Wednesday, 7 September 2011
In this current economic climate, companies are increasingly parking cash to lesson financial risk. However, due to this suppliers across industries are finding it difficult to meet their short-term cash needs. To help remedy the situation, buyers and sellers can benefit from Ariba® Discount Professional™.

Buyers can benefit from accelerating payments for approved invoices to key suppliers in return for discounts, earning an immediate return on their cash. And sellers are gaining increased visibility into future cash flows, certainty in payment timing and the ability to use cash sooner to fund daily business needs. And by creating a reliably efficient and completely automated process for managing discounts, Republic gives its trading partners greater control over their cash acceleration options and visibility into payment status so that they can improve their planning and forecasting.

Delivered in the cloud via the Ariba Network™, Ariba Discount Professional provides buyers and sellers with all of the tools necessary to fully automate the process of offering, negotiating, and agreeing on early payment terms, including:

•    Prorated discount terms through which buyers can capture discounts at any point between the invoice approval and net due date.
•    Dynamic discounting that lets suppliers control the acceleration of payment on an ad-hoc basis on individual invoices
•    Automatic presentation of discount offers by buyers
•    One-button acceptance of accelerated payment by suppliers

Ariba Cash Flow Optimizer™ offering suppliers insight into cash flow opportunity and single-click acceleration of cash

“In the face of renewed market volatility and economic uncertainty, companies are tightening their grip on cash to hedge against financial risk,” said Drew Hofler, Senior Manager, Working Capital Management Solutions, Ariba. “But with little prospect of earning a return on parked capital, many buyer organisations are increasingly seeing their supply chains as a more viable opportunity for investment. Likewise, suppliers are seeing large, cash-rich customers as a better source of faster cash for their receivables.”

Leveraging Ariba Discount Professional, buyers can achieve a greater return on their cash that is effectively risk-free because they are investing in their own suppliers.

Joy Stoelting, Studio Manager for Big-Giant, a Portland-based design firm that participates in an early discount programme with a major sport equipment manufacturer, agrees. “When we submit paper invoices, it can take a long time to get them approved,” she says. “Through Ariba, we get our invoices paid as quickly as four days, and the visibility into payment status is like gold.”