Customisation Gives Way to Configurability in LIMS Markets
Consolidation is an increasing trend in the western European laboratory information systems (LIMS) markets, with many LIMS vendors looking to strengthen their product lines through mergers and acquisitions as well as through co-marketing agreements.
Through such strategic partnerships, vendors are able to create more customer-driven, value-added product portfolios that can help expand the scope of LIMS solutions in terms of functionality. The aim is to achieve the desired high throughput that will allow pharma companies to pilot scale manufacture for lead screening.
“Mergers and acquisitions and co-marketing agreements can help vendors further their technological know-how and boost revenues by enabling powerful consolidated solutions that usher in better data management,” says Frost & Sullivan ( http://healthcare.frost.com ) Industry Analyst Charanya Ramachandran. “Revenues in the western European LIMS markets are likely to increase from approximately $90.0 million in 2005 to $163.4 million in 2012.”
However, the growing number of consolidations taking place bring together multiple and different solutions developed by various vendors. This places the acquiring or parent company in the difficult position of linking the various systems and streamlining effective communication between them, while ensuring minimal technical incompatibilities and product uncertainties.
A key challenge for LIMS vendors, therefore, is to develop an open, standardised technology platform to ease end users’ difficulties in understanding the technicalities of the solution design and help them reduce training costs. The impact of this challenge will decrease as LIMS vendors introduce a higher degree of configurability in the implementation design.
Indeed, the LIMS market is likely to naturally progress from customisation to configurability with customers showing increasing demand for configurable off-the-shelf solutions that address their specific application needs. Vendors are attempting to address these needs by leveraging the Internet to deploy web-based frameworks at no additional cost.
This ensures that there is a wide range of flexible solutions available to the customers that they can tailor to meet a variety of demands ranging from drug discovery to pre-clinical phases to bio-pharma production.
“Configurability is currently one of the main technology trends seen among LIMS participants,” remarks Ms. Ramachandran. “The main factor influencing the move from conventional customisation to configurability is that the latter enables vendors to retain the core capability of commercial off-the-shelf solutions as well as adapt product features to cater to customers’ requirements.”
The trend towards configurability offers vendors an excellent opportunity to add value to their product lines and thereby achieve strong product differentiation, which can help them win over the pharma user base.
Moreover, the pharma industry is subject to a strict regulatory climate and therefore, complying with those norms by meeting the changing laboratory experimental requirements is bound to give vendors a competitive edge. In fact, vendors that introduce a product differentiating factor, which has the ability to integrate with the laboratory environment and is in tune with the business processes are most likely to succeed.
Vendors possessing good brand recognition will be able to penetrate the pharma user base with greater ease than new niche market participants. Due to the huge amount of investment required to buy LIMS solutions, pharma companies tend to prefer vendors that have a proven history of efficient installations. They also appear to favour vendors that retain a strong customer focus in product development.
Unfavourable return on investment (ROI) and the existence of legacy systems could pose entry barriers to vendors since companies might be reluctant to adopt next-generation configurable LIMS solutions for these reasons.
“However, if a manufacturing plant required revised production process controls to strengthen its productivity gains and speed up drug manufacture, LIMS is bound to be a good choice,” says Ms. Ramachandran. “Vendors must deploy a stepwise modular approach to assess the existing inefficiencies and automate those operations.”
If you are interested in a virtual brochure, which provides manufacturers, end-users, and other industry participants an overview of the latest analysis of the Western European Markets for Laboratory Information Management Systems (B729-48), then send an e-mail to Radhika Menon Theodore, Corporate Communications, at rmtheodore@frost.com with the following information: your full name, company name, title, telephone number, fax number and e-mail address. Upon receipt of the above information, an overview will be sent to you via e-mail.
Western European Markets for Laboratory Information Management Systems
B729-48
Background
Frost & Sullivan, a global growth consulting company, has been partnering with clients to support the development of innovative strategies for more than 40 years. The company’s industry expertise integrates growth consulting, growth partnership services and corporate management training to identify and develop opportunities. Frost & Sullivan serves an extensive clientele that includes Global 1000 companies, emerging companies, and the investment community, by providing comprehensive industry coverage that reflects a unique global perspective and combines ongoing analysis of markets, technologies, econometrics, and demographics.
