CARY, North Carolina, December 19 /PRNewswire/ --

- SciQuest Continues Rapid Worldwide Growth and Market Leadership among Research-Intensive Industries with 100th Customer Signing

SciQuest, Inc., the global leader in helping academic and research-centric organizations realize the potential of strategic procurement, today announced that the University of Oxford has selected SciQuest's eprocurement solution, citing the company's market leadership in higher education and seamless integration with Oracle as key factors in their decision. Several hundred people -- including academics, researchers and administrators -- across 180 departments at Oxford will benefit from faster access to preferred goods and services through eprocurement, including an online private marketplace provided by SciQuest.

"SciQuest's size and financial stability, as well as its commitment to research and development made SciQuest the preferred choice," said Mark Bowen, director of purchasing, University of Oxford. "The company has some of the world's leading higher education institutions using its solution, which was an important differentiator that, combined with SciQuest's product offering and commitment to customer service, confirmed our belief that we'd be getting the best value from our investment."

SciQuest's successful partnership with Oracle also played a key role in its selection. SciQuest's Spend Director module -- a supplier enablement, catalog management and shopping platform -- will manage the front-end online shopping experience. Users simply login to SciQuest, browse the electronic marketplace of preferred suppliers and select the items they want to buy, all in an intuitive, Web-based shopping environment. The order is then seamlessly passed to the Oracle platform, which handles the transactional back-end activities.

SciQuest's Order Manager module will also be used to automate and streamline purchase order placement, tracking and management. It will enable Oxford to securely distribute orders electronically to a large proportion of its suppliers through a single integration point. The entire purchasing process is transparent to end users -- a key advantage to SciQuest's integration with Oracle that will ensure high adoption of the eprocurement system.

According to Bowen, the ultimate benefits of eprocurement will be the enormous process-efficiencies gained by eliminating laborious paper-driven activities, better management of suppliers, cost reduction, faster delivery of goods and services, and the creation of an all-around better buying experience.

"The signing of the University of Oxford, our 100th customer, validates our market leadership in research-intensive industries and our flexible approach to procurement automation," said Stephen Wiehe, president and CEO of SciQuest. "Our goal is to provide customers with the solution they need to deploy eprocurement within the context of their changing business and resource requirements, whether it's a total end-to-end system or to enhance existing ERP systems."

About SciQuest

SciQuest is the global leader in helping academic and research-centric organizations realize the potential of strategic procurement. The company's specialized knowledge, on-demand software, and services-first approach empower more than 100 of the best-known academic, pharmaceutical, biotechnology and research organizations to manage spend, drive ROI, and advance their critical missions.

SciQuest's strategic procurement solutions are strengthened by a deep understanding of the higher education and research environments combined with a broad supplier network for everything from lab equipment to office supplies to services. The company's intuitive, online shopping experience and diverse supplier offerings are proven to increase user and contract adoption. Through software-as-a-service (SaaS) deployment, organizations can quickly implement the right eprocurement solution, whether it's a robust shopping platform for existing eprocurement tools or to fully enable all aspects of purchasing from sourcing to settlement.

For more information about SciQuest, please visit www.sciquest.com or call +1-877-710-0413 in the U.S. or +44-179-434-1182 in Europe.

Trademarks contained herein remain the property of their respective owners.

SciQuest media contact: Ken Phillips Davies Murphy Group +1-781-418-2437 kphillips@daviesmurphy.com

Web site: http://www.sciquest.com

Ken Phillips of Davies Murphy Group, +1-781-418-2437, kphillips@daviesmurphy.com, for SciQuest, Inc.