The Hidden Cost of Lab Administration

Ordering supplies, sourcing reagents, chasing deliveries, and reconciling invoices are all essential to running a lab. Yet these operational processes often rely on manual systems that pull scientists away from the bench.

While these activities are necessary, their cumulative impact can significantly slow research productivity.

The operational work behind every experiment

Experiments rarely begin when a scientist steps into the lab. They begin much earlier, with the logistical preparation required to obtain the right materials.

Researchers must ensure the correct reagents, consumables, and equipment are available before an experiment can start. In many laboratories, that preparation involves a series of manual steps such as:

1. Searching supplier websites for product information
2. Comparing availability and pricing
3. Entering product details into spreadsheets or purchasing systems
4. Requesting internal approvals for orders
5. Tracking deliveries and resolving issues
6. Confirming invoices and purchase records

These processes can involve multiple people across procurement, finance, and lab teams.

Why procurement often becomes a scientist’s responsibility

In early-stage research organizations, administrative processes are typically simple. A small team may manage ordering through spreadsheets or shared documents, with scientists placing orders directly with suppliers.

This approach works when the number of purchases is small and the team is tightly coordinated. However, as research programs grow, operational complexity increases. Laboratories begin to manage:

• Larger volumes of reagents and consumables
• More suppliers and product catalogs
• Additional compliance and safety requirements
• More structured approval and finance processes

Without integrated systems, information can become fragmented across spreadsheets, supplier websites, and internal tools. Scientists and lab managers often become the people connecting these systems together.

Over time, operational tasks quietly become part of the scientific role.

The cumulative impact on research productivity

The statistic that scientists can lose up to 20% of their research time to administrative tasks highlights the scale of the issue.

In practical terms, that can represent one full day per week spent on operational work rather than scientific research. At the organizational level, the impact becomes even more visible.

In one biotech example featured by MyAmici, replacing spreadsheet-based purchasing workflows with a centralized procurement system resulted in 89 working days saved in a single year across sourcing and purchasing activities.

Those savings came from reducing manual tasks such as supplier searches, order coordination, and procurement administration.

For growing research organizations, reclaiming that time can significantly improve operational efficiency.

The Time Thief Breakdown

See where the hours go in our infographic on lab administration.

Download infographic

Why manual procurement processes persist

Despite these challenges, many laboratories continue to rely on manual procurement workflows.

Spreadsheets are easy to implement and flexible enough to manage early purchasing activity. But as labs expand, they can introduce new challenges.

For example, multiple users may edit the same spreadsheet simultaneously, creating confusion over the most recent version of an order. Product codes and descriptions may be copied manually from supplier websites, increasing the risk of errors.

These small inefficiencies accumulate as purchasing volumes increase.

A shift in how labs think about operations

In recent years, research organizations have begun paying more attention to operational efficiency in the lab environment.

As biotech companies grow, they increasingly recognize that administrative friction can slow research progress just as much as technical bottlenecks.

Reducing manual procurement work is not simply an efficiency improvement. It is also a way to ensure that highly trained scientists spend their time where it has the greatest impact.

The goal is not to eliminate operational processes, they are essential to safe and compliant lab environments. Instead, it is to reduce the amount of manual coordination required to run them.

Restoring time for scientific work

The core purpose of laboratory operations is to support research. When procurement, purchasing, and inventory processes become streamlined, scientists can spend less time managing logistics and more time advancing experiments.

For many research organizations, reclaiming even a fraction of the 20% of time currently lost to administrative work could significantly increase the pace of discovery.