Electronic Contract Execution in Supply Chain Management

Earlier this year, Ariba was selected as Best Supply Chain Management Company based on the ability to provide cost-effective solutions, help with solving common business problems, low time and cost of implementation, overall efficiency gains and facilitation of bank-to-bank and bank-to-customer communications.

DocuSign and Ariba have partnered to set a new standard for contract execution. Ariba now embeds DocuSign’s electronic signature capabilities within its market-leading contract management offering to provide customers with a complete on-demand solution for automating the entire contract lifecycle. Ariba’s Senior Product Marketing Manager, Ken Miklos, shares his thoughts on electronic contract execution in Supply Chain Management:

How has automation changed the entire contract lifecycle?

Contract management automation provides value in three core areas. The first is improved visibility into contract terms and processes. The second is standardized contracting processes, and third, you get better performance management capabilities. This includes compliance with trading partner contact terms and pricing, compliance and audit capabilities of the processes, and regulatory compliance with regulatory and other external statutes and codes.

What benefits has Ariba seen for its customers?

Contract management serves as the linchpin of all our customer’s spend management objectives. Effective contract management is critical to ensuring that the savings that have been identified and negotiated in Ariba Spend Visibility and Ariba Sourcing are realized through transactional purchasing and invoicing. Contract management automation also benefits procurement contracting processes by driving more strategic supplier relationships and greater efficiency throughout the contract lifecycle.

In addition, the driving objective of all sales organizations is to maximize revenues and profit. Ariba Contract Management helps sales, legal and finance achieve this through faster and more efficient contracting cycle times as well a better renewal management. We continue to see more organizations viewing contract management holistically to understand how automation will benefit their entire business, not just a single functional area.

What is the most unique story you can share about Ariba’s positive impact on a customer?

There are many, but one that comes to mind is a situation with a leading global retailer who came to Ariba due to an INS Consent Decree that they immediately implement a process to incorporate Consent Decree requirements into all of their supplier agreements. With less six months to comply and over 30,000 suppliers, this was no small task. But through implementing Ariba Contract Management, they were compliant well in advance of the imposed deadline. Today, compliance data is tracked and reported in the solution for audit purposes.

What comments/feedback have you received from customers since the Ariba and DocuSign Partnership was announced?

Although our customers derive significant value from implementing Ariba Contract Management, the reality is that there continued to be a gap in the contract lifecycle. After the contract had been authored, negotiated and approved, many customers were forced to print out the contract and deliver it down the hall, across town, or even across the country or globe for a wet ink signature. This process was inefficient and costly and added risk that the contract would not be appropriately updated afterwards. With our DocuSign partnership this has all changed.

Today, our seamless partnership permits our customers to manage their contracts in a 100% paperless fashion which speeds cycle times, reduces shipping costs, improves execution visibility and security while complying with green initiatives. On all counts, this strengthens our customer’s value proposition and the reason they implemented a contract management automation solution in the first place.