Biotech Incubation Partners has introduced an e-procurement platform, the Biotech Internet Purchasing Platform (BIPP), specifically developed for purchasing laboratory materials & reagents in the Life Sciences sector.
Membership of the BIP platform allows efficient, cheap and controlled purchasing using an online, sector-specific e-procurement software.

The platform-software, continuously maintained by the platform-support team, allows the participants:

1. To have access to a high-performance, ready-to-use e-procurement platform without having to (pre)invest large amounts in hardware, software or IT support.
   
   
2. To generate substantial operational cost savings* of up to € 50 per order due to the high efficiency of the (software supported) procurement process, from article searching to invoice registration.
   
   
3. To benefit additional product discounts from suppliers.
   
   
4. To place paperless orders from their personal article database or directly from the electronic catalogues of the suppliers online.
   
   
5. To have extensive professional control over orders through:
   
   
   • an electronic & personalized authorization cycle,
     
   • detailed follow-up of the status of requisitions online,
     
   • analytical study of the complete purchase history,
   • a real time project budget follow-up,
   • integrated legal and environmental obligations (dangerous goods, occupational health).
     
     
6. To integrate the e-procurement platform with their own already available internal system (ERP, accounting software etc.) if they allow data importation (minimizing manual maintenance of article & supplier databases).
   
   
7. Membership is cost-sharing and based on the number of order-lines created.
   Membership cost is a double digit multiple lower than the savings realized.

*: A study on a BIPP pilot biotech company in 2006 by an MBA-student at the Vlerick Leuven-Gent Management School, Belgium) calculated an expected operational saving of €1500 per collaborator, which turned out to be €50 per order in 2006;
  :"a savings potential of e-procurement averaging US$70 and more per order forms the basis of most feasability studies prior to e-procurement projects" (from: "Successful use of e-procurement in supply chains" by Thomas Puschmann and Rainer Alt, Supply Chain Management: An International Journal Vol.10 Nr.2 2005,122-133)