SAP Ariba

SAP Ariba started with some crayons, a paper tablecloth, and the right idea.

It was 1996. Over sandwiches at Quadrus Café in Menlo Park, seven business colleagues were discussing the tremendous waste of time and money involved in corporate purchasing. The problem: outdated, paper-based procurement procedures—tedious, frustrating, and incapable of helping enterprises understand how their money was spent.

The solution, they recognized, lay in this new thing called “the Internet” and the opportunity it presented to link computer systems and efficiently exchange information. Spilling the jar of crayons on the table, they diagrammed their solution and what it would do. See more at http://www.ariba.com/about/our-story