An Enterprise Electronic Lab Notebook: Designed by Scientists

To be successful, electronic lab notebooks (ELNs) must meet the day-to-day needs of the scientists who use it. This is especially critical for enterprise ELNs designed for use across scientific disciplines. Symyx Notebook is the result of the company?s broad experience developing ELNs for large, global corporations over the course of 15 years. Close collaboration with numerous pharmaceutical companies has been essential in understanding the workflows and use cases encountered by scientists in their daily activities. ?The key really is asking scientists what they actually need and then partnering to build that core functionality into the system correctly right from the beginning, rather than giving scientists what you think they want and then hoping for good results,? said Stan Piper, Senior Scientist, at Pfizer Inc, which was one of seven companies that has partnered with Symyx on the development of its Notebook. ?It?s a long haul process that requires constant feedback over many iterations.? Essential to success, according to Piper, is choosing a vendor that ?agrees on your vision of the product?which is not always as easy as it would seem?and who has the capacity to partner with a large organisation effectively to build an out-ofthe- box, fully supported solution. For us, Symyx was that partner.?