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Duke University Selects SciQuest's Procurement Automation Solutions

"The selection of SciQuest stems from our longstanding commitment to provide our administrators, faculty members and researchers with every advantage possible," said Jane Pleasants, assistant vice president, procurement and supply chain management, at Duke University. "The transformation of our procurement practices and processes with SciQuest will enable us to extend the value of existing resources, while making it easier for members of the Duke community to attain the goods and services they need in their work."

The SciQuest solution will be tightly integrated with Duke's financial system of record, an enterprise resource planning system from SAP. Users throughout the university will utilize SciQuest's virtual marketplace to find and purchase the goods and services they need.

"It's well known that the purchasing techniques and strategies that technology now makes possible are proven to exert a direct and significant impact on the bottom line without the adverse effects of other cost containment efforts," added Pleasants. "For us, the ancillary benefits - including the ability to accelerate the discovery process by providing researchers with the ability to quickly purchase critical supplies as experiments evolve - are equally compelling. It's rare to find an opportunity like this where the business case and the tangible benefits for users so closely align."

SciQuest's procurement automation solutions provide procurement and financial leaders with unprecedented visibility over spending, enable organizations to aggregate their buying power and empower purchasing organizations to utilize strategic procurement and sourcing techniques. Most industry analysts agree that the resulting practices decrease the cost of goods and services by five to 20 percent.

SciQuest also brings speed to the purchasing process. Users shop in an online marketplace similar to that offered on popular e-commerce sites and can easily access the best preferred contracts with ease. Fully electronic and easily integrated seamlessly with financial systems of record, SciQuest eliminates the time-consuming paperwork and data entry traditionally associated with purchasing.

"It is increasingly known that procurement organizations are uniquely qualified to drive bottom line results and provide colleges and universities with a distinct and immediate advantage," said Julie Hepner, Market Director, Higher Education at SciQuest. "For the employees of SciQuest, it's particularly gratifying to serve a local organization like Duke, where the savings and efficiencies our solutions deliver will undoubtedly resurface in the form of innovations and academic excellence that benefit all."

Duke University is the latest university to use the company's solutions to gain greater control over spending. It joins SciQuest customers Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University on U.S. News & World Report's 2010 ranking of the ten universities offering the best value in higher education.

About SciQuest

SciQuest provides a leading on-demand strategic procurement and supplier enablement solution that integrates customers with their suppliers to improve procurement of indirect goods and services. Our on-demand software enables organizations to realize the benefits of strategic procurement by identifying and establishing contracts with preferred suppliers, driving spend to those contracts and promoting process efficiencies through electronic transactions. Using our managed SciQuest Supplier Network, our customers do business with more than 30,000 unique suppliers and spend billions of dollars annually.

Our current target markets are higher education, life sciences, healthcare and state and local governments. We tailor our solution for each of the vertical markets we serve by offering industry-specific functionality, content and supplier connections. We serve more than 160 customers operating in 16 countries and offer our solution in five languages and 22 currencies.

SciQuest is a registered trademark of SciQuest, Inc. Other trademarks contained herein remain the property of their respective owners.

For more information about SciQuest, please visit www.sciQuest.com or call 877-710-0413 in the U.S. or +44 1794 341182 in Europe.

SciQuest media contact:
Davies Murphy Group
Ken Phillips, 781-418-2437
sciQuest@daviesmurphy.com