In its early days in the 1990s during the first wave of trading exchanges (anyone still remember the crash and burn of Commerce One?), SciQuest used to help manage procurement and inventory management for reagents, those substances or compounds that are added to a system in order to bring about a chemical reaction (or are added to see if a reaction occurs). SciQuest’s Enterprise Reagent Manager (ERM) is a procurement-focused chemical inventory solution used by seven of the world’s top ten life science organizations and leading higher education institutions.

SciQuest has since quite expanded its industry savvy and spend management functional footprint to now be a leading provider of cloud-based business automation solutions. Staying true to its roots, SciQuest and eMolecules just announced a partnership to make eMolecules’ catalog of in-stock molecular building blocks available within SciQuest’s ERM platform. As a result, ERM users can now directly purchase in-stock molecular building blocks via eMolecules’ market-leading database.

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SciQuest, a leading public provider of cloud-based business automation solutions, has announced the next major version of its spend management product suite. The latest version includes a redesigned user interface (UI) with consumer-like features and experiences similar to popular Web sites such as Amazon, Facebook, and LinkedIn. In short, SciQuest is bringing a consumer-like experience to business-to-business (B2B) shopping. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the major announcement sets at the recently held joint SAPPHIRE NOW and SAP TechEd event in Madrid, Spain, November 13-16, 2012, was about SAP’s plans to infuse SAP innovations into the world’s most powerful business network, Ariba Network. Through the recent combination of SAP and Ariba, close to 1 million companies are now connected to the Ariba Network—more than any other trading network. The introduction of SAP innovations in social, mobile, and cloud and the in-memory technology of the SAP HANA platform should logically drive global business-to-business (B2B) collaboration and achieve even higher levels of efficiency in sales, procurement, invoice, and payment processes as well as insights through the business network.

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Now that Emptoris and Ariba are gone as independent spend management software suite vendors (acquired by IBM and SAP respectively), is SciQuest trying to take their place? The company may indeed have those aspirations, based on its 2011 acquisition of AECsoft for Supplier Information Management (SIM), Supplier Diversity, and Sourcing Technology, and the recent 2012 acquisition of Upside Software for its leading Contract Management capabilities. Most recently, SciQuest acquired Spend Radar LLC, a rapidly growing provider of easy-to-use and flexible spend analysis software. Read the rest of this entry »

SOFTWARE SELECTIONS

Ventura Manufacturing selects IQMS
Industry tags: Manufacturing, Assembly
“Ventura Manufacturing, Inc. has adopted IQMS’s manufacturing ERP software after reviewing multiple top-tier ERP vendors. Venture Manufacturing is headquartered in Zeeland, Michigan, and provides component assembly for furniture and automotive customers. Ventura will also run IQMS’ EDI module and customer/vendor portals, and plan to implement the IQMS quality modules. The ERP system will replace Ventura’s previous in-house developed system, which reportedly lacked data integration and was missing tools to support the growing complexities of its business.”—Ted Rohm, TEC ERP Analyst

• IQMS profile
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Six London boroughs select Oracle ERP
Industry tags: Public administration and defense
“Application sharing is an ongoing trend for European governmental structures, and particularly in the UK. Six boroughs of London have agreed to pool their resources and benefit from lower costs and economies of scale. The latest version (version 12) of Oracle’s E-Business Suite won the deal. But in contrast with several cases involving UNIT4 wins, separate boroughs are expecting to use the same ERP system technically, but each in its own way, so the winning system needed to support this requirement. At the same time, boroughs will be able to easily exchange or share certain data if required.”—Aleksey Osintsev, TEC Analyst

• Oracle E-Business Suite profile
• Compare ERP systems now!

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