariba's to
re-invest in emerging markets, including Malaysia.

"We are investing in our team here in Asia to service our clients and reach out
to more potential customers," he said.

Ariba has over 350,000 suppliers and more than 1,100 buying companies on its
network.

"Ariba is the world's largest trading community, empowering both the buying
companies and over 350,000 suppliers to discover, connect and collaborate for
better commerce," he said.

In Malaysia, he said, Ariba has over 40 customers including, Sunway Group,
Genting, Maxis and Ambank as well as multinational companies (MNCs) that had
presence in Malaysia like Nestle, Unilever, Chevron, BP, Dell and HP.

"There are no official market share estimates specific to Malaysia.

"If we add the local customers and the MNC customers using our solutions in
Malaysia, without a doubt we would be the leading player in Malaysia," he said.

Meanwhile, Sunway Group managing director, Datuk Tan Kia Loke, said the company
was leveraging on the Ariba solutions to identify opportunities for cost
reductions.

He said using Ariba's cloud-based solutions, Sunway has created and
implemented a standard, best-practice process for procurement across 100 business
units to drive costs lower and fuel its long-term growth of its operations.

"We were facing two main challenges. We had inconsistent sourcing processes
across various business units, and we were missing savings opportunities as a
result.

"To overcome these challenges, Sunway tapped Ariba Sourcing On-Demand, a
flexible, hosted solution that can be quickly and easily deployed," he said.

Ariba Sourcing On-Demand combines the technology, expertise and services needed
to create effective markets for direct materials and indirect goods and services
with best practice processes that companies can implement to improve the
effectiveness of their operations.

Tan said Sunway also used Ariba Savings and Pipeline Tracker to ensure that
savings negotiated actually materialised.

Sunway has been using Ariba's solutions since November 2008, he said.

"Through Ariba's solutions, we have been able to harmonise our sourcing process
across 100-plus business units and drive savings of five per cent across our
spend directly to the bottom line," he said.
-- BERNAMA