How Koloma Solves the World’s Energy Crisis with QBench

What comes to mind when you hear “geochemistry lab”?

Is it an academic research lab in a major university? How about a government lab working with the EPA or the Department of Energy?

Koloma isn’t your average geochemistry lab. 

They’re lean, with around 10 people in the lab and 65 total employees, and they’re a far cry from dry academic work. Koloma is a natural hydrogen company with a world-changing mission. There are vast stores of clean hydrogen energy below the Earth’s surface. Koloma has developed the technology to identify, access, and explore clean energy to fuel a better world. 

What does it take to achieve that mission? Beyond top-tier technology, they needed a solution for data and sample management to replace notebooks and spreadsheets. Here’s the story of how Koloma found the right LIMS to equip its lab for life-changing work.

The Quest for a LIMS That Isn’t Just Built for Biotech

We spoke with Teresa, a geochemist at Koloma, to learn more about their search for the right LIMS.

When Teresa joined Koloma, the search for the right LIMS had just begun. But it wasn’t going so well. 

Many LIMS that the Koloma team evaluated were geared towards larger biotech or clinical labs. These are labs with specific workflows and vast IT resources, which many legacy LIMS vendors are happy to cater to. With the advancements in biotech and genomics recently, it’s not hard to see why – but where does that leave labs like Koloma?

“We’re in a unique situation because we’re a geochemistry lab, but we’re not an academic lab, though we are similar to one. And we’re not a huge operation; we just have about 10 lab employees. 

A lot of the vendors we reviewed seem to be designed for much bigger operations, and they offer a lot of excess things that we just didn’t need that we’d have to pay for anyway.”

Teresa Avila, Geochemist at Koloma

Koloma isn’t a medical lab, and they don’t have vast IT resources. They’re a leanstartup leading the way to find the first primary energy source since nuclear, and they needed a LIMS up for the task. 

“We could get in the guts with QBench”

Unlike legacy LIMS with on-prem installs, custom-coded configurations, and pre-configured workflows for the biotech and health industry, Teresa needed a LIMS that she and her team could configure to meet their exact and unique needs. 

She needed to configure workflows nimble enough to adjust as they gathered feedback from the field, and a LIMS that required minimal overhead to get started.

That’s where Teresa found QBench. After evaluating several vendors, she knew QBench was the LIMS for her team:

“We went with QBench in the end because it is so editable and can match exactly what we need. We can really get into the guts with QBench and move things around.

That flexibility really helped in making our decision. The fact that it is so configurable meant that we could set it up any way we wanted it, but going forward, whether requests come from inside the lab or our team out in the field, it’s easy to change things up as we need to.”

Teresa Avila, Geochemist at Koloma

What do “configurable” and “no-code” really mean, anyway?

For QBench, “configurability” isn’t just a buzzword. With QBench’s no-code tools, you can easily change workflows as your lab’s processes and requirements change. And we mean “no” code. For instance, with QBench you can…

• Transfer data into a worksheet with no-code file parsers
• Set up alerts and test re-runs in the event of a failure
• Transcribe batch and individual test data
• Generate pre-configured internal and external reports quickly

We take configurability seriously as a way to empower labs to customize their LIMS to their needs and not the other way around. Whether you need to adjust for an in-house lab or technicians in the field, you can build it with QBench.

See the Power of QBench LIMS For Yourself

Is your lab accomplishing life-changing work while struggling through the constraints of its tools and software?

Have you been frustrated by rigid legacy LIMS that require advanced IT resources or development work to modify to your changing workflows?

If you want a LIMS that is flexible enough to scale with you while empowering your team to get more done, check out QBench. 

Click the button below to schedule a free demo to discover how QBench can accelerate your lab’s work—so you, too, can focus on what matters most.