In many small biopharma companies, scientists wear multiple hats: designing experiments, running assays, and just as importantly, managing the day-to-day mechanics of the lab. When the lab operations workflow is inefficient, time is lost, experiments falter, and momentum stalls.
Our Virtual Lab Managers work directly with scientific teams to streamline operations, diversify their supply chain, and save both time and money. Here are key strategies we have learned work best to help R&D teams operate more efficiently and sustain momentum.
1. Establish supplier and procurement foundations early
Before you’re under the gun to place an urgent order, make sure you have your procurement infrastructure in place.
- Pro Tip A: Don’t default to a single supplier
It’s easy to pick one trusted supplier for all your purchases. However, relying solely on one supplier can result in paying more for lab supplies and unexpected delays due to backordered products. Instead, have 2–3 active suppliers for key consumables.
In practice: maintain a short supplier-comparison table (vendor, item, lead-time, price, service) for your top 10-20 recurring items. This way you can quickly pivot to an alternative supplier if you run into delays.
- Pro Tip B: Create a “generic credit application” to set up supplier accounts
Having a pre-filled credit application with billing/shipping addresses, FEIN/DUNS number, contact information and banking and trade references, can save you time when onboarding new suppliers. This means when an urgent need arises, you don’t get held up in paperwork.
2. Organize orders, invoices, and documentation like you document your experiments
Just as you would maintain a lab notebook to track the steps and observations of an experiment, you need analogous “lab bookkeeping” for orders.
- Pro Tip A: Record minimum order/receiving information
The following fields should be captured at a minimum: order date, supplier, item description/catalog number, PO/confirmation number, order subtotal, tracking information, whether items were received and where they are stored.
For small labs, a simple spreadsheet may suffice initially, but as you scale, you should consider procurement software.
- Pro Tip B: Keep invoices stored in a centralized location
Be proactive by centralizing invoice filing (e-inbox folder, shared drive, spreadsheet or accounting software). In smaller R&D operations, one person (or a rotating assignment) should own “accounts payable for the lab” to ensure continuity.
3. Build negotiating power and cost visibility
Budget constraints are often sharp in small biopharma. Every dollar saved on consumables, reagents or equipment is an extra dollar you can allocate to experiment or scale. It pays to understand how suppliers work and to negotiate actively.
- Pro Tip A: Understand the supplier sales model and pricing levers
The publicly-listed “list price” is almost always inflated in scientific consumables and lab managers should avoid paying list price for common consumables.. Become familiar with state and national life science associations, who can offer members significant savings across a wide variety of suppliers. Get to know your local sales representative and ask about new lab discounts, often offered to new or growing biotechs. Key areas to ask about: shipping, lead-time (delays cost you salary + downtime), product quality (cheap = poor performance leading to possible failed experiments).
- Pro Tip B: Keep your ordering cadence predictable
Suppliers often reward labs that have recurring demand, standing orders, or predictable buying patterns. If you can commit to a larger quarterly or bi-annual purchase for key consumables, you may be in a stronger negotiating position.
4. Create a lightweight operational checklist for your scientist-operators
Since your scientists are balancing experiments with operational tasks, a simple, predictable framework will help stay efficient without burnout.
Here’s a sample operational checklist (tailor for your lab):
- Review consumables usage monthly: what’s running low, what did we over-order?
- Update “approved vendor” list for key reagents (≥2 vendors per critical item)
- Log each order with the fields: date, vendor, item#, PO, tracking# or expected delivery, receiving status
- Archive invoice/receipt within 7 days in shared drive (tagged by PO number and project code)
- Annually renegotiation review: top 5 vendors, ask about discounts, compare alternate offers
- Quarterly cost review: shipping, delays, failed experiment cost from reagent quality or unplanned downtime
- Representative assigned as “lab ops lead” each week; rotates between scientists so ops doesn’t fall off while someone is deep in experiments
5. Foster an “ops-aware” culture in the R&D team
Operational excellence isn’t just about tools, it’s also about mindset. For small biopharma companies where scientists are doing double duty, embedding a few cultural habits helps.
- Transparency: Share procurement/invoice dashboards with the team. When scientists understand that a shipment delay means lab downtime (and budget impact), they may flag operational risks sooner.
- Accountability: Rotate the lab ops lead assignment, so the burden doesn’t fall on one person indefinitely.
- Continuous Improvement: At the end of each quarter, conduct a lessons learned session to assess the reliability of vendors, what invoices got lost, what experiments got delayed due to shipping. Use this to refine the checklist.
- Integration with science planning: When a scientist plans an experiment with a new vendor/reagent, include a mini-ops step: “confirm lead-time, alternative vendor, shipping cost, payment terms”.
Conclusion
In a small biopharma lab where scientists are also operators, efficiency, while maximizing savings, is essential. By establishing procurement and vendor foundations early, organizing orders/invoices methodically, negotiating from a position of knowledge, implementing a light operational checklist, and cultivating an ops-aware culture, labs can control costs, and free up more time for science.
Your next step: pick one of the six checklist bullets above and start this week. For example, open your top 10 consumable orders in the last quarter, map who the vendors were, check whether you had alternate suppliers, and whether you logged everything in one place. That five-minute audit could unlock greater momentum for the next 6 months.
Explore our Virtual Lab Manager service and reach out for more information: info.scienceexchange.com/vlm