With drug discovery costs skyrocketing, the life sciences industry faces increasing pressure to manage costs effectively and gain improved control over the procurement process. Modern procurement platforms help businesses build efficient supply chains, optimize inventory purchasing, and provide financial transparency. By curating a strategic portfolio of tools, finance, procurement, and lab teams can develop a procurement process tailored to the unique needs of biotech and life sciences companies.
Why procurement workflows matter for life science companies
Effective procurement workflows are crucial, helping labs be more conscious of spending and significantly saving money. Every dollar counts, especially in an industry where R&D costs are high, and project timelines are tight. Optimizing budget and processes ensures that research and development projects receive the necessary resources.
What is a procurement platform?
Procurement platforms, also known as procure-to-pay platforms (P2P), streamline the purchasing process, from requisition to payment, and facilitate supplier management and contract negotiations.
Go deeper: Lab Supply Purchasing: Everything You Need to Know
Key features of procurement platforms
- Vendor management. Requests quotes from vendors, filters them to choose the best options, activates contracts, and keeps information up to date. Vendor management can include lab supply ordering and other third-party services.
- Billing management. Generates invoices and completes the pay cycle on time, preventing duplicate or incorrect invoices and reducing financial losses.
- Budget forecasting. Tracks current expenses against goals, manages financial risks, and aids in building better budgets for improved cost management.
What to look for in a procurement platform
- User-friendly interface. Simplifies navigation and requires minimal training, as well as offers mobile accessibility.
- Integration capabilities. Seamlessly integrates with existing and/or future ERP, accounting, e-invoicing, and lab supply ordering solutions.
- Automation. Automates approval workflows and provides automated alerts for activities such as approvals, budget overruns, and order status updates.
- Compliance and risk management. Ensures adherence to industry regulations and company policies. Identifies and mitigates procurement risks, including supplier risks and financial exposures.
- Flexibility and customization. Allows tailoring of approval processes, user roles, and access controls and supports the needs of the organization as it scales.
- Security and data integrity. Ensures secure handling of sensitive financial and supplier data. Implements role-based access controls to protect data integrity.
- Support and training. Offers robust customer support services for troubleshooting and assistance. Provides comprehensive training materials and resources for users.
Top procurement platforms for life sciences in 2024
- Accrualify (now Corpay). Automates, manages, and tracks every aspect of corporate spend data, including month-end accrual processes.
- Coupa. Optimizes costs to invest in R&D, contributes to lab productivity, and ensures safety compliance. Uses AI-powered sourcing and supply chain management to enable businesses to build simple solutions based on risk, cost, and expiration.
- Jaggaer. Provides a powerful and modern procurement process, saving time and money with full control over customization and integrations with other enterprise systems.
- Procurify. Helps manage purchasing and budgeting efficiently, ensuring transparency and control over spending.
- SAP Ariba. Offers extensive features for supply chain and procurement processes, widely used across various industries including life sciences.
- SpendEdge. Provides specialized procurement market intelligence services, offering insights on the best pharma practices and managing costs effectively.
- Tungsten Network (now Kofax). Specializes in electronic invoicing and supply chain financing, enhancing procurement efficiency through automation and secure transactions.
- ProcureDesk. Enhances operations by automating procurement and AP processes, reducing costs, and improving efficiency.
- Zip. Streamlines biotech procurement, enhances visibility, automates workflows, and ensures compliance, saving time and costs
A carefully chosen procurement platform automates procurement processes, mitigates costs, and reduces errors in labs or organizations. By considering the factors listed above, you can select a procurement platform that enhances current functions and scales to accommodate future needs.
