| Lancaster Continues Growth |
| Cover Story | |
| By Kirsten Srinivasan | |
| Sunday, 31 July 2005 | |
 Lancaster Laboratories provides commercial testing and onsite staff. Lancaster Laboratories, a major player in the pharmaceutical and environmental testing industries, is a specialized testing lab offering analytical services in chemistry and microbiology on a contract basis. Its clients include most of the top-20 companies in the pharmaceutical industry, he explains. "We have a very nice business in pharmaceutical analysis and we provide service to the European market and beyond," he says. "It can be challenging to bring samples from that far away, but sometimes foreign companies are looking for approval from the FDA and want to use a lab that operates under FDA scrutiny." Lancaster has one of the largest single-site commercial testing labs in the United States and is well known in the industries it serves. The company also provides scientific staffing onsite at client locations. The company recently received the results of a biennial third-party survey sent to users of contract services in the pharmaceutical industry. Neumann says the results ranked Lancaster highest compared to its list of competitors in terms of scientific expertise, responsiveness, pricing, sample turnaround time and overall ease of use. "I pride myself in trying to be very service oriented to make sure our staff understands we're in business for our clients. I want them to know that each of us has a role in taking care of our clients and every client is important," Neumann says. "I think our world has lost sight of good service. I don't think there is a substitute. There is no substitute for treating people the way we want to be treated ourselves. We also want to be sure our clients know that we will get their testing done correctly so they don't have to worry about the work we're doing for them." Neumann says Lancaster is a conservative company when it comes to growth, but this strategy has paid off overall. "We've had the opportunity to take on new types of work and new business ventures within Lancaster Labs, but we've never done that when we couldn't afford to without financial risk," he states. "Part of being financially strong is being a little conservative in how you invest the money you have. We could have taken more risks and grown faster, but we have a targeted growth rate and it keeps us under control. The goal is to continue to add new services when the market analysis says we should do that, but to do our homework before we invest our hard-earned money." The company is in the beginning stages of building new biopharm laboratories dedicated to testing large-molecule pharmaceutical products. It has been cautiously building new lab functions and is careful to make sure its services are high quality from the start, Neumann explains. "I don't like to sell what I don't feel we do really well," he says. "Lancaster is built on doing it well. We are not comfortable putting [services] out prematurely. "The temptation is there to grow the business more quickly when there is clear potential and opportunity in the marketplace for pharmaceutical outsourcing. It's costly and it takes time to set up a new testing service business and bring it to the level of quality that Lancaster Labs expects from itself. It requires a significant management focus that can detract from the focus on the current business operations. It can have a costly impact on the breadwinning business. It is rather like handing a juggler who comfortably manages to keep three balls in the air a fourth ball. He often drops all four, not just the new one." Neumann says the company is always striving to improve. "We've been running a lab since 1961," he says. "We think we are pretty good at it, but we've hired a group of consultants who don't know anything about labs – they know about processes. We as lab people look at the company from a technical perspective about how to do techniques more efficiently. These people are looking at us from a completely different perspective. Our world today has become more and more cost sensitive, and we need to continue to look at ourselves critically to see how we can continue to improve the management of our costs." Family Friendly Neumann experienced some culture shock when he first joined Lancaster Labs because of its family-friendly atmosphere, he states. "I worked at a pharmaceutical company in New Jersey for many years, and my family got to see the inside of my workplace once on a Saturday during those years," he explains. "The first day I came to work at Lancaster Labs, I walked into the cafeteria and there were mothers eating with their young children. My gut reaction was, 'You can't do that,' and then I thought, 'Why can't you?' That's what you see here – families, husbands and wives working here. They may have lunch here with their children in the cafeteria or outside in the picnic area." Lancaster offers subsidized on-site child daycare and elder care for its employees' families. "We supported childcare well before it became available at most companies," he says. "More than 50 percent [of employees] are women and we tend to have a younger work force. These women are going to have children, and we would like them back. You invest in people and train them, and we understand that it's really nice to have your children close by." The company has won several awards recognizing its efforts, including 11 from Working Mother. The state of Pennsylvania also named it one of the 50 best places to work in the state in 2000, 2001 and 2004. |
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