Science never stops—especially during a pandemic. Our customers are doing vital work every day, working on cures for diseases, developing innovative solutions to complex problems, and creating new technologies to meet needs across scientific fields.
Here at Quartzy, we’re committed to simplifying processes that scientists rely on every day, from ordering supplies to managing their inventories.
Our aim is to make our platform more powerful and efficient, so researchers can focus on their core work, not administrative tasks. Below, we offer an overview of the key improvements we’ve made this year:
- Innovations to Combat Supply Chain Challenges The pandemic has disrupted supply chains across industries, resulting in backorders. For labs ordering supplies, the upheaval has led to paused experiments, frustrated researchers, and uncertainty about project timelines. Though Quartzy continues to face the same supply challenges as fellow distributors, we’ve made changes to our ecommerce platform to increase transparency and predictability:
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- More accurate availability info and estimated ship dates: Backorders may be inevitable, but we’re holding vendors accountable for estimated ship dates. Now, in the Quartzy shop, there’s clearer indication of indefinitely backordered items. Users will no longer place orders thinking an item is in stock—or available soon—only to find out it’s not.
- Search ranking based on availability status and lead time: We’ve improved our search algorithm to surface items that are ready to ship and vendors that have a reputation for fast, effective service. Now, out of stock items no longer rank higher than available items in our search results, and unreliable vendors have also been deprioritized.
- Estimated delivery dates based on vendor performance: Certain vendors in the Quartzy Shop exhibit more unpredictability—some orders come in 1-3 days later than promised. Using historical performance data, Quartzy now displays the delivery date as a range for vendors that are particularly prone to delays, giving customers more insight into possible issues.
- Customizations to Personalize Platform Experience Quartzy’s platform is known for its flexibility and customizability. To extend the platform and ensure it serves our customers’ unique needs, we’ve introduced several new enhancements:
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- Custom request fields: Researchers use Quartzy’s Requests module to place orders, filling in key information like item name, quantity, and more. Using custom request fields, researchers can now add more details to every item being requested, such as a project code, a relevant department or team within the lab, or even the specific experiment associated with it. Once Organization Admins create custom fields, users across the lab can use them to quickly sort their requests. Custom fields are available and identical for every lab at an organization, and they can be included on Spend Reports when exported via Excel for easy tracking and financial reporting.
- Multi-step approvals: Lab Admins now have the power to set financial thresholds for orders with Quartzy’s new multi-step approval process. Along with optional safety review steps and project-based approval routing, Quartzy ensures that high-cost orders receive the appropriate level of scrutiny.
- A Slew of Powerful New Integrations From task management and communication apps to financial reporting technology, we’re connecting our platform to commonly-used tools:
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- Suppliers: When customers place orders with supplier partners, our operations team manually adds that order data to the Quartzy platform to enable users to track and manage all of their orders. This creates a lag in customer communications and delayed request updates. By connecting the platform to vendors through an internal cXML order integration, we’re able to receive order confirmations, delay notifications, and shipping updates much sooner—and ultimately communicate this information to customers more efficiently.
- Financial platforms, including NetSuite and Quickbooks: Quartzy now syncs with NetSuite and QuickBooks Online to help lab managers and accountants automatically generate purchase orders. The integration cuts down on manual data entry and makes financial tracking simple and straightforward.
- Communications tools, including Slack, Microsoft Teams, Asana, Google Calendar and others: Quartzy updates are now everywhere that researchers are. Users can receive alerts and order updates via Slack, Microsoft Teams, Asana, Google Calendar and many other apps. Customers can also set reminders and tasks to coincide with delivery dates.
It’s been a busy year for us at Quartzy—but there’s much more to come in 2022. From new search filters to pre-selected item alternates, we’re always creating new ways to better serve labs.