ELN and the Paperless Lab discusses, among other topics, the return on investment in implementing an ELN.
I had a free minute so I figured I would use it to follow this article's model for calculating the cost and producing the ROI for an ELN implementation. My guess is that this would be useful for a LIMS implementation as well.
Key
- Software licensing cost (per user) = SLC
- Number of Users = Users
- Per License Support cost (percentage) = SUPPC
- Validation Staff Hourly Rate = VALH
- Average Time to Validate Item = AVGVAL
- System Function = FUNC
- Implementation Consultant = IC
- Implemenation Consultant Hourly Rate = ICR
- Laboratory Analyst Hourly Rate = LARATE
- Implementation Window (in hours per quarter) = IMPQ
- Average Time to Log in a Sample Manually = TLS
- Average Time to Log in a Sample Manually in LIMS = TLSR
- Average Samples Logged in Per Day = SAMPDAY
Licensing
So for basic licensing costs if I have:
SLC = $1,000 per seat
Users = 50
SUPPC = 25% of the per seat cost
Licensing Cost = SLC*Users+(SLC*SUPPC)
Example: $1000*50+($1000*50*0.25) = $62,500
Validation
For validation costs if
Users = 4
VALH = $25.50
AVGVAL = 1/2 hour
FUNC = 80 items
Ballpark Validation Cost = 4*VALH*AVGVAL*FUNC
Example: 4*$23.50*0.5*80 = $4,080
Hardware
Assuming here that everybody already has client machines to run the software and all that is needed is a server to host the application:
Server = $5,000
Routers = $800
Example Total hardware cost = $5,800
Implementation
Assuming we are using two implementation consultants that will be responsible for end user and IT staff training as well as integrating the system with 3rd party systems (only out-of-the-box integration tools are assumed),
IC = 2
ICR = $100/hr
IMPQ = 480
Example:
IC*ICR*IMPQ = $96,000
Grand Total
$168,380.00
Looks like a lot, but none of this actually computes ROI. ROI stands for Return on Investment. You should be able to ascertain how long it will take you to obtain that return. In order to understand that we actually need to take a look at how must things are presently costing the lab:
TLS = 1 hour
SAMPDAY = 20
LARATE = $50/hr
Daily Cost to Log In Samples/Orders Manually = LARATE*TLS*SAMPDAY = $1000/day
Weekly Cost (assuming 5 day work week) = $1000*5 = $5,000
Monthly = $5,000*4 = $20,000
Yearly = $20,000*12 = $240,000
Now with the LIMS:
TLSR = 0.10 hour
SAMPDAY = 20
LARATE = $50/hr
Daily Cost to Log in Samples/Orders in the ELN/LIMS = LARATE*TLSR*SAMPDAY = $100
Weekly Cost = $100*5 = $500
Monthly = $500*4 = $2,000
Yearly = $2,000*12 = $24,000
Hmmm, this is good news for LIMS/ELN implementations that are relatively small. As you can see, it costs ten times as much to continue manually logging in samples/orders into this environment. Even if we spend $168,000 to implement a system that just logs in samples it will apparently pay for itself in a single year.
Go BackCitation: Testing ROI Model. (2014). Retrieved Thu Apr 19 15:11:39 2018, from http://www.limsexpert.com/cgi-bin/bixchange/bixchange.cgi?pom=limsexpert3;iid=readMore;go=1406566089