How Enterprise R&D Organizations Can Effectively Replace Excel with a LIMS

Most R&D organizations want to digitize their processes to improve collaboration, reduce data errors, and increase productivity with more modern software, such as a laboratory information management system (LIMS). However, the most challenging part of this journey is often switching out Microsoft Excel, the most common tool for most scientists.

Excel is an excellent general-purpose tool and works very well for a single scientist, but is not designed for large organizations with disparate groups that need to understand and replicate each other's work. But its power leads to scientists having workflows they’re comfortable with in the program that they find difficult to move to a LIMS or ELN. When we talk to organizations about why a LIMS implementation failed in the past, it’s often because they could not get users comfortable with the new workflows and reverted back to spreadsheets. This guide will help you avoid those mistakes and guide your team through migration.