Water/Wastewater LIMS: A Look at the Industry
Water/Wastewater LIMS: A Look at the Industry
A White Paper
by
Corey Williams, P.E.; Ryan Lynnes; Max Murdock
Inflection Point Solutions, LLC
August 2006
This white paper is the result of observations from professionals at Inflection Point Solutions, LLC who have managed multiple Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) projects over the past fifteen years. This paper addresses LIMS from the unique perspective of the water/wastewater industry, and does not attempt to present pros and cons for each LIMS vendor or system; rather it expresses opinion on the current state of the industry.
Industry History
The last fifteen years have brought forth significant changes in the water/wastewater LIMS market. The turnover of vendors and the refinement of products have allowed the industry to evolve a more competitive, comprehensive, and focused set of solutions with robust features and functionality that allow water/wastewater laboratories of all sizes to be more proficient in their daily activities. This confirms what we all know about technology’s march: It survives and thrives only as it gradually improves in supporting the way we work and live.
The LIMS improvements during this period affected all water/wastewater customers, regardless of size, and the only real difference was the initial solution approach, i.e., vendor LIMS, home-grown LIMS, or paper-based LIMS.
Most large water/wastewater customers selected one of the recognized LIMS during this period; some focused on the water/wastewater industry and some had a general LIMS focus. While these products were technically classified as “COTS” (Commercial Off the Shelf), most still required considerable onsite vendor time and effort to customize and configure the LIMS to satisfy the laboratory’s needs and processes, or to help the laboratory modify its workflow and processes to fit the LIMS.
The small and mid-size laboratories either did not have the need for a large system or lacked the resources to make a large investment; these customers often turned to in-house application development or made do without a true computer-based system. For the laboratory with a home-grown LIMS, support was generally provided by the in-house development team, and that support often ceased when key individuals left the organization.
Whether the LIMS was COTS or home-grown, the usable life of these systems tended to be about 10-15 years. Upgrades were usually driven by the growing needs of the laboratory or the archaic technology on which they were based. Information Technology (IT) departments upgraded equipment and supporting technologies to keep up with the general growth of IT demands, and often the LIMS became incompatible with the new technologies.
Industry Evolution
As the water/wastewater LIMS demand grew and older systems hit the technology wall, opportunities emerged for other LIMS vendors to enter the water/wastewater arena. Many small “start-up” companies sought to focus on the industry and provide solutions tailored to the workflow and processes of water/wastewater laboratories. These systems were largely based on Microsoft Access, and because Microsoft Access was an affordable platform on which to build, it provided an opportunity for these start-ups to compete in the market without a large initial investment. It also allowed them and other companies to build solutions that worked very well for the small to mid-sized laboratories while tailoring the workflow of the software to water/wastewater demands. As these new solutions were implemented more frequently, and provided the necessary reinvestment revenue, the successful water/wastewater LIMS offerings added industry-specific functionality and scalability, further facilitating both process change and growth.
Meanwhile, the more robust database platforms, like Microsoft SQL and Oracle, were being designed with open architecture and scalability in mind, providing for code reusability and accommodating more data, more functionality, and enhanced performance. With these qualities, systems could now be re-designed with enough “muscle” to meet the needs of larger water/wastewater customers. This evolution, though rather slow, eventually led to the smaller companies being able to compete for projects at increasingly larger customer sites, thus enabling other IT avenues of opportunity for their water/wastewater clients, namely system integration and even assimilation into the broader Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) efforts of today.
Competition and other market factors caused some larger vendors to migrate away from water/wastewater and turn their focus on other fields possessing the need for laboratory software. And, as an outcome, often corporate consolidations or acquisitions have resulted in support issues. In some instances, the product was no longer supported after the current support and maintenance agreement expired, leaving the customer to either upgrade their system on their own or find their another means of system support; this latter case is served to some extent by third-party vendors or by contracting with former employees of the vendor that originally supplied the system.
As these market and supply changes occurred, laboratories saw the benefits that a database-driven system could provide, not only for large laboratories, but as a best practice for all labs, regardless of size. With more implementations nationwide, the products soon evolved into what we could finally call a “true COTS” product, with minimal customization necessary for a given customer site. Typically, projects could be completed in less than fifteen or twenty days of onsite vendor configuration.
The Present Industry
The LIMS market for water/wastewater is now vigorous, dominated by a small group of vendors and products that were created during the evolution stage. Any vendor can win any given project, and there are about ten key providers that serve the water/wastewater industry very well. The industry is at a point where it is good to be a water/wastewater LIMS customer. It may be hard for some vendors to acknowledge, but the truth is that all of the current products on the market work. The vast majority of core functionality found within all products in the water/wastewater industry is comparable to their competitor’s. For example, some products store documents as a file link, some store them as a BLOB, some store them as both. But it can be done. There are subtleties to functionality, but they can all basically handle what needs to be done on a daily basis in a water/wastewater laboratory. Moreover, the majority of functionality is both comparable and robust. Vendors have striven to provide everything a water/wastewater laboratory needs in terms of a database-driven system, and there is very little, if any, pure laboratory functionality to be integrated within these systems. The laboratory’s internal business can be well-managed using today’s COTS LIMS solutions.
The Future
We believe future releases of laboratory software shall provide feature enhancements to current functionality, even more scalability, and continued open architecture improvements. Some of the enhancements may include options for workflow improvements and shortcuts for streamlining system use. However, the base functionality needed is already present and working effectively.
In the future, when addressing the state of the water/wastewater LIMS market, it will be almost impossible to differentiate between vendors and products based solely on functionality. What should be the focus of the water/wastewater LIMS industry?
IT Infrastructure: Eventually, the major gap between systems is destined to be the platform on which it is based (i.e., web-based or client/server). Web-based solutions tend to take on the look and feel of a standard web browser and use much of the same usability options in order to make the application recognizable and familiar. Client/server applications tend to have a graphical user interface with a Microsoft Access “feel,” although the backend database is usually one of the more robust solutions.
Certifications: For laboratory personnel, it is becoming more and more important to obtain certifications to show competency and/or progress at a customer site. Many LIMS products have enabled customers to become NELAP certified by improving the processes and results offered by the laboratory. On the other hand, it may be important to a customer that a vendor is ISO certified, offering the assurance of a product that has passed through stringent developmental standards.
Industry Focus: There are a number of LIMS vendors in the market that have a major focus in the water/wastewater industry. These vendors have a number of installations across the country to prove the effectiveness of their system design. Because of their major focus on the industry, customers are assured their selection is compatible with their business processes. While minor configuration and customization are still part of the picture, they can now be viewed as offering personalization benefits, rather than cumbersome system liabilities. In some cases, it may be the preference of the customer to pay a premium for features and functionality to be tailored to dynamic processes. Many times this has already been taken into account by the vendor and the system settings can be modified to meet the particular needs of the laboratory without any extra investment on the part of the customer.
Reporting: Reporting has proven to be the largest downfall of the systems on the market today. Because every customer differs in their perception of what is important information, and because every state’s regulation and compliance programs differ, it is nearly impossible to have a library of every report necessary. Report customization is a major investment for any water/wastewater LIMS implementation project. A case can be made for having a full-time report-focused employee, and we believe many product improvements among COTS solutions are possible in this area.
Support/Training: Once the implementation is complete and the system is considered “live,” support is one of the most important aspects of the entire system. It is crucial to have a system that is reliable and accurate. The implementation stage of a LIMS project will last anywhere from six to fourteen months, but the relationship continues long after this stage. Customers will have a 10+ year relationship with the selected vendor; support is critical. As with support, the quality of training differs from vendor to vendor, and it is a vital factor in enabling the laboratory to meet their responsibilities in an efficient manner.
Integration: A laboratory must be efficient to meet the needs of the plant and to satisfy its responsibility to the public. Integration of laboratory instruments and other applications can enhance overall performance by giving staff what they need, when they need it. Most products on the market made serious investments in research and development to enhance their products and ready them for the next generation of LIMS requirements. Most vendors saw the move to SQL and Oracle and developed systems integrated to work with these databases; these vendors have robust and stable solutions today. A few vendors did not complete this level of database integration, but still lay claim to the ‘Oracle’ or ‘SQL’ labels. This should be one of the major test points in selection; the true SQL and Oracle solutions have a proven track record of reliability and scalability.
As laboratories continue to expand their business to external customers and take on more analyses, external access to the LIMS becomes a part of the overall strategy. Customers want access to their data as it becomes available and the laboratory will be expected to have the ability to provide it with little or no training required. The solution will have to be one that is user-friendly and provides familiarity to applications already possessing wide-spread use. While some solutions exist to address this expanded usage, the industry has significant room for continued improvement.
Implementation Staff: Because of the many acquisitions, consolidations, and change of focus in the overall LIMS industry, there tends to be a high degree of cross-over between vendors (i.e., employees leaving one LIMS company to work for another). Because there is a possibility of a project manager leaving the company before a customer’s implementation is complete, it is always a good idea to ensure an implementation is thoroughly documented for support engineers. If there is no way to transfer the knowledge of a customer’s particular implementation to your personnel, it opens the door to project failure or delay. In general, the more stable a vendor’s work force, the more likely it is that the vendor company treats their customers as expected and delivers on their contracts.
High cross-over rates lead to high visibility and availability of vendor information; any prospective LIMS customer has the ability to gather as much information as necessary to make a vendor decision.
Price: Overall, LIMS pricing within the water/wastewater industry is relatively stable, owing to:
· Lack of differentiation between products reduces customization costs.
· Standard daily rates are based on vendor experience with similar projects.
· Data migration processes and time per data source are well known.
· Established implementation procedures are in place.
· Functionality has been refined to a high level of usability and commonality.
While the preceding bullets represent areas most important in water/wastewater LIMS implementations, other areas should not be neglected during the selection process. A growing trend is the use of external analysis laboratories. While this is positive in terms of revenue generated, it also places a larger burden on laboratory staff and reporting requirements. Reporting tools within water/wastewater LIMS solutions need to be improved to meet the growing demand, and this factor of differentiation shall begin to weigh more heavily in selection decisions.
Conclusions
Today’s water/wastewater LIMS customers have a number of robust and viable options in a well-developed marketplace. The industry has come a long way in the last fifteen years, and it is becoming more and more difficult to create a shortlist for LIMS projects, and similarly difficult to select a clear winner.
Lines are blurring as vendors approach the critical mass of feature/functionality improvements and compete on fairly even ground on the remaining issues. When reliability, support, and training are factored in, and the particular customization and integration needs are addressed, one vendor and one solution should still emerge, though perhaps by a small margin, at the top. While it is more difficult to make a bad choice, the best LIMS choice requires more due diligence on the part of the water/wastewater selection team than ever before.
