Edinburgh, Scotland November 22, 2002 The University of Edinburgh has signed up to use an e-procurement solution from SciQuest in a bid to improve purchasing processes and identify areas for cost savings.
Edinburgh, one of the top five research universities in the United Kingdom, signed a multiyear license agreement for SciQuest's SelectSite Advanced Procurement Application (APA).
The university has secured licenses for an initial implementation that will include users in the Science & Engineering, Medicine & Veterinary Medicine colleges. Following this pilot phase, a campus-wide implementation of up to 4,000 users is planned.
"After an investigation of e-procurement solutions available for the different markets within the broad portfolio of higher education purchasing, we determined that SelectSite APA provided the Web-based technology, supplier content and domain expertise necessary to help our researchers manage spending and increase productivity in the laboratory areas campus-wide," said Karen Bowman, director of procurement for the university.
"The fact that SelectSite has been tried and tested in multinational research and university environments with many of our key suppliers certainly helped solidify our decision," Bowman continued. "This will help us meet the targets of our e-procurement strategy by offering the opportunity for testing the tool, during the pilot phase, in both a complex commodity area and within a devolved purchasing structure."
SciQuest said that SelectSite APA is a Web-based sourcing, procurement and catalog management application designed for research-intensive organizations. The application features an online product catalog with more 1,000 suppliers, and it automates internal approval and purchasing processes.
