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To: Robert Rose who wrote (71057)	7/31/1999 2:39:00 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Respond to of 164685

Well, I always liked ariba actually but the problem with them as an investment now, is their underwriters promoted them as a pure web play to cash in on the internet frenzy. Actually they are a software company... a morphed software/internet concern but because they are purchasing (which is mfg), they are more software than internet. Otoh, employease, flexenroll (I'll give HJs company a plug here even though I have no idea what they do, lol) which are HRIS are more web than software... this is because HR is an area that can be completely outsourced and we are not there in manufacturing yet. So Ariba being software has to be purchased and installed and I don't like the y2k problem hitting the softwares so I'm staying away from Ariba for now - I want to pick it up in the 70s or so, maybe high 60s. For those that don't know, what ariba does is, you install it and whenever a PO gets issued from some dept in your site... Ariba groups all the POs into a larger order, and "shops the web"... actually surfs a select list of suppliers you set up, for the cheapest price. You get economies of scale on your purchases. This is true b-to-b, major cost savings and we know from software that companies will pay. There are just a ton of enterprise software spaces and all of these are candidates for the web rewrites of that functionality for outsourcing. One of the hugest problems with software is staffing and implementation... web outsourcing eliminates those problems and gives the vendor real pricing power at a transaction level. Ordinarily companies won't pay on a transaction level for anything but if you say they don't have to staff an IT dept its another story entirely... at the providing company its great, the experts can be leveraged across the different customers. I think customer management (CRM) which was a lot of vantive is another area ripe for this, its standalone... I don't know about Sales because we have a strong player in sales (Sebl) and he's smart enough to do the web stuff himself. Manufacturing is going to be tough though.. I don't know about finance.