It’s not easy to land a coveted spot on the preferred supplier list of a biopharma, life sciences, or R&D organization. Yet, vendor consolidation is where the industry is going. Customer benefits are clear; increased purchasing power and savings, better spend visibility, improved productivity and, hopefully, stronger supplier relationships. Supplier benefits such as increased business are also clear, in theory, yet not often realized in practice.
Anyone who has gone through a preferred supplier selection process knows it is time consuming and expensive. From filling out the request for information (RFI), to the request for quote (RFQ), to the sales pitch, to the pricing negotiations, to the contract negotiations and supplier onboarding, the process consumes a lot of resources. And, there is no guarantee that you will be selected and, if you are, no guarantee that the stakeholders will purchase enough of your goods or services to have made the process worthwhile.
The goals of procurement and the lab can appear to be at odds. The lab needs supplier choice to enable scientific innovation, while procurement needs vendor consolidation for spend visibility and management. A recent ZAGENO survey found that biopharma R&D teams added up to 50% new suppliers in 2021 to support scientific innovation and address product availability issues. Adding suppliers to a procure-to-pay (P2P) system is lengthy and time-consuming, both for procurement and the supplier.
What if there was a way to become a supplier of record for thousands of customers without going through thousands of preferred supplier selection processes?
Digital marketplace ZAGENO enables scientists to build carts from over 30m+ product SKUs across 5,000 suppliers. Not only that, but ZAGENO offers streamlined invoicing with one invoice for all lab supplies each month, with ZAGENO as vendor of record.
How does selling on a digital marketplace work?
Regardless of whether you are small, niche or an industry leader, ZAGENO gets all of your products in front of consumers, even making less-popular life science products profitable by enabling you to sell them without any sales and marketing upfront investment. In today’s economy, purchasing lab supplies is more complicated than ever for scientists — but it doesn’t have to be. A digital marketplace is the ideal sales channel for buyers and suppliers, helping vendors recognize many of the benefits of being a preferred supplier without jumping through all of the hoops.