Our client was a thriving service-based analytical laboratory who had so much new work coming their way that they were absolutely overwhelmed by the growth of their business. Throwing more people or equipment at the situation wasn't helping to stem the gushing flow of samples coming through their doors, so they needed a digital and process improvement solution to improve their analytical efficiency quickly and allow their data analysts to achieve a higher rate of throughput at consistently high levels of quality and efficiency.

We started by looking at the analytical processes in place and identified areas of opportunity, as well as redundant and duplicated tasks. We also made a comprehensive list of data storage and record keeping practices. While doing our initial evaluation, we noticed that a significant portion of time was spent on menial tasks such as data entry, file transfers, and filling out forms and logbooks, which left very little time for data analysts to focus on their actual work- which was reporting high quality laboratory data.

We decided to work with our client on the implementation of a new and highly customizable analytical software program. This program allowed our us to develop customized automation scripts to align with the laboratory data reporting practices and requirements which would save data analysts tremendous amounts of time. The level of automation we introduced eliminated most, if not all, of the manual pointing and clicking or recording tasks that the analysts had been completing prior to implementation and put a much greater focus on analyzing and reviewing data- what our client was actually getting paid for.

Once the highly effective process was in place, the efficiency of data analysis more than doubled, with data analysts having the capability to review more than twice as many samples per day than they could have previously. The process change also significantly affected our client's bottom line by having a major impact on reducing the amount of overtime worked by lab staff. It also had the benefit of significantly increasing data quality, with more than 90% fewer data reporting errors than had occurred prior to our new digital process being put in place.