SAP Ariba President Barry Padgett Talks Procurement with Purpose at # SAPPHIRENOW
Elsewhere , driving efficiency is going to remain key , says Padgett . “ There ’ s no getting around it , we ’ re still a software company , we ’ re still helping our customers create a more efficient business and drive costs out ,” Padgett explains . “ Throughout the week at our event we heard a lot of success stories . There was also some discussion around this idea that the best projects are the ones that start with internal house cleaning and looking at current business practices before bringing in a tech vendor or partner ,” he reveals . “ If you take bad existing manual processes and add in technology or automation , you end up with a bad automated process . So , a lot of the stuff that came out of the conference around efficiency was about taking a real deep look at our businesses to work out what our best practices are and then we layer in the tech to really drive efficiency .”
At the Las Vegas live show , cognitive technology was another facet that was explored , including using IBM Watson to go through the Ariba system , as well as looking at blockchain and deep neural networks . “ Once you get through the basic blocking and tackling then you really start to propel your business forward . And that ’ s not just for the individual CPO driving value through their office , but also pushing competitor differentiations for their company .”
All of this begs the question : where does SAP Ariba fit into this landscape ? “ One of the stats we
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