Ariba: The Creation of a New Enterprise Software Category

SITUATION: In order to quickly adjust to the new market realities of the post-tech boom era, Ariba, Inc. named Bob Calderoni as the new CEO to lead the company through a radical shift in focus that began with ridding Ariba from the tainted B2B label and building up its reputation as an Enterprise Spend Management (ESM) guru. PR was challenged with salvaging Ariba's reputation while convincing CFOs that ESM is a valid category of software.

STRATEGY: Ariba needed to assure Wall Street that the new CEO had a master plan to turn the company around, while educating target customers that Ariba was no longer a one-trick pony and had reinvented itself by creating a new category of enterprise software. PR began with a two-pronged approach: introduce Bob Calderoni to the business press and attack the trade press. From the onset, Ariba executives set the number-one goal to achieve an ESM category story in CFO Magazine.

RESULTS: Ariba CEO was featured as the person to turn around the company in Business 2.0, Forbes and the San Jose Mercury News. ESM customer features were placed in major publications including CSO, eWeek, Information Week, Computerworld, Purchasing and a cover story in Internet World. The ESM feature story in CFO Magazine appeared in Fall 2003.