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Title: Justifying LIMS Acquisition and Deployment within Your Organization

Edition: First Edition

Authors for citation: Joe Liscouski, Shawn E. Douglas

License for content: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International

Publication date:

As laboratory workflows become increasingly complex, personnel become shorter on time, and competition becomes more pronounced, lab managers turn to laboratory informatics solutions like the laboratory information management system (LIMS) to help gain practical and competitive advantage. However, acquiring and deploying a LIMS is no easy task, and simply presenting a handful of bullet-pointed potential benefits likely won't be enough to convince upper management and other critical stakeholders in the organization to go along with any proposed LIMS plan. Justification for the LIMS will need to be succinct and relevant, based on organizational goals, economic concerns, and practical realities. This guide will help you—whether you are a lab manager, lab technician, or someone else in the organization with a stake in seeing laboratory operations improve—understand what a LIMS is, what the alternatives are, what and why acquiring one looks like, and what needs to be considered in putting together a competent and persuasive LIMS project proposal. This guide also includes a handy Microsoft Excel workbook that will help act as a "cheat sheet" for persuading stakeholders to better buy into your vision of LIMS acquisition and deployment within your organization.

The table of contents for Justifying LIMS Acquisition and Deployment within Your Organization is as follows:

1. Introduction to LIMS and its acquisition and deployment

1.1 What is a laboratory information management system (LIMS)?

1.2 What are the alternatives to a LIMS?

1.3 LIMS acquisition then

1.4 LIMS acquisition now

1.5 Why a LIMS matters

2. Organizational, economic, and practical justifications for a LIMS

2.1 Organizational justifications: Why is it important?

2.1.1 Why is acquiring a LIMS important to meeting the goals of your lab?

2.1.2 What problems does the LIMS solve that currently affect your lab?

2.1.3 What operational, financial, and personnel improvements do you expect to see in your lab because of LIMS implementation?

2.1.4 Why is this important to the larger organization, as well as those outside the lab?

2.2 Economic considerations and justifications

2.2.1 On-premises vs. cloud LIMS

2.2.2 Common and add-on costs

2.2.3 Factors that can offset costs

2.3 Practical considerations and justifications

2.3.1 Tangible benefits

2.3.2 Intangible benefits

3. Gaining buy-in from management and other stakeholders

3.1 The importance of manager (and stakeholder) buy-in

3.2 Pitching the LIMS project

3.3 Developing a cheat sheet for management

4. Closing remarks

Appendix 1. LIMS Acquisition and Deployment Justification Workbook