Daryl T. Rolley, senior vice president and general manager for international operations who recently visited Manila, said the Ariba and TransProcure would help local clients with their spend management, purchasing and supply management solutions.
"We will also convince new customers to work with us to help improve their competitiveness, better purchasing and supply management technologies," says Rolley.
"Local companies had to make the decision to be more global if they were to grow and they have to go out of the Philippines."
They also have to be competitive in their supply base, find the best suppliers in the world, the best total costs the best delivery, quality and the best price from their suppliers, says Rolley.
"Companies should have efficient purchasing organizations. They can’t afford to have too many people managing transactions. If they are not efficient, then the costs are higher and they are less competitive."
Ariba’s solutions would help companies in the supply chain, save money, find suppliers, negotiate the best contracts, streamline their purchasing management and take their purchasing process and make them online, thus saving more money and allowing their people to do more with less.
Rolley noted that growth is not the number one concern of CEOs because the economies in the world were not growing. "In the western countries where economies were slack, people were really focusing on cost reduction."
Many CEOs were focused on low-cost country sourcing, which means that how to make good materials at lower costs. "We help western companies find suppliers in Asia such as China, the Philippines or India that are highquality suppliers that can make delivery services at lower costs," says Rolley.
Ariba has recently acquired Freemarkets with a combined headcount of 1,700 employees. "We’re the largest company so focused on purchasing and supply management technology solutions."
Rolley noted that over the past five years, CEOs have come to realize that the purchasing and supply management organizations control a lot of value in a company.
For instance, for every dollar that a typical manufacturing company sells, 60 US cents is being bought in terms of products and services. "If they can just save 10 percent of the costs, it goes right to your profits," says Rolley.
The 10 percent savings in cost is achievable if companies can adopt and apply the technologies and solutions across the entire spend base within a period of years and save a significant amount of money, Rolley pointed out.
"We’ve been doing this for nine years and we have customers that saved hundreds of millions of dollars or even billions of dollars in the case of large multinational companies."
In the Asia Pacific region, Ariba has 275 people following the merger with Freemarkets with a software development center in Bangalore, India and some outsourced support center in Manila through TransProcure.
There are about 110 companies in the region deploying Ariba solutions including 50 US and European multinational firms.
"TransProcure is a very important partner to us and our relationship goes a long way," said Rolley.
TransProcure is the leading procurement services company in the Philippines headquartered in Manila and has been getting and supporting clients successfully in the Asian region.
The company’s vision is to make the Philippines the "Procurement Capital of the World," and thus helping local companies be cost competitive.
"A strong company translates to a strong economy and nation. We are here just to do that," said Charlie Villasenor, CEO of TransProcure.
