Rob DeSantis, Former Co-Founder of Ariba and Serial Entrepreneur, Joins Arkestro as a Strategic Advisor/Investor
DeSantis Working Closely with Board of Directors and Leadership Team
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 2, 2022 /PRNewswire/ – Bid Ops, the pioneer in Predictive Procurement Orchestration, has announced Rob DeSantis has joined the company as a strategic advisor. As a former co-founder of Ariba running sales, Rob has deep expertise in the procurement space, having helped propel Ariba from zero to $250 million in revenue in four years and IPO of the year in 1999 before its acquisition by SAP a decade later.
“In the relatively short time since its inception, Bid Ops has landed many large Fortune 1000 companies as customers,” says Rob. “I plan to work with (CEO) Edmund (Zagorin) and his team and the board to strengthen Bid Ops even further, leveraging many of the strategies that made Ariba so successful. I will be working on many facets of the business including building the team, sales, go-to market strategies, customer success, the partner ecosystem and financing.”
“We’re very excited to have Rob on our team. He sees a tremendous market opportunity in Bid Ops as an innovative application of machine learning and human behavior in real-time to the procurement process,” says Edmund Zagorin, CEO, Bid Ops. “Bid Ops provides great value by impacting 100 percent of an organization’s spend and generating predictable savings immediately through Predictive Procurement Orchestration. It’s a bottom line game changer for our enterprise customers.”
“When I first met Edmund, the team and the customers I became extremely excited, seeing the power of the solution and all the happy customers deriving tremendous value. The Bid Ops solution is the next paradigm shift in B2B ecommerce and complements the significant savings that companies have achieved with their existing e-procurement solutions,” continues Rob. “I have been involved with several successful companies but I have never seen one generate millions of dollars in savings in weeks rather than months and years. I feel strongly that this technology combined with the methodologies I implemented in the past will translate to huge value for everyone involved.”
In addition to co-founding Ariba, Rob was also an early angel investor and board member of LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional online network. More recently, Rob served as an investor and advisor to a small portfolio of companies including Bloom Energy, AEye, Inc., HiQ Labs, Agiloft, USEND and more. He is also a co-founder of Dibbs Technology and TrueParity. Rob holds a BSME from the University of Rhode Island.
About Arkestro (formerly Bid Ops):
Arkestro is the leading Predictive Procurement Orchestration platform. Built to amplify the impact of procurement’s influence, Arkestro helps enterprises deliver a 2-5x lift on cost savings attributed to everyday purchasing and sourcing cycles. Top enterprises leverage Arkestro’s behavioral science, game theory, and machine learning to predict and win faster value across every category of addressable spend. Learn more at arkestro.com.