GEP SMART is a procurement platform, meant as an end-to-end unified procurement solution that provides synergy between finance and purchasing and process fluidity.
N/A
JAGGAER
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
JAGGAER is a procure-to-pay provider in the higher education and government sectors. JAGGAER eProcurement and strategic sourcing customers gain access to suppliers on a scalable, customizable platform. The JAGGAER SaaS-based, source-to-settle solution provides unparalleled visibility, insights and recommendations to procurement leaders and suppliers. The result is a fluid supply chain driven by spend analysis, contract management, and an accounts payable solutions.
GEP SMART is well suited to equip procurement professionals to manage multiple RFx's at one point in time and help provide structure to the process. If an organization has an existing ERP and they want to acquire GEP SMART as a bolt-on, then integration is key. If there is any customization then it is more difficult to take advantage of the latest upgrades.
The SciQuest application helps guide users toward preferred suppliers. The efficiencies experienced in both sending out orders to suppliers as well as bringing back invoices helps our users maintain their inventories as well as allowing them to better understand the condition of their budgets and spend because of the quick turnaround
The workflow works great for routing requisitions to the appropriate approvers. It's also very customizable to adapt workflow to fit our current policies.
SciQuest pushes requisitions straight into our ERP, eliminating the need for duplicate data entry.
Punchouts are a great time saver for our end users to compare pricing within the same system.
Our organization has yet to take advantage of upgrading to the latest version of GEP SMART. The version that we are on does not make use of the full screen for the different internal windows and pop-up windows. I find it cumbersome to scroll left-right and up-down on the smaller windows when there is much real-estate on the screen that could optimize the user interface.
GEP SMART provides technical support but our vendors seem to have some difficulty logging in to their profiles and updating their information. Occasionally, the salesperson delegates to another internal member so we'll have to set up the new member with their log in.
The digital signature process requires that the signers of the agreement be defined before the agreement is routed for approval. Sometimes our vendors have a pool of signers that could sign the agreements and it can become a small challenge to change the signers after it has already been defined in GEP SMART.
The tool is fantastic, but we are investigating a broader spend management solution at the moment which may mean we look in a different direction for this capability, most likely internally developed.
Well, I put it in the middle because I hope someday we will get a chance to put eProcurement suite of needed products out for RFP one day. It will not happen anytime soon due to the current administration. But I'm hopeful, and if and when it happens, SciQuest no doubt will be a strong contender.
The application is highly usable, but there are some parts of the design that could be improved such as the layout and scaling on the pages, the amount of unused white space within the interface, and the consistency of the interface between modules.
There is a 3 month learning curve and then the features are easy to use. My AP team processes 400 invoices daily through the system. The things to watch for are vendor billing mistakes (no/incorrect PO number, information discrepancies) and buyer purchase request inconsistencies. Those are part of AP anyway so maybe it is what it is. The Sciquest AP software performs as designed some improvements needed. In our system I have documented a list of 60 improvements that could increase throughput up to 50%. Those improvements include making the AP records GUI format more customized for AP purposes, and improving the QC tolerance functionality, which can be laborious to sync (Match).
They have had only a couple of very quick occasions where they were down for 1-2 minutes. One time they had a problem adding attachments. Very Reliable!
The performance of the GEP SMART platform overall has been excellent. We do not hear complaints about system performance and have not experienced any slowdowns in adjacent systems due to the GEP implementation. Of all the (largely self-inflicted) change management challenges we've dealt with, system performance and platform reliability have not been on the list of concerns.
Having used SciQuest for over five years and having their competitors, SciQuest offers the best user experience and integration between vendors and ERP.
The support team is responsive, smart, and knowledgeable about their product and about our business needs. They are also flexible to respond to questions and find solutions to our requirements.
24/7 support. Never send you to India or some foreign country support line. Always get an answer, even if it's an answer you did not want. Always well formed conclusions/solutions to problems. They genuinely seem to care about the service they provide
Although we had encountered many bugs, GEP was able to address them quickly, and sent a technical person to sit in our hands-on training sessions to address bugs efficiently
We had an internal project manager who was well versed in PMI methodologies. I think the implementation would have gone far less successfully, or may even have failed entirely, without her. She was able to do all the things a project manager is supposed to do, and in an ordered and organized manner.
We selected GEP SMART for its ability to offer a full end-to-end integrated source-to-pay solution, pricing, and ease of use. There was an implementation series offered by GEP, as well as flexibility, customization, account management team dedication, and the overall service and support.
As a supplier, SciQuest is selected by our customers - we are always confident when this selection is made. One appreciates working together with SciQuest when considering some of the issues we've encountered with other marketplace/procurement solutions: - Uneven support from staff who were less than fully trained - Non-adherence to standards such as cXML despite claims to be compliant - Difficulty garnering project resources necessary to complete an implementation - Outdated and error-prone catalog management portals
Highly reliable remotely hosted PTP solution that interfaces with our remote OCR vendor and with university sited operational servers. Twice a year over the last 3 years a SciQuest/OCR system file handling or network problem occurs that gets fixed within a day.
GEP SMART has improved our spend analytics speed by allowing analysis to be completed in minutes compared to days when we previously used Excel spreadsheets.
The SMART Sourcing (RFX) solution has greatly improved the consistency of our supplier quoting and information gathering process.
Customers seem to be fine with selecting requisition items and having them pushed back via carts to a legacy system.
Converting one's legacy ERP system to a SaaS solution may prove to be too much of an overhaul in regards to converting to a new set of rules which do not fit exactly with current business processes. The inability to enhance in great detail is also a drawback for customers coming from a highly modifiable system.
