Global Collaboration, Made Easy

One of the overarching values of Albert’s end-to-end R&D platform is the ability to effectively collaborate across teams, regardless of where scientists and teams are located—locally or globally.

Though with traditional, siloed lab processes and systems, the ability to tap into—and leverage insights, data, equipment and resources across teams or facilities is challenging. And more importantly, creates unnecessary barriers to expediting projects and working more effectively across the entire R&D organization.

Enabling Collaboration at Scale

At Albert we hear many stories from our customers on the impact our end-to-end R&D platform has on creating new efficiencies and expediting the innovation process.  Use cases have included being able to more easily find similar formulations and experiments or pulling in resources to support faster experimentation cycles.

In this particular use case, our customer shares how they were able to quickly innovate across borders and time zones even on the heels of the COVID lockdown where local facilities and onsite resources were not available.

Half a world away, a colleague steps in to solve the problem

Fortunately, Albert was already being used as their laboratory management platform which combines inventory management, formulation design, experiment management. As a result, Albert enabled the team to develop a quick solution to their problem. The team in Shanghai designed formulations and sent the tasks via Albert to their colleague in Montornés facility in Spain who also works in product development for surface treatments.

Partnering with the team in Spain, especially during the lockdown, was the perfect solution because of the team’s background in surface treatments and their understanding of the tasks needing to be completed.

“Since we could not access the labs, I sent the tasks with formulation and required tests in Albert. And halfway around the world, the Spain facility could experiment and share their results with us.”

Innovation expedited; results achieved, despite unprecedented barriers

The Shanghai team found the combination of technology and collaboration made the work not only easier but, in this case, made the work possible. They sent tasks with the formulation and required tests via Albert. Since the design process was also done in Albert, the receiving team in Spain had comprehensive processes inputs and documentation.

Halfway around the world from Shanghai, the team in Spain was able to leverage the data while keeping the team in Shanghai up to date every step of the way.

“With Albert’s help, we could use our resources more efficiently which allowed us to continue our laboratory work and minimize the impact of the pandemic.”

Having Albert as a cross-border collaboration tool continues to enable our customers to learn from and utilize other product developers around the world. On an ongoing basis, they use Albert to move tasks around the world and accelerate innovation, shrinking the time to market by maximizing its global footprint of research and product development centers.

“With everything going digital these days, it makes sense for us to do the same. And Albert is a giant step in the right direction because I can access information from my colleagues in Spain, Germany, or the US at the click of a button and share new updates or solutions that might not have worked for me but could be the answer they’re looking for, at the speed of internet.”

How Albert enables efficient design before approaching the bench

• Jumpstart materials selections with automated recommendations from more than 40,000 commercial raw materials
• Leverage parameter groups to break lab processes into discrete steps with structured inputs
• Link workflows to test method standards like ASTM, ISO, DIN, UL, and others
• Design formulations with an understanding of cost and safety profiles before approaching the bench

Seamless collaboration—regardless of location—via Albert

With Albert, expertise and resources are no longer limited to the people or equipment in your lab. Leveraging the insights or support needed to expedite a project or fill in gaps is easily achieved with Albert where information and updates can be exchanged back and forth across teams, labs, continents, and time zones at a click of a button.

About Albert

Every day thousands of scientists across 30+ countries rely on Albert—an end-to-end R&D platform—to accelerate innovation. Built for chemistry and materials science, Albert’s cloud-based, API-forward platform enables our customers to be more competitive and delivers hard-dollar ROI.