SAP announced early this morning that they will be moving the Ariba Network to their HANA platform by the end of 2014. HANA is an in-memory real-time computing platform; to read more, click here. SAP started the transition to HANA with Ariba Spend Visibility. The release was the first major upgrade that was deployed on HANA and was pushed to 2,200 customer areas and 4.7 million buy-side users instantly with zero downtime.

The advantages of this are fairly straightforward—the network will be faster and more reliable. Companies will still be able to garner predictive intelligence on risks, performance, capabilities, rates and more from the more than 15 years of transaction and relationship data and content that reside within the Ariba network, but now they will have quicker access to this data.

Bill McDermott, co-CEO and member of the Executive Board of SAP AG said, “We always knew the true potential of the SAP HANA platform would be realized by the applications that run on top, the Ariba Network is already changing the way businesses work together with more than 1.5 million companies transacting half a trillion USD in commerce. With Ariba solutions on SAP HANA, companies will gain unprecedented real-time insights and transparency into their business networks. The network is a powerful example of the business value that SAP can deliver in the cloud.”

With SAP HANA, data loads 30 times faster and is instantly accessible. So once a sourcing project, contract or invoice is initiated on the network, companies can immediately perform more complex analyses based on an expanded set of variables, including cost centers, purchase price variances and micro regions, and receive results in real time.

Leveraging SAP® Lumira™, the company’s visualization software, they will be able to see and interact with their data in entirely new ways and outline more informed strategies that advance their business goals. Suppliers, for instance, will for the first time be able to access their complete transaction history with a given customer and create intuitive data visualizations that allow them to understand how their payment cycles are trending or whether their invoice rejection rates are improving.

PayStream Advisors is excited to further explore the benefits that the HANA platform brings. To read the full official press release, click here. Be sure to stay tuned for our upcoming AP & Working Capital report that will feature Ariba’s dynamic discounting solution as well as market insights into the growing market.