Leakages are the root cause of instability in business finance. In a laboratory business, there is a particular profit margin planned every month, through which a potential ROI is estimated. However, in a system that has leakages, the financial flow of your business remains disturbed affecting the profits and the ROI. Hence, as decision-makers, it is essential that we know what leakages exactly are, and how we must tackle them to maintain a healthy business flow in your company.
What are leakages and how to identify them?
Leakages are mainly the unaccounted gaps in the management system that directly affects business costs. When untraced, they can be a potential threat to the organization’s revenue generation program. This is why you must identify them and plug them.
We must utilize technology as an advantage in our lab business to identify these leakages. A lab information system that allows end-to-end management & tracking of lab operations, finance, and inventory is necessitated.
Such a system allows you to
- Track your financial in-flows and out-flows
- Trace test processes
- Maintain sample status
- Keep a check on the machines (analyzers)
- Evaluate stock movements
- Control discounts
What are the types of leakages in lab management?
The types of leakages that usually exist in your pathology lab are –
- Financial leakages: Due to mismatching numbers
- Operational leakages that affect turnaround time
- Sample Management errors that affect costs
- Manual errors that call for redos of tasks
- Quality errors that affect performance & productivity
Types of leakages that affect lab’s ROI
Every type of error that hampers cost, time, and productivity in your lab is responsible to impact the ROI.
Following are the examples of leakages that affect the lab’s ROI
- Untraceable & uncontrolled discount management program
- Machines/Analyzers that consume reagents more than expected affecting test results and creating a leakage in the inventory
- Sample mishandling and loss
- Bad debts that are hard to trace and fix
- Loss of handwritten bills and documents during a business transaction
Inventory wastage due to lack of tracking on expiry & near expiry stock
Best steps to cutdown leakages
Some of the best practices that can help your lab cut down revenue leakages are:
- Automate your operations & finance
- Ensure your LIMS offers sample automation and tracking
- Enable user control and activity logs
- Use standardized processes
- Set controls on discounts and approvals
Track overall finance & operations with MIS, analytics & dashboards
