Ariba Reviews in Pittsburgh, PA Area

Pros

I think they have a Pro Employee attitude:

- When the recession hit there were wage freezes but they also doubled the 401(k) matching. Not many companies that I know made that kind of effo

Cons

- Work-life balance can get a little out of control sometimes, such is the life of a sales organization though

Pros

Great benefits and if you are in with the "in crowd" in HR you're good

Cons

The VP of HR signs off and changes all raises and reviews and has 0 professional discussions w/anyone.
She's too busy shopping online in the morning and talking about hiring good nannies.
There is NO training or employee development
Counting myself 5 people left HR in 18 mos and the group size in Pittsburgh is 16 people (33%)

Advice to Senior Management

Find people who understand the term "leadership" and people development and hire them. You're overpaying your Sr. Mgmt and getting nothing in return but disgruntled people, high turnover and apathy.

Pros

Ariba offers a lot of opportunities for flex time. It's a great place to be if you have a family.

Cons

The organization can be siloed. People are not very open unless they are part of the same team. It can be hard to get to know people outside of your team.

Advice to Senior Management

Management should focus on finding easier ways to communicate the complex nature of Ariba's products and services to its customers.

Pros

Most middle managers are very good, great time off & benefits. Work/Life balance is geared totally towards Life, which at times can be a con.

Cons

Promotions and raises are rare. Those that are promoted are often undeserving and promoted only because it is less expensive than paying a competent replacement. Employee moral is low. Top Management has no clue or simply does not care what is going on with their eployees.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep your competent employees and drop the dead weight, instead of promoting the dead weight and letting your competent employees leave. A dollar per share hit now is better than all of the problems that you are going to have. An ounce of prevention...

Pros

Fun, energetic, motivated workforce
Recognition and awards tied directly to performance
Great benefits, time off
Management fully understands work/life balance
Monthly involvement in different charities
Community involvement

Cons

Salaries could be more competitive
Global operations are sometimes inconsistent.
Sales, delivery, and operations are somewhat misaligned in their objectives.

Advice to Senior Management

Try to make more of an effort to interact with employees at all levels. For a smaller company such as Ariba, this could be very feasible and prove to enhance morale. After reading through some of the posts from teams in IDC, it sounds like they could really benefit from 1:1 interactions with our executive team.

Pros

Low key environment and good benefits, lots of vacation time. Over all I like Ariba a lot. Good place to work your way up.

Cons

Work long hard hours, it can be highly demanding at times. Management changes pretty often compared to other companies I've worked for. People switch positions a lot.

Advice to Senior Management

Management could have a better understanding of how demanding the work can be at times. Thats all the advice I have.

Pros

- Extremely smart, dedicated and fun people
- Regional leadership is strong
- Market leadership makes it easier to get to decision makers
- Good benefits -- health and 5 weeks vacation (including shut down week between Christmas and New Year's Day)
- Despite the bad press, Calderoni is a good guy who cares about his people
- Marketing (especially events such as AribaLive) are very well done and helpful

Cons

- Bureaucracy -- decisions are made by large committees
- Deal approval process is arduous, adding weeks to sales cycle
- Key management members manage by fear and intimidation
- Politics are very thick for a such a small company
- Lead development is weak. You need to drive 100% of your own pipeline

Advice to Senior Management

- Understand that culture is built by action not words.
- Remember that most people respond to intimidation by leaving.
- Use the company's stock to reward your people, more often. It's a great retention tool.

Pros

Flexibility in working arrangements as an option

Cons

Lack of Management training and/or recognition; Keep your head down and just do your job, oh and the job of 2 other people that we let go/reassigned as we aren't going to backfill;

Advice to Senior Management

Let go of the "rah rah everyone is working hard - keep it up" and just tell everyone it's not going to stop - you are going to work way more hours than you have in a day and you just need to suck it up.

Pros

People are generally nice. Free beer for employees every Friday. Good amount of vacation time once you earn it.

Cons

Almost all "policies" are simply "managers discretion". This allows some employees freedom to come and go as they like but chains other employees to their desks. Employees are not treated equally depending on the department you are in.

Advice to Senior Management

Communicate more, have actual policies and stick to them! Provide managers with more training and help them motivate their employees.

Pros

benefits, beer, collaboration, working environment

Cons

pay, favoritism, salary discrepancies between male/female employees

Advice to Senior Management

more management training; hire additional staff to increase productivity and leverage internal resources for updating process improvements; realign salary to reflect work accomplished.