Quartzy is a commonly used purchasing and inventory management solution in Biotech companies. From purchasing to Inventory management, Quartzy provides a complete purchasing solution and a user-friendly interface for Biotech companies and finance teams, but there are better alternatives.
This guide ranked and reviewed the best Quartzy purchasing and inventory management alternatives.
5 Quartzy Alternatives
1.ProcureDesk – Best for Biotech startups that need a quick response on punchout catalogs
2.Prendio – Best for managed procurement services
3.Labguru – Best Inventory management solution for Biotech
4.Jaggaer – Best for large Pharma companies
5.Procurify – Best general-purpose procurement solution
1. ProcureDesk
Our Verdict — Best for Biotech startups that need punchout catalogs
Price: $380/month with 10 users
ProcureDesk provides a complete procure-to-pay solution for Biotech startup companies. With a strong coverage for catalogs, it makes it easier for scientists to order and manage lab supplies. With purchase order automation and tracking, scientists don’t need to use spreadsheets for tracking purchase orders and managing the PO lifecycle. The inventory management solution allows you to track on-hand inventory and track the usage of inventory. ProcureDesk can be easily integrated with LIMS (Lab Information Management System) to automate the workflow from experiments to ordering supplies to run those experiments.
I recommend you get started for $380/month on the purchasing automation plan, then upgrade to add the inventory management plan..
Best For:
ProcureDesk is best for Biotech startups that need to purchase lab supplies frequently.
What’s Better Than Quartzy:
- Strong punchout catalogs to enable better purchasing. ProcureDesk offers punchout catalog integration with 100+ vendors, including the top vendors like Fisher Scientific, ThermoFisher, and VWR. With the website plugin, you can easily copy the cart data from any website, even when the vendor doesn’t have a punchout catalog.
- Better purchase order management capabilities, even for noninventory items. Unlike Quartzy, ProcureDesk supports all vendors, and you can create and track purchase orders for all vendors. Quartzy works best for items that are in their inventory.
- Support for Budgets so you can easily track the spending against different department budgets. Rather than relying on financial reports to understand budget consumption, you can use real-time budget analysis to see how you are trending against a specific budget. You can also block purchases if there is no budget available.
What’s Worse Than Quartzy:
- No low pricing tier: Quartzy offers a low price tier for academics and non-profit organizations, offering 1 user for $99/year. The ProcureDesk base plan is expensive compared to Quartzy’s lower-tier plan.
- No warehouse: Quartzy maintains its own warehouse where they stock inventory of commonly used lab supplies. ProcureDesk doesn’t have any warehouses.
- Limited inventory tracking – Quartzy allows you to print labels to barcode items in the lab. ProcureDesk currently doesn’t have any such capabilities.
2. Prendio
Our Verdict — Better For Companies that need managed services
Price: Please get in touch with the vendor for pricing
Prendio is a known name in the Biotech startup space. Prendio is best known for its managed procurement services through BioProcure, another company owned by Prendio.
With the managed procurement services, Prendio’s purchasing team takes over the processing of purchase requisitions, finding the best supplier and price for the lab supplies. That frees up scientist time from chasing different vendors, understanding the lead times, and finding the best vendor for a particular need.
This might be overkill for companies with preferred suppliers because they can purchase lab supplies using a punchout catalog.
Best For:
Prendio is best for Biotech companies that don’t have relationships with preferred vendors for lab supplies and looking for a managed purchasing service.
What’s Better Than Quartzy:
- Managed purchasing services: As mentioned above, Prendio offers a managed purchasing service that takes the burden of placing and tracking orders. Scientists can just put in a request, and Prendio’s buying team can purchase the items for you after completing the research.
- Better catalog coverage: Quartzy only allows you to manage catalogs for items purchased from their inventory. Prendio allows you to create as many catalogs as you need to run the operations.
- Blanket orders for CRO: Quartzy doesn’t have the ability to create blanket purchase orders. For example, if you want to purchase CRO(Contracted Research Organization) services, you can create a blanket order in Prendio but can’t do that in Quartzy.
What’s Worse Than Quartzy:
- No warehouse: Quartzy is the only vendor in this category that has its own warehouse locations. That makes it faster to get the supplies that are in their warehouse. Prendio doesn’t have any such capabilities.
- Expensive: Prendio is expensive compared to Quartzy, especially when compared to Quarzty’s startup plan.
- No inventory management capabilities: Quartzy allows you to track inventory, but no such capability is available with Prendio.
3. Labguru
Our Verdict — Better For Labs that need strong inventory capabilities
Price: The vendor doesn’t mention pricing on their website.
LabGuru is designed for labs. It offers a comprehensive capability for lab management that includes ELN ( Electronic Lab Notebook), LIMS (Laboratory Information management system), and an inventory management system.
LabGuru is not a best-of-breed procurement system but a Lab management software with purchasing capabilities. LabGuru does allow you to create purchase orders.
You can create a list of items you frequently purchase and manage inventory for. Those items are then added to the shopping list that a manager can approve. Once the manager approves the shopping list, a purchase order is issued to the vendor.
Best For:
LabGuru is best for Labs looking for complete Lab management software with purchasing capabilities.
What’s Better Than Quartzy:
- LMIS capabilities: Quartzy offers a complete solution for lab management. Whistle Quartzy is focused on inventory management only; LabGuru offers full lab management functionality to manage your projects effectively and track experiments for location management functionality.
- Better inventory management: Quartz offers basic inventory management capabilities, but with Labguru, you can set up a detailed inventory management system, including different locations. It supports lab-specific locations, for example – Lab room, Refrigerator room, Dry storage framework, layered sample storage, storage units, etc.
- Equipment usage reporting: Lab Guru provides detailed equipment reporting so that you can see what equipment is used the most. This also allows scientists to reserve spots when using certain equipment. You can also schedule maintenance windows for different equipment so scientists can plan their experiments effectively.
What’s Worse Than Quartzy:
- No catalogs: As mentioned before, LabGuru is not a best-of-breed procurement system, so it lacks capabilities like catalog management.
- Lacks basic purchasing capabilities: Though you can create a purchase order in LabGuru, it is missing capabilities like order tracking. Also, since there is no support for punchout catalogs, the purchase orders can be sent using the cXMl protocol.
- No warehouse: Quartzy has its warehouse locations where it stores the product it sells to its customers. LabGuru doesn’t have any such capabilities.
4. Jaggaer
Our Verdict — Better For Large Pharma and Biotech companies
Price: The vendor doesn’t list pricing on the website.
Jaggaer, as a healthcare platform, provides and platform for life science specializing in procurement solutions tailored to meet biotech companies’ unique needs. These cloud-based solutions are designed to help biotech organizations streamline their procurement processes and manage their supplier relationships more effectively.
Some of the specific biotech capabilities offered by Jaggaer include managing complex sourcing events, tracking inventory and materials usage, and monitoring supplier performance. They also offer advanced analytics tools to help biotech companies identify cost savings and control opportunities to optimize their procurement strategies.
Best For:
Jaggaer is best for large Biotech companies that need a large-scale procurement system, not only for lab management platform needs but overall purchasing for the company.
What’s Better Than Quartzy:
- Complete procurement solution: While Quartzy View is only focused on Procurement, Jaggaer offers a complete procurement solution that includes spend analysis, strategic sourcing management tools, including RFP, and tracking end-to-end procurement capabilities.
- Track contracts: Quartzy doesn’t allow you to track contracts; however, in Jaggaer, you can easily track contracts for better contract management, including the utilization and advance notification of contract renewal or termination.
- Better punchout catalogs support: As a complete laboratory sample management software, Quartzy only allows catalog creation for the items they currently sell directly to the customers. You can use the customer portal to create purchase orders for other items, but the catalogs, specifically the punchout catalog, are unavailable in Quartzy View Software.
What’s Worse Than Quartzy:
- Expensive: Jaggaer is expensive compared to Quartzy. Of course, the pricing depends upon the functionality purchased by the customer, but Jagger does not cost-competitive when compared to some of the Quartzy low-end plans.
- Lacks inventory management: Jagger doesn’t have inventory management capabilities, a requirement for many reference labs and clinical laboratories.
- No warehouse: Jaggaer doesn’t have a model where they store and sell inventory. This model might appeal to customers who want to deal with one distributor and many individual vendors.
5. Procurify
Our Verdict — Better For Medium-sized companies that are looking for a generic purpose purchasing solution
Price: There are three different pricing models, but the vendor doesn’t mention them on their website.
Procurify offers features that enable biotech companies to manage the procurement of laboratory equipment, research materials, and other specialized supplies. The platform allows for customized approval workflows, budget tracking, delivery tracking, full-featured sample tracking, and vendor management, which can be especially important for organizations that must ensure compliance with regulations and optimize their spending on research and development.
In addition, Procurify provides analytics and a customized report tool, and a built-in report generator that can help biotech companies identify opportunities for cost savings and process improvements. This can be particularly valuable in an industry where the cost of materials and equipment can be high, and research timelines can be long.
Overall, Procurify’s procurement software can be a valuable tool for biotech companies looking to streamline their purchasing processes and gain better visibility into their spending, ultimately helping them optimize their research and development efforts.
Best For:
Procurify is best for medium-sized Biotech companies that are looking for a generic purpose purchasing solution.
What’s Better Than Quartzy:
- Better buyer capabilities: Procurify, as laboratory software, allows buyers to work on multiple requisitions and then convert them into purchase orders. This allows buyers to consolidate purchase orders to save shipping costs or get volume discounts.
- Support for all purchases: Procurify is an all-in-one spend management solution that allows companies to purchase products or services they need to run their business. Whether you are purchasing lab supplies, CRO services, or general office supplies, you can use Procurify for the purchasing process.
- Virtual cards: Procurify offers virtual cards for payment so you can handle purchases using credit cards instead of issuing physical cards to employees. This not only saves administration headache but reduce the effort for the AP team as it also offers great customer service with its dedicated support team.
What’s Worse Than Quartzy:
- Lack of Inventory management capability: Procurify doesn’t offer inventory management capabilities like Qurtzy. Quartzy allows you to order and track inventory in the lab, which you can’t do in Procurify.
- Limited punchout capabilities: Procurify has limited punchout catalogs for the Biotech industry. Even though Quartzy doesn’t offer punchout catalogs, it has a list of preferred Biotech vendors for which they hold the inventory. That negates the need for punchout capabilities to some extent.
- No warehouse inventory: If you are looking for a vendor that manages their inventory and ships out of their warehouse, Quartzy is a better option because Procurify, like many other vendors, is a pure-play software vendor.
The Bottom Line
Here is our top list of solutions for the best Quartzy alternatives and competitors to try this year:
1.ProcureDesk – Best for Biotech startups that need a quick response on punchout catalogs
2.Prendio – Best for managed procurement services
3.Labguru – Best Inventory management solution for Biotech
4.Jaggaer – Best for large Pharma companies
5.Procurify – Best general-purpose procurement solution
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