Lab Management Software for Education & Research Labs
University Lab Management Software
for Academic Research
Academic Labs: Shared Spaces, Tight Budgets, and Complex Collaboration
University and research labs face unique operational challenges.
Equipment is shared across departments, bookings happen through emails or whiteboards, and IT teams are often stretched thin. Without clear scheduling, asset tracking, or centralized workflows, friction slows down research – and that is exactly what lab management software for education is built to eliminate.
newLab® offers a modern, structured foundation for lab management software in education environments, supporting both administrative control and scientific autonomy.
Use Cases for Higher Education & Research Labs
Academic research environments are dynamic and decentralized. Here’s how newLab® helps institutions improve lab operations without increasing administrative overhead:
Reducing Equipment Downtime Across Global Lab Sites
In multi-site pharma environments, equipment servicing schedules are often tracked manually or in disconnected spreadsheets—leading to missed calibrations, unplanned downtime, and costly delays.
How newLab® helps:
Automated maintenance and calibration workflows ensure every asset stays operational. Notifications, service logs, and availability updates are all centralized in one platform, so lab managers never miss a critical service window again.
Avoiding Redundant Purchases and Overspending on Capital Equipment
Procurement teams in biotech often lack accurate utilization data across departments or regions—resulting in unnecessary equipment purchases, overlapping functionality, or idle assets.
How newLab® helps:
With unified asset tracking and real-time usage analytics, newLab® helps organizations identify underutilized instruments, rebalance across sites, and prevent duplicate investments—supporting better budgeting and procurement alignment.
Eliminating Data Silos Between LIMS, ERP, and ServiceNow
IT teams often struggle with fragmented platforms that don’t “talk” to one another. This leads to duplicate data entry, inconsistent reporting, and slow access to key operational metrics.
How newLab® helps:
newLab® acts as a central orchestration layer—integrating natively with ServiceNow and via APIs with LIMS, ELN, and ERP systems. The result is a single, accurate source of truth for equipment status, usage, service history, and financial data.
Improving Lab Resource Access for Scientists Working on Critical Projects
Scientists lose valuable time due to unavailable or double-booked instruments, lack of visibility into equipment readiness, or delays in internal service fulfillment (like imaging or analysis).
How newLab® helps:
A self-service portal gives scientists the ability to view real-time equipment availability, make bookings, and track service requests. This accelerates experiment cycles and removes unnecessary administrative back-and-forth.
Scaling Lab Infrastructure During Rapid Growth or M&A
Fast-growing biotech firms or newly merged pharma divisions often inherit multiple lab systems and inconsistent operational processes, making it hard to scale efficiently.
How newLab® helps:
With configurable workflows and enterprise-grade scalability, newLab® brings standardization across global R&D operations—while still allowing teams to maintain autonomy at the site level. Labs get the structure they need without losing flexibility.
Managing Shared Lab Resources Across Departments
Whether it’s an NMR, chromatography system, or confocal microscope, equipment is often shared across users from different departments, leading to conflicts and a lack of accountability.
How newLab® helps
A centralized calendar and booking system gives all users visibility into availability and reservations. Lab managers can assign access rules, usage limits, and see who used what—making shared lab resources easy to manage.
Improving Scheduling and Usage Transparency
When calendars live on whiteboards or in scattered tools, researchers waste time coordinating access.
How newLab® helps
The platform standardizes scheduling across all instruments and services, so students, researchers, and PIs can self-serve bookings, check service status, and plan their time effectively.
Simplifying Lab Resource Management for IT and Admin Staff
University IT teams are often responsible for multiple systems and struggle to maintain support for niche lab software.
How newLab® helps
Because it’s built natively on ServiceNow, newLab® integrates easily into the broader university IT ecosystem. It requires no middleware, supports SSO, and scales without custom development.
Supporting Research Grant Oversight and Asset Utilization
Grant-funded equipment must often be tracked by department or cost center to justify budget usage or support funding reports.
How newLab® helps
Track lab usage, bookings, and equipment availability by cost center, project, or user—giving grant managers the visibility they need, and research teams the autonomy they want.
Onboarding Students and Researchers with Minimal Admin Overhead
High turnover from rotating student cohorts creates strain on lab onboarding and training processes.
How newLab® helps
Role-based access ensures users only see what’s relevant, and intuitive interfaces reduce the need for formal training—so students and visiting researchers can use the system without added burden to lab managers.
Key Capabilities for Academic and Research Labs
Lab Equipment & Resource Management
Track and manage shared instruments across multiple labs, campuses, and research groups.
Smart Scheduling & Role-Based Access
Avoid double-bookings and usage conflicts with permission-based calendars tailored to departments or research groups.
Internal Lab Service Requests
Allow researchers to request services like maintenance, instrument training, or sample prep through a structured portal.
Multi-Department Resource Sharing
Simplify interdepartmental access, cost attribution, and booking rules, all from a centralized platform.
ServiceNow-Native Integration
Extend your university’s existing infrastructure with a native application that offers seamless IT integration and scalability.
Usage Tracking & Cost Center Reporting
Support grant tracking, cost recovery, and budget planning with structured lab usage logs and asset reporting - core to any effective lab management software for education deployments.
Modernize Your University Lab Operations
Empower researchers and administrators with the tools they need to manage shared resources, schedule lab time efficiently, and reduce friction across academic teams.
Whether you support one department or an entire institution, newLab® helps streamline the operational side of science—so researchers can focus on discovery.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is lab management software for education and how does newLab® support universities and research institutes?
Lab management software for education helps universities, research institutes, and shared academic facilities manage equipment access, lab scheduling, service requests, and asset tracking across departments and research groups. newLab® delivers this as a ServiceNow-native platform – meaning it integrates directly into a university’s existing IT infrastructure without requiring standalone systems or custom development. It is designed for environments where equipment is shared, budgets are tracked by grant or cost center, and users range from students to principal investigators.
How does newLab® handle shared equipment across multiple departments or research groups?
newLab® provides a centralized booking calendar with role-based access rules, so each department or research group can manage its own reservations while lab managers maintain visibility across all users and instruments. Access restrictions, usage limits, and booking windows can be configured per asset or per user type – ensuring high-demand instruments like NMRs, confocal microscopes, or chromatography systems are distributed fairly without creating administrative bottlenecks.
Can newLab® support grant-funded equipment tracking and cost center reporting?
Yes. newLab® tracks lab usage, equipment bookings, and asset activity by cost center, project code, or user – giving grant managers the structured data they need to justify budget usage or support funding reports. Lab teams retain full autonomy over their work while administrators get the visibility required for financial oversight, without needing to manage separate spreadsheets or shadow systems.
How does newLab® fit into a university's existing IT infrastructure?
newLab® runs natively on ServiceNow, which means it extends whatever ServiceNow infrastructure a university already has in place – without adding middleware, custom integrations, or standalone servers. It supports single sign-on (SSO), connects to existing asset management and IT service workflows, and can be deployed incrementally across departments or facilities. For university IT teams managing multiple systems with limited resources, this significantly reduces both deployment effort and ongoing maintenance overhead.
How does newLab® handle onboarding for students and rotating researchers?
newLab® uses role-based access to control what each user type can see and do – so students, visiting researchers, and principal investigators all get an interface relevant to their responsibilities without needing individual configuration. The self-service portal is designed to be intuitive enough that new users can navigate bookings, check availability, and submit service requests with minimal training. This reduces the administrative burden on lab managers each time a new student cohort arrives or a visiting researcher joins a project.