“There’s a lot of innovation available in the market, but I don’t think many labs are adopting it early enough,” said our CEO.
He emphasized the need for laboratories to ask themselves how crucial it is to embrace new technologies to drive innovation. “Having worked in this industry for over 20 years, I can say it’s absolutely important. Labs want to implement new technologies to reduce full-time equivalents (FTE), increase throughput, or improve quality.”
As an example, our CEO highlighted a major project iVention is currently managing in Europe. This project involves consolidating as many as seven separate systems, each running their own custom software, alongside additional connected applications.
“They can’t upgrade everything all at once,” he explained. Because each site uses custom software, every installation effectively acts like a unique system.
“Now, compare this to the advantages of a web-based system that can be deployed across all these sites without custom software. The benefits are clear,” said our CEO.
He stressed that organizations searching for a new LIMS or ELN should carefully consider their choices, as “the decision you make now will affect you for the next five to ten years, given the investment involved.”
Our CEO urged customers to ask themselves whether their current large, conventional LIMS vendor truly supports innovation. “There’s plenty of innovation out there, but can I adopt it with the systems I have in place? That’s often the gap.”
He shared an example of iVention successfully rolling out a system for a pharmaceutical client with 300 users across seven countries in just eight months. The system was hosted by iVention, allowing for automated upgrades and maintenance.
“I don’t believe many conventional LIMS systems have achieved rollouts of this scale so efficiently,” our CEO said. “This was a large company with its own IT department, yet we hosted the solution because our technology enables full automation of upgrades. Because of this success, the client has made iVention a strategic partner for future, larger rollouts.”
Our CEO also pointed out the challenges many organizations face with legacy software. “I’ve seen labs running very old systems that are costly and time-consuming to maintain and upgrade. Sometimes, IT directors tell me upgrades can cost more than the original installation, so they postpone or look for new solutions.”
A major pain point with older LIMS or ELN systems is the lack of maintainability and upgrade options. “Often, customers pay for maintenance but can’t upgrade. Support teams can’t help because the system is too outdated. In many cases, the maintenance fees feel wasted.”
He strongly recommended companies review their maintenance agreements and ask themselves, “What value are we really getting from this?”
Source: Scientific Computing Winter 2021