Since its inception in 1996, financial software solutions provider Ariba has made a tremendous transformation as a company.

“Most folks who heard about Ariba back in the 2000 era, think of us as a procurement company and since then Ariba has completely reshaped itself and the market around collaborative business commerce. Today, we are the world’s largest B2B trading network,” Ken Miklos, director of solutions marketing at Ariba, told TMCnet. “We have more buyers and sellers transacting more commerce across the Ariba network then any B2B network globally.”

For over two decades, Ariba has centered upon helping companies control spending and reduce costs and, accordingly, the company has emerged as the leading provider of spend management solutions. Over the years, Ariba’s solutions have evolved, particularly since business commerce no longer happens in a vacuum. Consequently, the company started the Ariba Commerce Cloud which allows businesses to access the most efficient and effective platform for inter-enterprise commerce.

“What we are doing today is looking for ways to help our companies buy, sell and manage cash more efficiently and effectively,” Miklos said.

“If you look at the world, it’s being shaped by macro trends like cloud, social media and enterprise apps, and they dominate our personal lives,” he added. “We search on Google (News - Alert), we shop on Amazon, and we communicate through Facebook, but now that is starting to creep into business. We saw that trend a long time ago, and we like to joke that we were the cloud before the cloud was cool. Our solutions are designed and have always been designed to consumerize business commerce; it’s still way too hard.”

Therefore, as opposed to typical ERPs who can only help companies within the four walls of their organization, Ariba looks to extend that reach and help customers with their different business functions.

One area that Ariba has particularly excelled in is contract management. For the past 10 years, Ariba has been a leading contract management provider, delivering solutions for over 400 companies. From procurement to sales to internal HR contracts, Ariba helps companies navigate through contract processes.

In an effort to maintain its competitive edge and meet the needs of the marketplace, Ariba recently announced the launch of AribaContracts on salesforce.com's AppExchange, the leading marketplace for business applications. Built using Force.com, salesforce.com’s social enterprise platform for employee-facing social apps, Ariba Contracts on Force.com is positioned to help companies drive a real-time, collaborative sales contracting process through which they can speed cycle time and deal closings and improve revenue and relationships, according to company officials.

“A lot of the companies that we talked to and those who are using salesforce or CRM strategies tend to have fair to very good visibility into their sales process; they understand what opportunities are coming down the pipe and when things are scheduled and so on,” Miklos said. “But the reality is that for a vast majority of those companies, when it’s time to begin the contracting cycle, the process goes completely offline. It turns into managing a Microsoft (News - Alert) word document.”

According to Miklos, Ariba asked itself why that is and why that is so inefficient and after some research Ariba found its answers. One of the main drawbacks to the process is that the contracting cycle becomes “painful” and this does not allow the company and its brand new customer to get off on the right foot. With the app, the different parties involved can collaborate better both internally and externally to make for a more tolerable contracting process.

Moreover, the problem with the typical contracting process is that it doesn’t account for mobility needs. With the app, contracts can be reviewed, approved and accessed all via email on BlackBerry (News - Alert), Android, iPad, etc.

Finally, a huge part why the process is so inefficient today is because there are so many bottlenecks in the process.

“When you think of getting a contract through the cycle what it turns out to be is a bunch of hand-offs and waiting” Miklos said. “When you automate that you get proactive alerts and know when the contact is on your desk and when it’s waiting your approval. These interactions can help to improve the social aspects of the sales contracting process both internally as well as externally.”

So as we prepare to say goodbye to 2011 and hello to 2012, how will Ariba continue distinguishing itself in the marketplace?

“By offering the end-to-end solution,” Miklos said. “There are a lot of companies that offer pieces – a lot of companies that do contract management software or sourcing software. But when you think of the network which is really where it’s at, we are the largest network with 700,000 companies using it and they are doing two hundred billion dollars in commerce a year on it. That rivals eBay (News - Alert); that’s double the volume of eBay. We have more buyers and more sellers connecting around more commerce than any other network on the planet.”

Carrie Schmelkin is a Web Editor for TMCnet. Previously, she worked as Assistant Editor at the New Canaan Advertiser, a 102-year-old weekly newspaper, covering news and enhancing the publication's social media initiatives. Carrie holds a bachelor's degree in journalism and a bachelor's degree in English from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Rich Steeves