A lack of sufficient inventory organization and proficient reagent tracking systems, as well as high lab costs all contribute to low efficiency levels that can plague many labs and frustrate scientists, according to a group of new companies founded to innovate purchasing and supply management methods in labs. To bring lower costs and higher efficiency to lab purchasing and inventory management, these companies offer free web-based software that provides a centralized and streamlined approach for increasing lab productivity.

With company headquarters in Arkansas, free web-based platform Labscoop was founded in early January 2014. Dubbing itself the “Life Science eCommerce Engine,” Labscoop allows users to comparison shop for lab supplies (i.e., reagents and consumables) and equipment, and provides a forum for peers to leave verified reviews and ratings.

The perceived complications of lab supply procurement management methods resulted in the creation of Labscoop. “Complex institutional procurement workflows have led to the development of many eProcurement solutions,” said Kundan Das, founder and CEO of Labscoop. “Several eProcurement companies later, we’ve lost sight of the end-user, [which] has allowed for the continuation of inefficient, archaic process within the lab.” According to Mr. Das, Labscoop aims to solve this issue by providing end-users with access to an “unbiased, scientist-centric, comparison shopping marketplace.”

Users are able to log into a single account to order products from multiple vendor sites and use a shared shopping cart for the entire lab, which Labscoop claims eliminates duplicate supply orders and multiple purchase orders, while still allowing users the benefits of institutional grant rates. As Mr. Das says, “No more sticky notes, emails or conversational order requests.” The website claims a 15 second checkout process that enables the application of institutional/vendor discounts when users create an account, and also promises to price match.

Cost savings for labs are a major focus for Labscoop, and the company has had to overcome challenges in regard to established suppliers. “Convincing a handful of the lab supply giants to include their manufactured/branded product lines within the Labscoop marketplace has been our main obstacle,” said Mr. Das. “This is partly due to the fact that they are attempting to create a marketplace of their own, which is utilized to make preferred/exclusive deals with institutions. These deals oftentimes lead to artificially increased prices to provide a buffer for additional ‘discounts.’” He added, “As an eCommerce engine, our users would like to comparison shop lab supply giants side-by-side with hundreds of other suppliers.”

Labscoop serves as an intermediary between vendors and customers. Numerous vendors are part of the Labscoop database, including ImmuQuest, PRO Scientific and Thermo Fisher Scientific. Since Labscoop is not an OEM, it is able to be objective, according to Mr. Das. “A marketplace hosted by any supplier that manufactures or brands OEM will be inherently biased,” he said. “Labscoop is not a manufacturer and does not brand OEM [so] we will always remain a partner in helping end-users search and order from an unbiased marketplace, while driving efficiency within their internal lab ordering workflow.”

Labscoop’s free online ordering system, inventory management feature and comparison shopping model is one approach to increasing the efficiency of lab supply procurement. Quartzy, another company, takes these features and further enhances them.

Launched in 2009 with a focus on life science products, California-based Quartzy integrates inventory management with lab supply procurement systems on a free online platform. As with Labscoop, Quartzy aims to make lab supply purchasing more efficient through a customizable, web-based platform. The platform offers a centralized system to order lab supplies, manage new and existing inventory, import Excel inventory files, and share equipment through an organized, online availability calendar. The Quartzy platform works with multiple purchasing systems, such as SciQuest and Ariba. Like Labscoop’s 15 second checkout, Quartzy claims users need only three clicks to make an order.

Benefits of web-based lab supply platforms include low overhead costs and thus lower costs for customers, according to Jayant Kulkarni, PhD, cofounder of Quartzy. “Many labs are still stuck in the dark ages, using paper spreadsheets to track supplies or writing a whiteboard ‘grocery list’ of things they need to order,” he said. “Quartzy’s online lab management software brings labs into the digital age.” As he told IBO, just as important is its competitively priced online marketplace that allows for comparison shopping.

With close to $25 million raised in venture capital and currently used by over 30,000 labs at academic institutions, and pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms, Quartzy serves as an intermediary between suppliers and customers enabling lower costs for supply procurement. Quartzy’s “Effortless Quote” feature allows users to keep their existing ordering process when ordering an item, while the software searches for a lower-priced item. Quartzy features many major vendors, such as Bio-Rad Laboratories, Mettler-Toledo, OriGene Technologies, PerkinElmer, Shimadzu and Thermo Fisher Scientific.

The company’s revenue comes from suppliers when labs purchase supplies through the software. The fact that it is web based adds to the convenience, both for Quartzy and its users, according to Dr. Kulkarni. “Web-based software is the gold standard for building world-class products,” he said. “The software can be improved and updated continuously, data can be backed up in multiple locations for redundancy and the site can be accessed from any device, anywhere.”

The idea of storing information in a web-based platform does not stop at lab inventory and supply purchasing systems. It can also extend to services enabling the storing, sharing and commercialization of consumables like life science reagents, as with Ximbio.

London, UK–based Ximbio is a business unit of Cancer Research Technology (CRT), the commercialization arm of the charity Cancer Research UK. CRT has been commercializing research tools for more than 25 years and launched Ximbio in October 2014 to serve as an online reagents portal. According to its website, Ximbio focuses on changing the way reagents are searched, sourced and shared. Scientists and technology transfer offices (TTO) can share research reagents, while reagent companies can find new products, saving time and resources.

Each product page on Ximbio provides links for users to order reagents from companies. “Users [can] choose from a list of suppliers depending on their requirements—quality, price or their procurement department’s needs,” said Melanie Hardman, PhD, head of Ximbio. “We will have licensed or sold the product to that supplier(s) at some point in time, but do not directly supply to scientists.” Like Labscoop and Quartzy, Ximbio is a free platform, but also offers a paid service, where the company manages the reagents portfolio on behalf of an institution to enable streamlined commercialization agreements.

Users can create a unique reagent (i.e., antibody, cell line, mouse model) and, after publishing their research, are able to virtually upload the reagent onto Ximbio’s online platform, branded with their name and institution. Scientists receive credit for their innovations, which can be easily accessed by others, thus enabling and accelerating scientific and institutional research by raising inventors’ profiles, according to Ximbio. Moreover, life science reagent companies can source new products through Ximbio’s commercialization system. In addition, researchers can more easily identify and source specific reagents, since, like Labscoop and Quartzy, Ximbio provides a searchable database, datasheets, supplier options and peer reviews in a centralized platform. “Life science reagent companies can come to a single place to source a broad range of academically created research tools,” said Dr. Hardman. “Universities can let us act as an extension of their TTO, negotiating and completing sales and licensing deals. They can also exploit our 25 years of experience from CRT and existing supplier relationships.” Dr. Hardman added that the benefits for scientists using the platform include comprehensive listings of reagents and linking inventors with universities, thus validating the product.

CRT launched Ximbio as a result of an opening in the market. “We identified a need within the research tools market to expand beyond cancer to cover all life sciences and to offer our commercialization services to universities who struggle to do this because of conflicting priorities on other projects,” Dr. Hardman said. “We are now managing portfolios on behalf of 17 global academic institutions.”

Ximbio views large suppliers as customers. “We enable [supplier companies] to access academically derived materials and supporting data much more quickly and easily than they might otherwise,” noted Dr. Hardman. She stated that Ximbio is different from other reagent companies because it “maintains the link between the products, the scientist and the university that created them, something most life science reagents companies don’t do.”

Free web-based platforms for procuring, storing and uploading lab supplies can offer labs opportunities for greater organization, higher efficiency and lower costs. Due to the easily updatable nature of online service systems, the larger the companies get (i.e., more suppliers, more scientists uploading information into a shared database), the greater their reach will be. As Dr. Kulkarni said, “It’s a virtuous cycle that helps accelerate the pace of scientific research while driving down costs.”