Nov 13 2009
Latest Product Release Focuses on New Functionality to Support Buying Consortia and Improve Settlement
SciQuest, Inc., the global leader empowering enterprises to realize the potential of strategic procurement, today announced the availability of the latest release of its suite of on-demand procurement automation software solutions. This product release reflects the increasing formation of buying consortia within the markets SciQuest serves, including education, government, healthcare, and the life sciences.
"There is a growing realization that when it comes to buying power, there is strength in numbers," said Stephen Wiehe, president and CEO of SciQuest. "The latest release of our solution suite includes new features and functionality that enable customers to effectively collaborate with one another, aggregate spending and attain savings through consortium-based communities."
The latest enhancements to SciQuest's eprocurement solutions provide the technology framework that lets customers attain the visibility over spending and high level of collaboration and data sharing required for a successful consortium -- while simultaneously functioning independently as part of a community.
"For leaders that want to form a single, powerful buying entity among universities, hospitals or local government entities, SciQuest provides the technology foundation to enable their success," adds Wiehe. "Traditionally, organizations have experienced significant difficulty in consolidating spending information across units, negotiating group contracts, sharing them with all stakeholders and enforcing compliance. With this release, it has never been easier for our customers to overcome these obstacles."
Noteworthy enhancements, many of which reflect insights gained from customers such as the State of Georgia and the Inter-University Council of Ohio -- a voluntary educational association comprised of Ohio's 14 state universities -- in the latest release of SciQuest include:
- Greater ability to share and promote contracts among consortia members: SciQuest enables procurement operations to easily share contracts, view terms and conditions, and opt-in if desired.
- Greater consolidation and synchronization: Members can shop from shared contracts in their organization's independent online marketplace, or from the consortium online marketplace with the assurance that contract terms and conditions, supplier requirements and all product and catalog details are always synchronized and updated.
With this release, SciQuest also focused on improving functionality in its settlement solutions, including:
- Greater ability to manage invoices, receiving and payment: Enhancements allow organizations to capture and bulk-load invoices into SciQuest's supplier portal and automatically calculate early payment terms, discounts and rebates -- ensuring that financial systems of record accurately reflect spending. In addition, SciQuest's Optical Character Recognition (OCR) solution enables organizations to convert paper-based supplier bills to an electronic format so that invoices can be automatically validated against the purchase requisition and received inventory.
SciQuest unveils new releases of its on-demand procurement software three times each year -- a process that reflects direct customer input through focus groups and participation in the SciQuest Customer Forum, an online community that recommends enhancements to improve on the company's intuitive and proven suite of solutions. Because of the modular, on-demand nature of SciQuest's eprocurement solutions, customer feedback and insight from the company's product development experts on emerging procurement trends can be easily integrated into new releases, enabling the company to stay agile as market demands change.