What even is digital transformation? I don’t know about you, but I hear it everywhere. It’s easy to just write it off as a trend or hot topic of the moment when we've heard something so much. But to do so with this would be a grave mistake. Write off digital transformation, and you could set yourself up for higher costs, lower efficiency, and, ultimately, loss of business as your customers go to labs whose processes are smoother, quicker, more transparent, and more reliable.
For the past few decades, technology has been advancing at breakneck speeds, and it only seems to be getting faster. Especially with the advent of Artificial Intelligence, it’s impossible to know exactly where we are headed. We know that harnessing the power of technology - the earlier, the better - gives labs a competitive edge as the quality of their work increases and the time taken to do it decreases.
Analyzing Your Status
What is your current digital transformation status? That’s a loaded question. What I mean is, how comfortable are you with harnessing the technology available to you as a calibration lab? Stop and think about all of your current processes now. How many are manual, how many are digital, and how many are digital but still quite clunky? Are you aware of what’s available, or do you feel overwhelmed with moving to a digital way of working?
For many labs, the extent of their digital transformation is using Excel to manage the calibration and generate certificates. Many labs that have come to us at Metquay haven’t even used that option to its full extent!
We are here to help. Let’s look at ways to transform your lab digitally and how Metquay implements them.
Modernizing Calibration Data Sheets
In my view, this is the single most impactful item to focus on if you want to move into a more modern way of doing work. If you’re already using Excel in its fullest form - using it to calculate uncertainties and tolerances and using lookups and expressions - then you’ll benefit greatly from the endlessly customizable Metquay worksheets feature.
In worksheets, you can do everything that you can do in Excel, and then some! Create lookups to other worksheets in order to calculate uncertainties? Check! Write expressions to compare the uncertainty to a CMC (in a separate worksheet) and report the correct number? Check! We have even had customers add in checks and balances for their technicians to make the calibration process more foolproof and increase the quality and reliability of their work.
If I went on listing all of the awesome customizations and features available in worksheets, we’d be here forever. Let’s move on.
Pen and Paper No More: Metquay’s Offline Module
Most calibration labs offer onsite calibration, and for many of them, there is no option but to use pen and paper to manually capture data. Then, when they get back to the lab, they enter the data into their calibration management system or Excel spreadsheet. While the process works “just fine” for some labs, it opens them up to a second opportunity for error, and it costs technicians valuable time. But Metquay offers something unique: an offline calibration module.
With Metquay Offline, labs have access to a downloadable version of Metquay. Everything that technicians need for jobs is in that downloadable version, and they’re able to open works, complete them, and generate certificates while onsite. When they are back at the lab (or online anywhere), they simply sync their work back to Metquay Online.
Savings: time, money, errors. It’s a win, win, win!
System Integrations: Advantages
A program for scheduling. A program for bookkeeping. A program for shipping. And on and on. While calibration is the bread and butter of your business, a lot goes on behind the scenes in order to make that possible. Anywhere that you’re able to integrate these systems is a huge help in many ways:
Consistency: With integration, information is the same across systems, which reduces error and confusion.
Time (money!): Eliminate the need to double, triple, or even quadruple enter data into multiple systems. Simply have APIs in place to pass information back and forth between programs.
Communication: Reduce communications required to get the information to everyone who needs it, and reduce the chances of miscommunication. This can be related to your employees, but it can also be related to your customers! Metquay offers standard integrations that alert your customers to their instruments coming due for calibration, to the instrument’s calibration status when it’s at your lab, and even an integration that allows customers to have 24/7 digital access to their certificates. There’s no need for your customers to call or email asking about status or for another copy of their certificate; it’s all at their fingertips.
System Integrations: Examples
ERP: An ERP like Odoo helps you handle everything from inventory to sales orders. When you integrate an ERP with Metquay, a sales order created in Odoo will be pushed to Metquay, where that sales order can be converted into a calibration work. When the work is done, Metquay is able to push that back to Odoo so that the certificate number can be updated and the customer can be notified.
Bookkeeping: Quickbooks is one of the first names that comes to mind when I think of accounting software. It allows you to manage all of your invoices and sales formats, as well as track your customers’ payment statuses and more. Metquay even offers the option to only load customer certificates to the portal once Metquay has confirmed payment via Quickbooks.
Figure 1: a simple Metquay x QuickBooks integration flow
Scheduling: With so many moving parts, scheduling may be one of the most challenging parts of your business. Metquay allows you to integrate with your existing calendar, like Google Calendar or Outlook. Metquay uses an API call to gather availability, hours, and current schedule from the calendar and then looks for available technicians within Metquay to schedule work. You have the option to filter technicians who are available by their expertise in any given area, so that you always have the most experienced technicians on the job first.
Shipping: Print the label. Manually enter the tracking information. Send the tracking information to your customer. Check the tracking information yourself. How time consuming! By integrating Metquay with a shipping aggregator, you’re able to use your preferred method, whether USPS, FedEx, UPS, or another provider, to print labels and packing slips, track shipments, and even automatically provide shipping details to your customers via the customer portal and all of this happens in one place.
CRM: Integration with your existing CRM, like Hubspot, allows customer information to be shared between the two applications so that you always have the most up-to-date information about them. This can be especially useful when we consider automatic email alerts sent out by Metquay for calibration reminders.
Timelines and Budgets and Goals: Oh My!
You may also consider a project management software integration to round out the ideal calibration integration suite. Digital transformation can be a very overwhelming process, and knowing exactly how it will look can really help. Project management software will help you track:
Goals: Are you looking to just get started in digitally transforming your business, or are you all-in? Do you have some processes in place that can be kept but need refining? Really nailing down your goals and getting them into software will help narrow down your scope.
Timeline: Timeline (and budget, below) largely depend on your goals. If you’re a small lab just looking to get started in digital transformation with the very basics (calibration management software with basic integrations for email alerts and a customer portal), you are probably just looking at about a month to live, if you have a team dedicated and ready to take it on. With a few integrations or for a larger company, more processes will need changing and the implementation becomes slightly more complex, so 3-6 months is more likely. It’s important to remember that since digital transformation is a huge undertaking, the more dedicated resources you have to it, the quicker it will move.
Budget: Let’s imagine you’re a small calibration lab doing a basic transformation. look to spend $5,000. Add a few more integrations on top of that, like scheduling and shipping, and you should plan on spending about 50% more. As with any project, the larger the scope, the more expensive the project gets.
Milestones: On your digital transformation journey, there are several key milestones that need to be tracked. In order to be effective, you should have, at the most basic, the following milestones:
Goal identification and project mapping, which should include regular intervals of project meeting reviews
Basic installation
Data migration
Integration installation
UAT
Training
Go Live
Integrating a project management software will allow you to take the above information in one place to keep everything running smoothly and to see where potential issues may cause a delay or budget increase.
Last, But Certainly Not Least: Specifications
One more integration that I’d like to highlight is the 'calibration specification' integration. In creating this feature, Metquay has transformed and simplified the way that data sheets are built, which has the potential to reduce the time taken both to create the initial worksheet templates as well as reduce the time taken for the calibration process.
In this type of integration, a master worksheet containing functions, ranges, tolerances, uncertainties, and test points is used to prefill data according to each instrument. During the work process, the technician has to enter which instrument and function they’re calibrating, and all of the specifications populate according to how you need them, whether it’s a manufacturer specification, a customer specification, or another spec altogether. As data analytics and predictive intelligence grow, this solution has incredible potential to evolve into something even more transformative.
What Else is Possible?
According to a report by The Business Research Company, the calibration industry is set to grow to $9.91 billion by 2029. They largely attribute this growth to digital transformation:
“The growth in the forecast period can be attributed to rapid digital transformation in manufacturing, expansion of aerospace and defense industries, the emergence of smart cities and infrastructure, renewable energy sector growth, and increased demand in healthcare and medical devices. Major trends in the forecast period include remote and on-demand calibration services, automation and robotics in calibration, data analytics and predictive maintenance, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) calibration solutions, and integration of calibration management software.”
There are endless possibilities in the coming years, and Metquay remains committed to being your partner in digital transformation. By keeping our collective finger on the pulse of what’s happening in automation, data analytics, and AI, you can count on us to bring you the most cutting-edge solutions available.
Let’s Wrap Up.
As a calibration lab, it’s crucial to stay at the forefront of technological advancement, and you deserve calibration management software that is committed to the same. To learn more about what we’ve already done at Metquay, where we are headed, or explore custom solutions for your unique needs, we’d love to hear from you at consulting@metquay.com.
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