Aravo Raises Industry Bar for Supplier Information Management

New Aravo supplier productivity pack streamlines processes, helps reduce maverick spend

SAN FRANCISCO, July 15, 2009 – Aravo Solutions, Inc., the leading provider of on–demand Supplier Information Management (SIM) software and services, today announced the latest release of its Aravo SIM software, which introduces the Aravo Supplier Productivity Pack. With new features like Preferred Supplier Tracking and Dynamic Surveys, the Aravo Supplier Productivity Pack helps eliminate an organization’s maverick spend and improves both buyer and supplier productivity.

In a down economy, increasing cash on-hand can be crucial to a company’s survival. Maverick spend, when companies forfeit negotiated savings with preferred suppliers because employees continue to buy from the wrong suppliers, can usually be identified as one of a company’s most controllable expenses. It is also often the largest expense. According to Accenture’s recent study, “Procurement to Payment Processes,” which surveyed and interviewed 50 large enterprises on procurement practices, maverick spend accounts for as much as 32% of overall buying.

The Aravo Supplier Productivity Pack introduces Preferred Supplier Tracking which reduces maverick spend by facilitating purchasing from pre-approved suppliers. Preferred Supplier Tracking allows users to designate suppliers as preferred based on multiple variables including commodity or service, geography and business unit. For example, a team in China should be sourcing through preferred suppliers in Asia while a team in Europe has preferred vendors in that geography.

To further improve productivity and to increase the accuracy of supplier information, the Aravo Supplier Productivity Pack has enhanced functionality in a number of other areas including:

• Dynamic Surveys: To facilitate on-boarding and ongoing supplier management, the surveys dynamically change the questions asked of suppliers based on their answers. Suppliers are only asked specifically pertinent questions, increasing usability and streamlining the process.
• Bounced Emails: The Aravo Workflow Engine has been enhanced to support immediate tracking of undeliverable emails to suppliers. Tasks are re-routed and buyers are immediately notified that key contact information is inaccurate so that they can take corrective actions without waiting for information requests to expire or missing critical tasks.
• Real-time Tax ID Validation: Aravo has added a direct third party data integration with the IRS to ensure that supplier reported Tax ID numbers (EIN & SSN) are matched and verified with the IRS via automated TIN matching. Failed matches will automatically route tasks and notifications to the appropriate resource to correct the invalid data.

“We’ve found that most large companies spend 80 percent of their time managing preferred suppliers that account for about 20 percent of their supplier base. That means that there may be outdated contacts or inaccurate information for up to 80 percent of their suppliers,” said Tim Albinson, founder and CEO of Aravo. “Our goal with the Aravo Supplier Productivity Pack was to give companies a way to better manage all their suppliers and to mitigate supply chain risk with more accurate supplier data.”

About Aravo

The world’s best-run businesses utilize Aravo’s Cloud-based Supplier Lifecycle Management solutions and Supplier Risk Services to find and manage trading partner relationships, reduce supply chain risk, ensure global regulatory compliance and lower the cost of managing suppliers by up to 72%. Aravo launched the market’s first SIM/SLM solution in 2004 and has been the leading innovator in the space ever since. Customers such as General Electric, Accenture, and Boston University rely on Aravo to manage information and processes for over 2 million global suppliers. Aravo is based in San Francisco, with offices in Chicago, Dallas, New York, Portland, Monterrey, Mexico and Ahmedabad, India, and is backed by over $50 million in investment from Cisco Systems, Big Sky Partners, and others.