Today's public sector organizations face significant challenges. Budget cuts and staff reductions are putting increasing pressure on government and educational institutions to deliver the same services with less funding and fewer resources. The decentralized management structures typical in government and public education add to these difficulties, making it hard to achieve process efficiencies. To succeed, public sector enterprises need tools to effectively handle their spend-so they can reduce costs, streamline internal processes, and create easy-to-deploy initiatives that better support the communities they serve.

By providing a comprehensive, integrated solution designed from the ground up to manage and optimize enterprise-wide spend, Ariba Spend Management allows public sector organizations to automate all their purchasing-related activities, from spend analysis to negotiation to supplier selection to payment. The flexibility of the Ariba solution enables public sector users to adapt lessons learned from years of success in commercial venues to create effective spend management practices within their own enterprises.