Aravo and Cisco to Power Next Generation of Enterprise Supplier Collaboration
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, December 2, 2009 – Aravo today announced that it has closed a $27 million Series D financing round with Cisco as a new strategic investor and the largest participant in the round. In addition, Aravo announced that Cisco WebEx technologies will be integrated with Aravo Supplier Information Management (SIM) to facilitate real-time collaboration between buyers and suppliers.
The $27 million Series D financing brings Aravo’s total investment to $50 million. The Cisco strategic investment represents Aravo’s first institutional investment, with all prior financing provided by individuals. The majority of Aravo’s Series A, B, and C lead investors participated in round D, including Charles Schwab/Big Sky Partners (Chairman, Charles Schwab Corporation) and Stephen Friedman (former Chairman, Goldman Sachs). A select group of new investors also participated in the round, including William Harrison (former CEO/Chairman, JP Morgan Chase).
“Cisco and Aravo share a common vision on the transformative nature of enterprise collaboration technologies,” said Aravo CEO Tim Albinson. “Cisco is the leader in enterprise collaboration, and Aravo is the leader in supplier information management. With this new investment round and the integration of innovative Cisco WebEx solutions, Aravo will deliver products and services that not only drive productivity and cost savings for global enterprises, but will quite literally change the way people work.”
The Series D funds will be used to develop new products and to expand sales, marketing, and delivery capacity. A series of product roadmap announcements are scheduled for early 2010 and will include new products and services focused on the burgeoning enterprise supplier collaboration (ESC) market. During the first phase of product development, Aravo will work with Cisco to power the next generation of enterprise supplier collaboration by integrating technologies such as Aravo SIM and Cisco WebEx.
“New collaboration technologies will affect every industry and facilitate the next wave of productivity growth across virtually every core business process,” said David Knight, senior director of product management, Collaboration Software Group, Cisco. “We see a great opportunity to advance cross-company collaboration within enterprise supply chains, and we chose to invest in Aravo because of its strong track record of delivering innovative, collaborative supply chain solutions to clients. We look forward to working together in the months and years to come.”
Aravo and Cisco have multiple enterprise customers in common, including GE.
“Cisco and Aravo share a common focus on powering collaboration for global enterprises like GE,” said Gary Reiner, GE’s Chief Information Officer. “We welcome the prospect of greater integration between complementary products such as Cisco WebEx and Aravo SIM, both deployed globally by GE.”
Over the last several years, Aravo has pioneered a new market segment focused on collaborative SIM. While traditional supply chain technologies have focused on sourcing (RFx, auctions), transactions (purchases, payments) or logistics (inventory, transportation), Aravo SIM takes an “information-centric” approach by enabling the world’s largest companies to collaborate with their suppliers to transform how information is created, validated, maintained and integrated across global enterprises. Aravo SIM powers more productive, profitable business relationships and drives significant cost savings for both large enterprises and their suppliers. Aravo SIM is 100% Software-as-a-Service/Cloud-based, and includes specific business solutions in areas such as risk management, diversity, compliance and sustainability.
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.
