[labnetwork] Recommendations for commercially available ERP-type SW packages

[Thomas Lohman]

>      1. Database for storing names, credentials and affiliations of
>         current and past lab members
>      2. Database for tracking of lab user invoices and balances owed per
>         PI (accounts receivable)
>      3. Database for detailed tracking of operations costs which are
>         assigned to a specific category of expense (ie., consumables,
>         repairs, spare parts, upgrades, etc.) which are in turn assigned
>         to a specific tool. This would enable the generation of detailed
>         annual cost of operations reports, including total annual cost
>         per tool, which could in turn be used to adjust equipment access
>         rates as needed.

Hi,

We also handle the equivalents of #1 and #2 "in house" as part of the 
overall LMS but don't have anything integrated in that handles #3. 
Additionally, there was interest in a "database of all MTL" - this would 
not just include fab users but everyone else affiliated with MTL whether 
outside or inside - to be used for various things such as e-mailings to 
certain sub-groups, etc.  We briefly looked at a product called 
BatchBook but ultimately it didn't really fit with what we were looking 
for.  You'll probably want to define more of the details on exactly what 
you want to use this data for (e.g. what will all the user data be 
collected for - emailings, reports, integration with the core LMS for 
authorization checks based on credentials, etc.) before determining what 
kind of commercial software may fit.

The other thing to consider with regard to #1 is that if the data is 
meant to be manually entered/updated, how much can you live with 
incorrect data since things can get out of date fairly fast.  For 
example, if one of the things you'd like to track is campus affiliation 
- grad student, undergraduate, staff, visitor, etc. - then you're best 
bet is to sync this from your university's systems and simply keep a 
cache of it.  There is also the issue of time and whether you want to 
keep all history for each user (e.g. you don't just want to know if a 
user is a Student, you want to know that they were a graduate student in 
2014 and then in 2016 came back to use the lab as a postdoc).  This 
means basically tracking all of the associated user data with date/time 
stamps on each piece.  So, depending on the answers to various 
questions, the software needs may or may not be straight forward.


--tom