CA Technologies Transforms Corporate Procurement with SAP Ariba

When inefficient, complex processes were making procurement a chore, CA Technologies decided to change the way things are done. With the help of SAP Ariba, CA has created an efficient, consumer-like experience that has transformed corporate purchasing from a frustrating task into a strategic initiative that is delivering savings, efficiencies and innovation across its operations.

“At CA, our sole purpose is to remove the obstacles our customers face every day by putting technology at the heart of their operations. It’s what we do and what drives us as a company,” says Rich Lazzara, Director of IT, CA Technologies. “And it’s why when we faced barriers of our own with respect to procurement, we turned to SAP Ariba.”

CA’s objective was clear: lay the foundation for a unified procure-to-pay process that would increase speed, simplicity and savings. And it chose to partner with SAP Ariba largely because of its end-to-end offerings that could be implemented alongside its SAP ERP system.

“The fact that the solution is integrated from end to end was a key differentiator,” said Stan Brown, Vice President, Global Procurement, CA. “We knew that to achieve our goals, we needed a single platform from which we could manage all of our spend in a simple, intuitive way.”

CA began by implementing SAP Ariba’s cloud-based applications for purchase order (PO) automation and catalog management and quickly added invoice management to deliver a complete procure-to-pay solution to users in 35 countries. And the company was soon seeing significant results. Within six months of rolling SAP Ariba out CA had:

• Increased its electronic invoice submission rate in North America to 92 percent
• Reduced time to enable catalogs from six weeks to less than two
• Cut PO cycle times from six days to 2.5

“What was once a complicated, time consuming task quickly became a simple, fast one that is positively impacting our business,” Brown said.

And CA is setting a standard for the rest of the industry to follow. The company was recently awarded the 2017 CPO Honors Award for Best Team Performance by Ardent Partners at its annual conference, the CPO Rising Summit.

“From leadership and innovation to technology usage and team performance, CA has powerfully demonstrated that top-performing procurement departments are a competitive advantage that can drive bottom line results,” said Andrew Bartolini, Managing Partner and Chief Research Officer, Ardent Partners.