Labviva Blog

Academic institutions stand at a pivotal inflection point. The convergence of agentic AI, autonomous lab systems, and mounting geopolitical pressures - from tariff volatility to Scope 3 emissions mandates - is forcing a fundamental rethink of how research universities operate.For decades, academic procurement has been defined by fragmented workflows, decentralized spending, and manual contracting. It has accumulated what we call "workflow debt." That era is ending. Distilled from Labviva's Academic Procurement Roundtable and Customer Advisory Board, this piece explores how agentic AI is transforming procurement from a bureaucratic bottleneck into the metabolic engine that keeps science moving

We’ve all seen and experienced how companies like Uber, Airbnb, and Amazon have reshaped B2C commerce by creating platforms that are both continuously innovating from a technical perspective, but also raising user expectations.

Procurement managers at life sciences organizations like biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and research institutions know how challenging it can be to help keep scientists and their labs fully stocked while still managing to the budget.

In his research report “AI-Driven Platforms Will Move Business Applications Beyond The ERP Era”, the Forrester analyst Duncan Jones discusses how the enterprise resource planning (ERP) era is becoming obsolete in the sense of having a single software suite meant to handle every process in every area of the company. 

In the ever-changing world of life sciences, it’s critical to implement the ideal B2B digital procurement system.

Once a rarity, supply chain disruptions are now a fact of life for industries across all markets, and life sciences is no exception. The early phases of the COVID pandemic brought these issues into sharp focus, with researchers, manufacturers, and healthcare industries bearing the brunt of the impact of shortages and interruptions.

Procurement professionals in life sciences have more technology options than ever, ranging from point solutions like catalog management or invoice management, to enterprise options that help manage the business end-to-end.