SciQuest was founded in 1995 as an eCommerce business-to-business exchange for scientific products and conducted an initial public offering in 1999. In 2001, we brought in a new management team, exited the business-to-business exchange model and began selling our on-demand strategic procurement and supplier enablement solution.

Our company was subsequently taken private in 2004. Since 2001, we have focused on developing our current on-demand business model, building out our technology, acquiring a critical mass of customers in our higher education and life sciences vertical markets, and selectively expanding our solution to serve the healthcare and state and local government markets. In September 2010, we completed an initial public offering of our common stock, raising net proceeds of approximately $51 million prior to the redemption of our outstanding preferred stock for $36 million.

In January 2011, we acquired all of the capital stock of AECsoft, a leading provider of supplier management and sourcing technology. AECsoft’s technology will be incorporated into our product offering with new Total Supplier Manager, Sourcing Director and Supplier Diversity Manager modules. AECsoft will also provide increased functionality for some of our other modules, delivering a comprehensive procurement solution suite to our customers.

Today, we’re a leading provider of source-to-settle strategic procurement and supplier enablement technology, and we tailor our solution for each of the vertical markets we serve by offering industry-specific functionality, content and supplier connections. We help Higher Education, Life Sciences, Healthcare and Public Sector markets, as well as other industries, streamline processes, improve contract compliance and turn spend into savings. Our value proposition and our unrelenting customer focus have led to an average annual customer renewal rate, on a dollar basis, of approximately 100%. We believe our renewal rates are among the highest of on-demand model companies.