Online Access to Laboratory Reports with a Customer Portal

For a laboratory, the job does not end when the report or certificate is signed. Getting the document to the customer, finding it again when needed and being able to show that it is genuine are all part of the process. In most laboratories this stage is handled by phone and email, and it takes more time than expected. In this article we look at the benefits a customer portal brings to the laboratory and to the customer, the security expectations involved, calibration tracking and document verification.

Phone and email traffic over reports

Customers usually call the laboratory or send an email to find out whether their reports are ready. Requests for a document that has already been delivered are also common, because the file may have been lost on the customer's side or the contact person may have changed. Each request means someone in the laboratory has to stop what they are doing, look for the document and send it again. Tasks that look small on their own add up to a serious burden in busy periods. On top of that, it is not always possible to know whether a file sent by email has reached the right person.

This traffic is one of a laboratory's hidden costs. Nobody plans it as a separate item of work, yet attention that is interrupted throughout the day slows technical work down and raises the likelihood of error. On the customer's side, waiting for an answer causes dissatisfaction, especially when the document is needed urgently.

What does a customer portal offer the laboratory?

A customer portal is an area where customers can reach their own documents online. When completed reports are available in the portal, the customer does not need to call the laboratory to ask for a document. Laboratory staff spend less time on repeated sending and can focus on their actual work. Because documents are provided from a single source, the risk of sending the customer an outdated or wrong file is reduced too. The Testing Laboratory Software that BYK Yazılım offers for construction materials laboratories includes a customer portal for this purpose.

A portal works well only when the laboratory's own internal flow is in order. In the Testing Laboratory Software the report flow consists of the pending, review, approval, e-signature and completed stages, and the person who prepares a report is different from the one who approves it. Once a report has completed these stages, it becomes accessible to the customer.

Benefits for the customer

For the customer, the clearest benefit is being able to reach a document at the moment it is needed. When a laboratory report is required on a construction site, during an audit or outside working hours, there is no need to wait for the laboratory to respond. In the customer portal of the Testing Laboratory Software, customers can view and download their completed reports. They can also request a conformity report through the portal. The need to look up a test report is met without any back-and-forth correspondence.

The security expectation: everyone sees only their own documents

The first condition of offering documents online is that each customer can access only their own documents. In the customer portal of the Testing Laboratory Software, customers see only their own reports. Only completed reports appear in the portal, and reports still going through review and approval are not opened to the customer. On the laboratory side there are role and permission definitions and an audit trail, so it is possible to follow who created or changed a record and when.

Laboratories evaluating software that offers a portal would do well to ask about these points openly. Which documents the customer can see, at which stage a document becomes visible and who is authorized for what inside the laboratory are questions to clarify before deciding. Trust depends not only on the document being correct, but also on it being offered to the right person.

Customer tracking and reminders on the calibration side

In calibration laboratories the customer relationship does not end with the delivery of the certificate, because devices have to be calibrated again at certain intervals. Customers often find it hard to keep track of the calibration dates of their devices themselves. KALDATA includes customer calibration tracking, so the laboratory can see the devices whose calibration is coming up and remind the customer in good time. This reduces the customer's risk of working with a device past its due date and helps the laboratory plan its workload in advance. Completed certificates are delivered to the customer by email after the e-signature stage.

Document verification

Being able to show that a report or certificate was really issued by the laboratory in question is as important as the document itself. In the Testing Laboratory Software, reports can be verified with a QR code, so the person holding the document can scan the code and check the report. For accredited calibration certificates, TBDS comes into play. TBDS is the Document Verification System of TÜRKAK, the Turkish Accreditation Agency, and it allows documents issued by accredited bodies to be verified through this system. KALDATA works in integration with TBDS, and the related operations are carried out from within the software.

The ability to verify is also valuable for third parties who receive the document from the laboratory's customer. An auditor examining the document, or the customer's own customer, can check that it is genuine without calling the laboratory. This in turn reduces the verification questions that reach the laboratory.

Conclusion

A customer portal eases the laboratory's phone and email load while giving customers easy and secure access to their documents. Online access to certificates and reports, considered together with the verification options, also supports customer trust. You can visit the Testing Laboratory Software page for construction materials laboratories and the KALDATA Calibration Laboratory Management Software page for calibration laboratories. If you would like to see how it fits your own processes, request a demo.