Over 1,000 Clariant users across 35 global facilities rely on Uncountable's ELN.

Clariant & Uncountable — Video Transcript

‍

[0:00]

Thousand plus colleagues working across research, development, innovation, and sales, across 35 plus sites, are using Uncountable electronic lab notebook.

[0:11]

So in 2023, Clariant came to Uncountable with a problem. They had implemented an old school ELN that didn't do much and move them past the paper on glass state of the world. What they really wanted was to create a scientific backbone that connected their synthesis teams to their application teams, with their complicated synthesis workflows and their full formulations and testing all in one system that is structured, searchable, shareable, and scalable.

[0:44]

The biggest challenge we had with the old ELN vendor was, from a functionality perspective, the timelines. We did not get changes implemented within weeks, but actually within years. And if you are a user working on a daily basis in the lab with the software, and you don't feel that the software improves and you need to work with workarounds over and over again, you can be frustrated.

[1:09]

I'm glad to say that based on this better system of Uncountable, we already have been able to achieve much more than what we had intended in the original scope. We've transferred around 500,000 data points from Uncountable, all with the necessary attachments. We have all former users trained and expanded the pool, actually, of users from 600 users to 1,000 users globally. And initial surveys indicate that the users find the new system much more intuitive and user-friendly than the previous one.

[1:45]

During 2023, we did a competitive pilot where they thoroughly evaluated multiple solutions, including Uncountable. And Uncountable's flexibility and our willingness to adapt and conform the solution to their problem was really important and critical in their decision making. So throughout 2024, we went through a very aggressive rollout timing. They needed to get off this previous solution. And so thanks to the help of the great power users in Michael and Marcus and Yvonne and Ilka, we were able to aggressively roll out the platform. They set up a ton of global standard elements, a ton of very structured elements, but also ones that allowed for scientists to have the normal flexibility they were looking for.

[2:25]

And we ended up rolling it out over 800 people in less than nine or 10 months. And obviously, this wouldn't have been possible without folks like Giri and Daniella leading the charge from a project management standpoint, and folks like Cesar as well.

[2:38]

AI in itself can make us all a bit more productive, whether it's 5 or 15%. But everyone has access to this today, and it will soon be a level for all. The real difference that we make with AI is when we can use our data to accelerate our proprietary know-how usage. This is where we can dramatically improve what we do for our customers.

[3:02]

ELN provides the high-quality data foundation that, combined with AI, will allow us to innovate faster. Uncountable makes it as, from what we have seen with other suppliers when we evaluated several, as easy as is really feasible in our material space when you do inorganic materials, catalysts that you synthesize. That really is a platform that was standing out for us, how easy it is to bring in the data with little interaction, but still as clean, as structured as possible.

[3:35]

So what stuck out about Uncountable in the evaluation, and now also working with it, is the flexibility of data that you can pull in while you're planning or executing, documenting your experiments. We can build templates that are tailored to what the people actually require in their daily life, and they can, all of the time, using the normal user interface, steer which information they see at which time point.

[4:04]

And our major work is creating formulations in the lab, but we also cover chemical synthesis, where you do document a lot of parameters over time. You need a lot of columns and rows, and for both applications, for both ways of working, Uncountable is a big help here.

[4:24]

So we use the Uncountable tool for lab requests, not only for our technical organization, but we also pulled in our commercial organization so that they can directly open requests from customer for lab work. This creates a lot of speed in the organization, so they can faster communicate, faster work on the requests.

[4:47]

It's a harmonized system that we have established across all segments and across all regions. But the big benefit that we have with the Uncountable tool is that we can really configure it to the needs of the single organizations, which helped a lot, of course, for the user acceptance. And then we have also set up the interfaces to the LIMS system that allow lab users to send test requests to an analytics lab and receive the analytics results in their electronic lab notebook, all by a click of a button.

[5:20]

And the monthly user rate is 70% for the electronic lab notebook. This is fantastic when you consider that this is about twice as high as what we were able to achieve with the old ELN system.

[5:38]

So now that we have implemented Uncountable, we can make use of the data, of course. And one of the uses is we can very quickly find information about experiments that we have done already, which helps us to reduce the amount of double work. So it could be that formulation synthesis have been done in the past already, and you can just look back in these results, and only if there's really something new required, go back and do that again. But otherwise you can just rely on what people have documented in the past.

[6:10]

This was a big project with a lot of moving parts and an ambitious timeline. I think a big reason we were successful is because of the resources that Clariant dedicated. We had strong executive presence, IT support, project management, and department leads dedicated to learning the platform quickly. I think that level of buy-in, paired with the expertise from our team, situated us well.

[6:36]

The holy grail, of course, is the use of AI. But the power of AI depends on the data that the AI has available. By having a tool that by design creates structured digital experimental and analytical data, the potential uses are huge.

[6:57]

Our goal is to ensure that all colleagues working throughout Clariant's value chain, including synthesis and application development labs across our three business units, experience the tangible benefits of systematic data documentation through the Uncountable ELN platform. I'm proud of the team for what they have accomplished in this journey. It is truly exceptional teamwork by many colleagues across business units, IT, and other functions, together with our partner, Uncountable, that enabled us to roll out ELN to over 1,000 users across 35 plus sites globally in record time and with high levels of adoption.

[7:40]

This adoption is showing that we are delivering a solution that works, that is helping our colleagues in R&D. We've obviously accomplished a lot that both Clariant and Uncountable are very proud of in this partnership, but we still feel like we have a ton of room left to go. We know there's many things we want to improve upon, whether it's lab automation, potentially LIMS and QC, more development and use of the AI applications within Uncountable.

[8:03]

But we're very excited to engage on this and continue to partner with Clariant throughout their global rollout of a more scientific background type of system like Uncountable.

[8:11]

Now that we have successfully rolled out ELN, for the next phase, we will focus on fully leveraging the power of our data. Listening to our 1,000 plus users, we'll continue to improve ELN so that the solution brings what they need, what R&D labs need to collaborate and share their expertise. We'll advance our capabilities on advanced analytics with training on visualization and predictive modeling, empowering scientists to extract insights and accelerate decisions from the data that they are gathering.

[8:44]

Most importantly, we are creating a connected ecosystem that extends beyond ELN by integrating information from other areas and accelerating our ability to use it with AI. We are transforming how we innovate and deliver value to our customers.

[8:58]

For us, Uncountable is more than a vendor. We see them as partners.