The BMW Group will use the global Ariba B2B Commerce Platform to streamline the BMW Group's annual worldwide spend. With 1999 revenues of over 34.4 billion pounds sterling (USD$31.7 billion), the BMW Group is a global company with over 115,000 employees in more than 120 countries worldwide.

"For the BMW Group, Ariba was the only choice," said Robert Bauer, head of eProcurement for the BMW Group. "Their frictionless global platform and proven ability to execute were the keys to our selection and no one else even came close."

"We will use the global Ariba platform to aggregate our spend, consolidate our supplier base and improve the efficiency of our procurement process to significantly reduce our cost of doing business," said Dr. Horst-Henning Wolf, executive director of worldwide technical purchasing for the BMW Group.

The Ariba B2B Commerce Platform, including the Ariba B2B Procurement solution and Ariba Commerce Services, will help the BMW Group realize greater economies of scale and commerce process efficiencies, resulting in lower costs and competitive advantage. The Ariba platform provides companies with a B2B eCommerce infrastructure that electronically aggregates corporate purchasing from each employee desktop and directs spending through the Ariba B2B platform to preferred suppliers and B2B marketplaces at higher-volume prices.

The intranet-based Ariba B2B Procurement solution provides seamless integration with Ariba B2B Commerce Services that can drive cost savings while also speeding time-to-benefit. Ariba B2B Commerce Services provide a single point of integration with business suppliers and seamless access to efficient trading mechanisms such as reverse auctions, auctions, electronic payments and streamlined transaction services.

The initial rollout of the Ariba platform for the BMW Group is expected to be completed by Q3, 2000 in Germany. Following the initial deployment, the platform will then be deployed to the entire BMW Group.

(April 10, 2000)