Special Report: Making no sense to buy
Given that many projects are relatively short, at one to three years, it makes no sense to buy.
Funding is an essential but increasingly hard-won requirement for research and innovation projects. Cost justification and close monitoring of expenditure can create difficulties, even where a wise use of funds is felt to be paramount for successful project completion. Many projects require investment in new laboratories, laboratory instrumentation, software, and staff, all of which eats heavily into the available funds: a solution to this is rental.
Increasingly there are more rental opportunities; laboratories, instrumentation, contract staff. What is not common is the rental of software. We were one of the first companies to introduce the concept, over three years ago, and we have seen growing acceptance of rental in all laboratory sectors.
Initially smaller companies and organisations saw rental as a way of being able to afford a LIMS, then larger organisations recognised it as a way to conserve their working capital for business development: now the research sector can benefit from rental to conserve precious funding. Given that many projects are relatively short, at one to three years, it makes no sense to buy.
A major benefit of our rental scheme is that there is no formal contract: all we require is that a standing order or BACS agreement is put in place for the monthly rental fee. When the project is completed, the payments cease. All project data stored in the LIMS is our client’s intellectual property and can still be accessed. The same applies if a project is halted or terminated.
Under our rental scheme the software is installed on client’s own hardware infrastructure so that the security of their data is under their own control. The rental scheme is available from just £266 (~ €323) per month and includes full support.
Projects
The project manager enables the laboratory to group its work under various categories. These are often referred to as projects, but local nomenclature may vary and so the names and meanings of the project fields can be tailored to suit the laboratory needs.
http://www.twofold-software.com/site/qualoupe/qualoupe-functionality/#projects
Stability
Many organisations need to perform stability trials on products, where samples of the product are stored in different conditions and for differing periods of time. These samples are automatically scheduled by the stability manager application and will join the work flow exactly as all other samples.
http://www.twofold-software.com/site/qualoupe/qualoupe-functionality/#stability
Files
Throughout all of the Qualoupe applications you can attach files, which may be documents, spreadsheets, images, spectra, basically any type of file.
http://www.twofold-software.com/site/qualoupe/qualoupe-functionality/#files
Clive Collier
Managing Director
Twofold Software
tel: +44 (0)1844 208598
http://www.twofold-software.com/