Saracini Brings 20+ Years of Sales, Operations, and Executive Leadership Experience to Role
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., April 7, 2011 – Aravo, the leading provider of on-demand Supplier Information Management (SIM) software and services for Supplier Lifecycle Management (SLM), today announced that Michael Saracini has been appointed Chief Executive Officer. Concurrently, Aravo’s founder and previous CEO, Tim Albinson, has assumed the role of Executive Chairman and will focus on strategic client and partnership initiatives.
Serving as Aravo’s COO for the past year, Saracini has been a driving force behind Aravo’s growth and SIM market leadership. As CEO, he will leverage his more than 20 years of sales, operations and executive leadership experience building profitable, high-growth software companies, to bring vision, leadership and execution excellence to all company operations. Saracini will also take a seat on the Aravo board of directors.
Prior to Aravo, Saracini served as Vice President, International for SumTotal Systems, a software-as-a-service HCM leader, delivering talent management solutions. As a member of the executive staff, he was responsible for driving global expansion outside the United States in Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, contributing to public company revenues in excess of $100 million. Prior to SumTotal, Saracini served as Vice President and General Manager for RightNow Technologies, a software-as-a-service CRM leader delivering customer experience management solutions, contributing to public company revenues in excess of $140 million. Earlier, Mr. Saracini served in a number of senior leadership positions with Siebel Systems, Computer Associates, AT&T Capital and GRID Systems.
“Michael is a strong, passionate leader and I am thrilled to announce his promotion to CEO” said Aravo’s Founder and Executive Chairman Tim Albinson. “He has been a key driver of our success in product leadership, go-to-market strategy, and sales execution over the past year. As CEO, he brings a visionary, dynamic leadership style which will drive best-in-class performance across the company. We are excited to hand him the reins at this important juncture in our firm’s history, and know that our customers, partners, employees and investors will benefit greatly from his leadership.”
“Michael is a seasoned executive with extensive experience managing and growing SaaS applications companies” said Peggy Taylor, Aravo board member, investor, and former Senior Vice President for Operations at PeopleSoft. “The time is right at Aravo to transition the CEO role from the passionate, entrepreneurial, founder to the seasoned, execution- and operations-focused manager — and Michael is a perfect fit. I am excited to see the company arrive at this important milestone and see a very bright future for the firm.”
Aravo launched the market’s first SIM solution in 2004 and has been the leading innovator in the space ever since. With global customers including GE and Cisco Systems, Aravo continues to dominate the worldwide market for SIM and SLM solutions. By transforming their process and technology landscape using Aravo’s technology, clients reduce supplier management costs by up to 72%, avoid supply chain disruptions by proactively managing supplier risk, and accelerate time-to-market through optimized supplier discovery and performance management.
“I’m honored to have the opportunity to lead a company like Aravo. As the creator of the SIM market and the dominant SLM solution provider, Aravo has a rich history of innovation and successful Global 1000 customer implementations,” says Aravo CEO Saracini. “We plan to leverage those strengths to aggressively grow our market, deliver creative, game-changing product capabilities, and help our customers improve EPS by reducing costs and creating competitive advantage.”
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.
