SAP Ariba Means Business in Europe

Company teams with Mercateo to roll out Spot Buy solution on the
Continent

PRAGUE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The world’s largest digital marketplace for industrial goods and
services just got bigger. On the heels of successful rollouts in North
America, Australia and Latin America, SAP
Ariba today announced that it has selected Mercateo AG as its
primary partner to launch SAP
Ariba® Spot Buy in Europe. The strategic alliance promises to
transform ad-hoc purchasing for enterprises across the Continent by
matching buyer demand with seller supply in an efficient and trusted
digital marketplace to drive a simple, more transparent process that
delivers flexibility and savings to buyers as well as opportunities to
sellers.

A Tough Spot

Every purchasing process has its challenges. But spot buying is
particularly tough. Buyers generally lack the resources to qualify
suppliers and manage bids for items that were needed yesterday and end
up purchasing from the first vendor they find who can deliver what they
need with extreme speed. That leaves significant savings on the table.
And sellers miss out on opportunities to expand and win new business.

“In joining forces with Mercateo, we can help solve these problems,
creating a unique, end-to-end experience through which buyers and
sellers in Europe can more efficiently engage around non-contracted
spend and make procurement awesome,” says Tony Alvarez, General Manager,
SAP Ariba Spot Buy. “Mercateo has robust functional capabilities for
both buyers and sellers. This philosophy and commitment to creating a
neutral platform for commerce fit very well with our strategy, and we
are pleased to be leveraging Mercateo Unite as our primary
infrastructure for onboarding trusted seller content into SAP Ariba Spot
Buy.”

A Simple, Powerful Solution

Pairing SAP Ariba’s business
network and cloud-based
procurement applications, SAP Ariba Spot Buy delivers a
consumer-like shopping experience driven by business controls through
which even the most casual users can quickly find and immediately buy
thousands of contracted and non-contracted items in accordance with
their company’s procurement policies and procedures.

“Mercateo and SAP Ariba share a passion for connecting buyers and
sellers and enabling them to collaborate in new and innovative ways that
drive their business forward,” said Dr. Bernd Schönwälder, CSO/CMO of
Mercateo. “In sharing the passion for innovative technology and
combining SAP Ariba’s procurement expertise with our supply side reach,
we can help buyers get a handle on this hard to manage category of spend
and control their costs while at the same time opening the door to new
opportunities for sellers that fuel growth.”

With SAP Ariba Spot Buy and the Mercateo Unite multi-supplier
infrastructure, enterprise buyers can access the rapidly growing number
of Mercateo Unite suppliers as well as millions of items from Mercateo
Shop on demand. Here’s how it works:

Find: If an item isn’t listed in a company’s catalog, users can
search the SAP Ariba Spot Buy catalog to locate it.

Approve: Through configurable business rules and spot
buy-specific workflow, purchases are automatically aligned with
corporate policies and routed for approval.

Buy: Approved purchases trigger checkout, secure payment and
shipment of goods.

A Win-Win

“Ariba Spot Buy has been a life saver for us,” says Shannon Simmons,
Program Manager, Global Sourcing & Procurement Services, AIG, a buyer
who is already using SAP Ariba Spot Buy.

Chris Dunlap, Global Indirect Spend, HP, Inc. has been pleased with the
service since rolling it out as well. “With SAP Ariba Spot Buy, we’re
able to move more spend through no touch channels which is really
important for us,” he says. “And it’s a pretty easy experience. People
can find things that they couldn’t before, they are able to comparison
shop and they are finding the prices are as good or better than what we
have negotiated in our regular catalogs.”

But SAP Ariba Spot Buy isn’t just for buyers. There are benefits for
sellers too as they can easily reach out to a global network of buyers
who spend billions on indirect goods and services every year and offer
their goods when and where they are needed.

With more than 2.8 million companies in 190 countries transacting over
$1 trillion in commerce on an annual basis, the Ariba Network is the
world’s largest, most global business-to-business trading platform. With
Ariba Spot Buy, SAP Ariba connects the demand of buyers on the network
to the most expansive supply of global goods to create digital commerce.
To learn more about Ariba Spot Buy, and the value it can deliver to your
organization, visit: www.ariba.com.
Suppliers interested in participating in Ariba Spot Buy can also contact
SAP Ariba at [email protected].

About Mercateo

Mercateo is the European expert in the field of non-contracted B2B
spend. The company has been running Europe’s largest B2B marketplace
since 1999. In early 2017, Mercateo launched Mercateo Unite – the B2B
networking platform. Through Mercateo Unite, buyers, suppliers,
manufacturers and service providers can connect their systems directly
with each other and digitally process transactions regardless of their
current level of digitalization. Mercateo Unite serves as SAP Ariba’s
infrastructure for the integration of a wide range of suppliers and
assortments in SAP Ariba Spot Buy.

With its headquarters located in Germany, Mercateo operates in 14
European countries and employs more than 450 people. Mercateo increased
its sales by 14% to EUR 228 million in 2016. For more information, visit www.unite.eu.

About SAP Ariba

SAP Ariba is how companies connect to get business done. On the Ariba
Network, buyers and suppliers from more than two million companies and
190 countries discover new opportunities, collaborate on transactions
and grow their relationships. Buyers can manage the entire purchasing
process, while controlling spending, finding new sources of savings and
building a healthy supply chain. And suppliers can connect with
profitable customers and efficiently scale existing relationships –
simplifying sales cycles and improving cash control along the way. The
result is a dynamic, digital marketplace, where more than $1 trillion in
commerce gets done every year.

To learn more about SAP Ariba, visit www.ariba.com.

About SAP

As market leader in enterprise application software, SAP (NYSE: SAP)
helps companies of all sizes and industries run better. From back office
to boardroom, warehouse to storefront, desktop to mobile device – SAP
empowers people and organizations to work together more efficiently and
use business insight more effectively to stay ahead of the competition.
SAP applications and services enable approximately 350,000 customers to
operate profitably, adapt continuously, and grow sustainably. For more
information, visit www.sap.com.

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Contacts

SAP Ariba
Karen Master, +1 412-297-8177
[email protected]