Purchasing and implementing a LIMS system for production and lab environments is an essential apprehension for life science companies. This concern is further heightened, since most companies overlook the short and long-term total cost of implementation and ownership. These factors impact the ultimate cost as well as the overall success or failure of the project in the vendor selection and deployment processes.
To address this fundamental concern, companies take several very different approaches. These include in-house development, using ERP systems as a LIMS, and more recently, the altogether acquisition of a LIMS provider.
There are some advantages to the acquisition of software vendors by larger pharmaceutical companies. This is primarily financial stability, but with stability comes forced direction. The mandate of the software provider is no longer set by trends of industry, or more importantly, client requirements, but specific financial goals of the parent company.
The question is how independent and reliable is your vendor to serve your business in the long term?
Research suggests that more than 28% of software suppliers are bought by various pharmaceutical companies who were once considered potential clients. These corporations use the acquired software companies and platforms to apply technologies that are related to their own products, services, and markets. They increasingly become less interested in LIMS and what clients (now also competitors) require. While the software may be satisfactory from a technical standpoint at the initial purchase time, users hesitate over concerns about the level of support they can obtain in the long term.
From a cost-of-ownership point of view, the industry is shying away from relying solely on words from dependent suppliers as guarantee of future support. There are many different types and levels of support that organizations should consider before adding a specific supplier or software to their IT infrastructure. Being able to upgrade the software once their requirements have expanded, or when trends have changed, is an important factor in deciding the supplier.
Another complication that arises with dependent suppliers involves the product itself. The acquired supplier will have to change its direction at the request of the parent company. This makes the original software so specific to their own process and requirements that it is no longer useful to industry. Clients end up abandoning a product that required months, if not years, of internal resources (costs such as configuration, training, documentation, validation, user spec collection and the like).
No matter if this is your first LIMS, next generation, or globalization of your existing LIMS, how comfortable are you with a LIMS vendor that is not autonomous?