Five observations from implementing Jaggaer's procurement solution

I recently led the implementation of Jaggaer’s eProcurement solution for a publicly-traded biotech organization with NetSuite as their ERP. RiseNow served as the implementation team. As of the writing of this blog post, the company has been live for about twelve weeks. Overall, I’ve been impressed with Jaggaer’s functionality. Here are five observations for a biotech company considering Jaggaer as their procurement solution:

1. The system supports advanced workflow approvals: Jaggaer has the ability to support advanced approval workflows for requisitions, purchase orders, invoices, and forms. The system is able to recognize the type of order and route the transaction appropriately. The rule functionality can assess the selected account, department, total and line amounts and other fields, giving users options to build appropriate approvals. The downside of this functionality is that maintaining all those rules could end up being cumbersome. Thankfully, Jaggaer allows for changes via a CSV load so users can make mass changes in Excel.
2. Jaggaer has a vast network of enabled suppliers: Jaggaer’s network of punchout and hosted catalog vendors includes over 2,000 suppliers. For a small biotech with one bill-to and ship-to address, setting up these suppliers is easy and saves time for scientists placing orders and accounts payable processing invoices. Organizations can be more efficient with electronic ordering and invoicing instead of processing these by phone, fax or email. Jaggaer does not charge for implementing punchouts. However, vendors might hesitate to set up a punchout if your organization does not spend enough money with that specific vendor.
3. Add-on modules for future organizational growth: Besides procurement, Jaggaer offers additional services, such as contracts, supplier management, inventory management and invoicing. At implementation, a small biotech will not need but as the organization grows, Jaggaer can be a synchronized tool to handle these pain points. As of this blog post, I am leading the implementation of the contracts module at the same client. A future post will follow regarding the synergizes between these two systems.
4. Ability to integrate with NetSuite: The ability to integrate with an ERP is a necessity. With RiseNow and Sikich (the client’s NetSuite consultant), the team was able to integrate vendor bills, vendors, users, the chart of accounts and payment status between the two systems. RiseNow had to build the integration from scratch, which is a downside of Jaggaer compared with other tools, such as Coupa, which has a larger base of customers who use NetSuite as their ERP.
5. Cost and time commitment for integration: For a small biotech organization, the cost and time to implement Jaggaer is a downside. The implementation took approximately six months and was expensive. The RiseNow implementation plan was geared for larger, more complex organization instead of a small organization. I brought this up with the Jaggaer and RiseNow teams and both organizations recognize this as an issue. They are currently working to create a “fast-track” implementation for early-stage biotech organizations. I plan to share more details as they emerge.

Overall, the Jaggaer procurement solution is a solid choice for organizations looking to upgrade. The tool is comprehensive and can scale with a fast-growing organization. I would highly Jaggaer for biotech organizations needing to upgrade their procurement system, especially if a quicker path to implementation is introduced.

If you or your team is looking for assistance with selecting, implementing, or optimizing your procurement solution, please contact info@intheblksoftware.com. We have led successful procurement implementations for biotech organizations and are happy to assist your organization.