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About
INNOVATOR 2005: Arizona State University
7/28/2005
| INNOVATION: | INNOVATOR: |
|---|---|
| Full-Life-Cycle Chemical Material Management System | Arizona State University / SciQuest |
Challenge
Arizona State University (ASU) needed to provide a full life cycle, chemical material management system that could be widely used by the university research community, provide increased control over laboratory materials, aid investigators in their research efforts, and comply with federal and state mandates on chemical and biological safety. The ideal system would be easy to use and could be replicated in the more than 1,060 university labs.Technology Choice/Project Design
According to Director of Purchasing and Business Services, John Riley, “We were a happy user of a previous eProcurement system, but it did not support our laboratory security and safety initiatives. SciQuest (www.sciquest.com) offers a Web-based system, the LifeCycleT materials management solution, with a method of ordering and managing lab materials while also enhancing the research effort; it seemed to be the only supplier in the industry that met our research needs with a suite of usable products. Due to their experience with eProcurement, we knew what to look for, including standards, scalability, and extensibility. Our SunRISE system (Research Intensive Systems Enhancement; www.asu.edu/sunrise) utilizing the SciQuest technology is integrated with our financial management system, Advantage, from American ManagementSystems (www.ams.com). A key feature we were looking for was the ability to rapidly adopt system enhancements jointly developed with the 15 or so other large research universities using at least parts of the system.”
ASU included the following LifeCycleT modules in the deployment: Chemical Manager, Supplies Manager, HigherMarket Selectsite (eProcurement), Spend Director (budget module), and Settlement Manager. Everything integrated with ASU’s WebAuth authentication— a secure, centralized authorization system that provides the user with a single sign-on environment. In fact, adoption of WebAUTH was a key driver, as were the hundreds of scientific suppliers already available in a science catalog, the ability to add ASU’s key suppliers, the ability to adopt business rules that allow approval of ASU purchasing card transactions, and integration of SunRISE to Advantage (although the team did have to build some interfaces that would translate the larger data fields available in SunRISE to the smaller data fields used in Advantage).
Key Players
Although the SunRISE system was initiated by Purchasing and Business Services, many key user departments, plus Administration and Finance IT, play a direct role in its implementation.
