Voulez-Vous eInvoice? Ariba Buys b-process

REPORT AUTHOR: Vishal Patel, Research Director

On October 19, 2011, Ariba, a cloud-based provider of collaborative commerce solutions, announced the acquisition of the French-based company, b-process. The acquisition allows Ariba to further expand its global footprint for eInvoicing solutions and accelerate its goal of supporting $1 trillion in annual transactions on its trading network. This Market Alert includes details about the deal and Ardent Partners’ analysis of it and the overall market. In addition to Ariba, the report mentions the following solution providers Basware, Crossgate, SAP, and Hubwoo.

The acquisition, announced last week was for approximately €35 million in cash. b-process is a privately-owned electronic invoicing service provider, which offers certified VAT and regulatory compliant eInvoicing and financial supply chain services across 24 European countries. The company supports over 3,000 of French and international customers by optimizing their invoicing and payment/collection processes. The acquisition will add an annual transactional volume of 40 million invoices and an estimated value of $80 billion to the Ariba network which will bring total network transactions to more than $270 billion. Additionally, of the 80,000 companies that are part of the b-process network, over 28,000 of those are electronically connected and transacting, and will be added to the Ariba network.

The report also include Ardent’s Deal Analysis which looks at the impact this acquisition will have on Ariba, its customers and network as well as those of b-process. This is followed by Ardent’s Market Analysis, which assesses the impact of the deal on the eInvoicing/trading network market and a discussion of some of Ariba’s competitors.