Leading Private University Renews its Commitment to Optimizing Supplier Lifecycle Processes
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., July 28, 2011 – Aravo Solutions, Inc., the leading provider of on-demand Supplier Lifecycle Management and B2B information and collaboration solutions, announced that Boston University (BU) has signed a 3-year renewal of its agreement licensing Aravo’s products and services. BU’s institution-wide deployment of Aravo has driven working capital improvements, reduced supplier management process costs, and improved supplier information quality across departments.
“Using Aravo, we have enabled a global change in payment policy and practice to improve the University’s working capital position on a one time basis by an estimated $16M. This initiative could also yield an estimated cost benefit of $1.5M per year, generating a positive net present value of $7.5M over 10 years through additional prompt pay discounts,” said Richard Stack, Director of Sourcing and Procurement at BU.
BU is a large, diverse, and dynamic world-class institution with over 9,600 employees and 32,000 students in over 58 countries. The University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston’s largest employers. Faced with an impending global deployment of a large ERP system, BU needed to create a single source of supplier truth from which it could centrally manage all supplier information and related processes. The University chose Aravo Solutions to help meet those challenges, with exciting results.
“With Aravo, our commodity managers spend more time developing and managing our preferred suppliers,” said Stack. “My team now has the ability to evaluate suppliers in multiple dimensions in order to effectively assess their value to the University.”
Using Aravo, suppliers are now the stewards of their own data. Aravo’s supplier portal allows them to self-register and maintain key procurement and payment data, thus lowering BU’s cost of supplier administration. Important data elements such as federal tax ID and bank account numbers are validated in real-time, and pre-configured workflows ensure that internal reviews and approvals are managed effectively. The data is then automatically pushed into BU’s ERP solution ensuring that all departments are working from the most current information available.
“We are excited to continue our successful relationship with BU”, said Michael Saracini, CEO Aravo. “The University has been one of our most innovative customers, using our solutions to manage supplier catalogs, drive online supplier registrations, ensure diversity program compliance and optimize payment terms. We expect the next 3 years of our relationship to be just as successful as the last as BU continues to implement Aravo-enabled world-class supplier lifecycle processes.”
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. For more information regarding Aravo’s award-winning solutions please visit our website at https://aravo.com.
