Looking for a LIMS? The Benefits of Working with a Partner to Identify the Best LIMS For You

Gregory Emmert, at STARLIMS, has over 25 years of successful experience in developing profitable and innovative sales and marketing teams for both software and professional services firms in domestic and global markets. With deep expertise in managing implementations of global enterprise systems for Fortune 50 companies, Gregory has a proven track record of exceeding sales goals through the implementation of aggressive performance metrics, overhauling strategic geographic alignments, and critical alliance partnerships.

Having managed P&Ls in excess of $160 million and led two companies to successful IPOs as their VP of Sales & Operations, Gregory offers extensive industry knowledge across multiple vertical industries, including healthcare, retail, travel, transportation, logistics, hospitality, manufacturing, and energy.

In this blog, Gregory describes how a third-party partner can benefit the LIMS selection process from RFP to user acceptance testing and hypercare.

Opinions expressed by CSols Inc. contributors are their own.

When it comes to your lab, data is the backbone. It drives processes, surfaces insights, and supports decision-making across your lab’s operations. 

With data as your backbone, a Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) acts as your lab’s nervous system, collecting, consolidating, and transmitting information and enabling communication across various parts of your lab to keep workflows moving. It is an essential system for any organization looking to improve processes and increase productivity.

Because data plays such an important role, the process of LIMS research, vendor comparison, demonstration reviews, selection, and onboarding can take up to a year or more from start to finish. LIMS projects can also be resource-intensive, requiring the investment of your team. As such, it can be challenging to determine the first steps. In this case, working with a lab informatics partner can be a great way to get started on the right foot and support your team through the entire process. Consider the following benefits.

Deep Industry and Technical Expertise

The search for your first—or a new—LIMS can be daunting. With so many legacy players and new market entrants in the LIMS space, it can be hard to know where to look to find the best LIMS for your organization’s specific needs. The primary benefit of working with a partner during your LIMS search is the expertise they bring to the table. 

Lab informatics consultants must have deep expertise in laboratory operations, information technology, and regulatory requirements, with broad experience across industries. Select a partner that has experience in your field to help you refine your search. Your laboratory informatics partner should work with you to understand the needs of your lab, while combining their knowledge of best practices for data—both maximizing its value and ensuring proper handling and security.

Partners can evaluate your current informatics ecosystem, interdependencies, and requirements to make targeted suggestions for optimizing your lab and ensuring your data environment empowers effective decision-making. These suggestions will likely include a shortlist of LIMS vendor recommendations. This leads us to our second benefit…

Vendor/Solution-Agnostic Support

When working with a partner, rather than working directly with a software vendor, you have the added benefit of an external party to support your selection process. Their priority is solely on the needs of your organization—their customer—to make the best recommendations for you and your end users. 

Partners perform business analyses of your lab workflows to become intimately familiar with your lab’s day-to-day procedures and necessities. By combining these analyses with their technical expertise across a variety of solutions, partners can deliver a shortlist of vendors that will meet your needs. From there, partners should be able to support the sales process from request for proposal (RFP) development and management to demonstration scoring and on through customer-specific vendor functionality and pricing analysis.

Deep Vendor Relationships and Access to Continuous Education

Although partners are vendor-agnostic, they are also well-versed in the functionalities, features, and everyday use of the systems that they recommend. In fact, they may even have access to the platforms on their own servers to maintain their practice and understand the best applications of the system.

Partner staff have user experience and often work with the software providers to establish ongoing training and education. They are kept up to date on product releases, launches, and roadmaps, enabling them to make recommendations based on the most current information and outlook for the future.

Start-To-Finish Project Support

Partners don’t just help you kickstart your LIMS journey; their support extends throughout the entire project lifecycle. They may also be skilled in implementation, integrations, and validation. Once you’ve selected your LIMS, you might choose to continue working with the partner to streamline the implementation process and accelerate your time to value or leverage a partner to do external work, such as device and third-party system integrations in tandem with the LIMS provider implementing the solution. With a partner to guide your team through implementation, you can also maintain your lab’s productivity while doing the heavy lifting of a system integration.

End-To-End Service: From Research and Integration to Data Illumination

Beyond helping you identify the best LIMS for you, partners provide end-to-end service. Whether it’s managing data migration, overseeing system integration, or training your staff on the new platform, partners provide comprehensive support to ensure that your lab’s transition is seamless. Their ongoing involvement also means that if issues arise after going live, they can continue to offer guidance and troubleshooting support. Because your LIMS project will set your lab up for success for the next decade and beyond, consider investing in working with a partner like CSols Inc. to help your lab achieve its goals.