Getting savings to the bottom line is a challenge that all companies face. But it’s one that UPS (NYSE: UPS) and SunTrust Banks, Inc. are overcoming with the help of Ariba, an SAP Company. Leveraging the Ariba^® Network, UPS and SunTrust are forging an innovative e-invoicing process to ensure the savings they negotiate actually materialize. The companies will share the stories of their success at Ariba LIVE, the business commerce event of the year, which will take place May 6-8 at the Gaylord National Resort and Conference Center in Washington, D.C. Registration for the event is open today at www.aribalive.com

“When it comes to negotiated cost reductions, the median company loses about $9 million in value per $ 1 billion in spend as a result of maverick buying,” says Kurt Albertson, Associate Principal, Procurement Advisory for The Hackett Group, an independent research firm. “Companies that can drive stakeholders to preferred contracts through the procure-to-pay process can effectively stem a significant portion of these losses.”

With Ariba, companies can do just this.

“Processing invoices without purchase orders presents challenges,” says Ashley Miller, Group Vice President Strategic Supply Management Optimization, SunTrust Bank. “Through the Ariba Network, we can build invoices off contracts to improve compliance and prevent millions of dollars in contract leakage from rogue spend.”

Leveraging Ariba’s cloud-based invoice managementapplications and business network, companies can link their procurement, contract and invoicing processes and check invoices against purchase orders, contracts and/or order receipts to ensure that only complete, accurate and approved documents reach their system.

“Thanks to advances in technology, companies have made significant progress in automating their contract management process, but many still struggle when it comes to eliminating savings leakage because these contracts aren’t being leveraged,” says James Tucker, Director of Marketing, Invoice and Payment Solutions, Ariba. “By creating invoices off contracts, organizations are more able to drive compliance while also increasing their returns on investments in e-invoicing initiatives.”

With Ariba’s contract invoicing capabilities, suppliers can access customer contracts and build invoices off them to deliver the same level of efficiency and compliance as PO invoices. This, says Jeff Phillips, Manager, GBS Procurement, Financial Service Center, UPS, is critical to converting negotiated savings into hard dollar results.

“Seventy percent of our suppliers are contract suppliers,” Phillips notes. “We needed to make it as easy as possible for them to access our contracts and ensure that they were charging us in accordance with the terms and prices we negotiated. Ariba allows us to do that.”

A global leader in e-invoicing and dynamic discounting, Ariba provides a robust portfolio of cloud-based applications and network-based services that enable companies to create a fully automated, compliant process for capturing and settling invoices. Using the solutions, companies can:

Click here to view the entire Ariba press release.

Download a complimentary copy of PayStream’s Q1 2013 Electronic Invoice Benchmark report to learn more about Ariba’s electronic invoice solution.