In a conversation with BioPharma BoardRoom, Siamak Baharloo, the visionary Co-founder and CEO of Labviva, delves into the transformative role of technology in life sciences procurement. Labviva's platform aims to bridge the gap between researchers and suppliers, ensuring streamlined access to critical resources and fostering innovation in scientific discovery. Baharloo shares insights into the company's journey, its mission, and the future of procurement in the life sciences landscape.

How will Labviva use this funding to accelerate product development and expand internationally?

Our product development and expansion strategies are predicated on the work we do in close partnership with our customers. With their valuable input, we develop new features and functionalities that advance scientific research, product discovery, purchasing, and inventory management workflows which ultimately serve the greater community of customers. This approach created the blueprint that led to mass adoption of Labviva, and it’s our intention to use a portion of this funding to continue on this path. 

Given our large, multinational customer base, we plan to continue focusing on global support by further expanding our operations internationally. As we grow our global presence, our product development strategy will address the intricacies of local and global compliance and global business. By developing region-specific product features, channel management strategies, and regulatory approaches, Labviva will continue to support customers across all the geographies they serve.

What unique advantages does Labviva's AI bring to life science procurement?

Historically, life sciences researchers have spent countless hours navigating outdated legacy systems and cumbersome punchout catalogs for procurement, often struggling to secure competitive pricing and diverting valuable time away from advancing their critical research. Procurement leaders, on the other hand, face challenges with rigid marketplaces, which increase the likelihood of stock shortages, last-minute ordering, and supply chain delays. At the same time, suppliers grapple with inefficient inventory management and a lack of detailed item-level data, leading to or intensifying operational hurdles.

The Labviva platform transforms this landscape by harnessing the power of natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) to address these persistent inefficiencies and redefine the procurement process. The platform provides unique advantages with its AI-powered capabilities, streamlining catalog aggregation and intelligently connecting buyers with the most suitable products, suppliers, and pricing. It also minimizes delays and supply chain disruptions by analyzing purchasing patterns and offering cost-effective alternatives. 

Labviva’s AI differentiates our inventory management product by analyzing previous usage behavior, supplier fulfillment times, and market availability. The platform then leverages this information and uses AI to recommend the best time to reorder a product, helping maintain continuous operations that ensure a smoother and more efficient experience for researchers and procurement teams alike.

The platform also uses AI to harmonize product attributes and part numbers and create a bank of referenceable context for how scientists have previously used the same products they’re looking to invest in. The AI-enabled system can search catalogs and recommend matching products, completely revitalizing manual searching and ordering while significantly reducing time and costs. In fact, organizations using Labviva report up to a 20% reduction in managed spend, enabling researchers and procurement teams to operate more effectively.

How does the platform ensure diversity and sustainability in supplier selection?

Labviva’s technology is a key enabler in driving informed and responsible procurement choices. By integrating attributes such as "local," "sustainable," or "diverse" into supplier and product listings, the platform empowers scientists and procurement professionals to easily search for and prioritize these options. For example, Labviva users aiming to reduce their carbon footprints by purchasing locally manufactured products are able to filter and select such options effortlessly.

Labviva's platform establishes a private marketplace uniquely designed for the purchasing needs and procurement strategy of each of its customers, including those who wish to allocate a portion of their spending to small businesses, local or diverse suppliers, or green suppliers. Labviva’s platform allows such suppliers to easily present their offerings within a buyer’s procurement environment and increase their visibility. Also, by enabling organizations to classify suppliers based on their organizational goals, using configurable badges and search refinements, Labviva helps to level the playing field for such suppliers, allowing them to compete with larger and more established suppliers. This transparency not only enhances decision-making efficiency but also reinforces commitments to sustainability and diversity goals.

What challenges do you face integrating with existing procurement systems?

The Labviva platform was designed to be easily integrated into existing procurement systems. Its intuitive platform operates as a stand-alone solution or directly integrates with leading procurement systems, including SAP Ariba, JAGGAER, Oracle Procurement Cloud, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Coupa.

How does Labviva plan to maintain growth momentum in a competitive market?

From the beginning, Labviva has focused on customers and prioritized satisfaction and redressability as the foundation for everything it does. We partner with our customers to better understand their procurement strategy and align all operations on the platform to deliver on that strategy. Our customers view Labviva as an unbiased partner that only has their best interests in mind. As we expand operations into new geographies and support new product categories and new procurement workflows, Labviva remains a step ahead of the competition, and will continue to meet the growing needs of its customers.

What innovations can the Biopharma industry expect from Labviva in the next year? 

The Labviva platform provides the procurement operating system that supports every aspect of the life sciences purchasing process. From searching and discovering the best products and purchasing through optimal channels to managing product inventories and customer supply chains, Labviva continually invests in the development of new bioinformatics applications to better serve the needs of scientists and laboratory workers. We are also expanding purchasing workflows by evolving our inventory management solution to support additional quality control and manufacturing use cases.

Since Labviva’s customers are multinationals with operations across multiple continents, we plan to use this funding to fortify our global presence so we can provide local support for customers and suppliers while expanding marketing and business development efforts.