GM Joins Up Too

So far, Ariba has signed up several blue-chip companies, including Chevron, Caltex, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Transamerica, Visa, Advanced Micro Devices, Cisco Systems, Cypress Semiconductor, Octel Messaging Systems, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Sqibb, Merck and Co., Inc., the State of California, and FedEx. Overall, the 39 charter members of Ariba Supplier Link (ASL) represent 84,700 supplier companies and more than 10,150,000 items.

Last week, General Motors joined the Ariba.com network. GM plans to use ORMS for procurement of IT commodities, track metrics and turnaround times, and build comprehensive views of all related corporate spending. "Through its sophisticated e-commerce capabilities and decision support tools, Ariba ORMS will allow us to identify significant opportunities for cost reduction. By replacing our manual, paper-based system we can optimize our procurement processes and more closely control our spending while leveraging company-wide economies of scale." says Bob Chattin, corporate director of finance and contracts at GM.