SciQuest, renamed Jaggaer, hungers for bigger slice of procurement pie

The 22-year-old company formerly known as SciQuest has rebranded itself as Jaggaer about a half-year after it was acquired by a private equity firm and taken off the public stock exchange.

Emerging from its rebranding and reorganization, Jaggaer – which company officials say is inspired by the German word for “hunter” (although it’s pronounced “jagger”) – has a leaner staff and a new management team. Jaggaer officials said Monday they are focused on double-digit growth and gaining market share in the expanding field of procurement software. The company’s new name and logo was shared with employees Monday and will be public Tuesday.

Jaggaer’s procurement technology acts as an online broker to help customers obtain goods and services from suppliers. Although Jaggaer started out providing services in the life sciences field, today more than half its 562 customers are higher education institutions the other half commercial, such as transportation, manufacturing, retail and other sectors.

London-based industry analyst Duncan Jones at the Forrester research firm said Jaggaer is seeking to broaden its client base and “to escape its type-casting as a niche player for higher ed and life sciences.”

“But it still faces compettion from larger companies such as SAP and IBM, and also from a host of smaller vendors,” Jones said by email. “Jaggaer needs to invest wisely to compete with larger vendors who can invest more R&D money in their software.”

The company has gone through periods of expansion and cutbacks, and employed 510 people in mid-2016. CEO Robert Bonavito would not give a current headcount, but said Jaggaer employs more than 450 people and added that the company is hiring engineers and recruiting from Triangle universities.

“You go with these younger guys – they’re more aggressive, they’ve got the energy, and they crank out the code,” Bonavito said.

Jaggaer has eight product lines and its customers include Starbucks, Levis, Kimberly-Clark, Safeway, J.M. Smucker and Rite-Aid. Because the company is privately-held, it does not disclose its revenue or other financial details. But in a press release last month, the company announced that 2016 was its best year ever for revenue.

As SciQuest, the company was publicly traded until it was acquired last year for $509 million and taken private by Accel-KKR, a private equity firm with a portfolio of IT and software assets. In 2015, the last full year it disclosed financial information, SciQuest’s revenue was $105.4 million.

Shortly after the it was bought by Accel-KKR, several top executives left, including CEO Stephen Wiehe, who had led the company since 2001.

Founded in 1995, SciQuest went public in 1999 at the height of the dot-com boom. It was subsequently bought by an investment firm in 2004 and taken private, then went public again in 2010. The company is now privately-held for the third time since its founding, but Bonavito did not discount the possibility of the company one day doing another public stock offering or being acquired by another investment firm.

“Our objective, our mission is to grow the company,” Bonavito said.

This story was originally published February 6, 2017 at 5:44 PM with the headline "SciQuest, renamed Jaggaer, hungers for bigger slice of procurement pie."