For many of our customers the Animal Billing module, along with the supporting data provided by Census, is the most critical module in the Elements suite. It allows the PIs to be billed their monthly charges for use of the facility and the services provided. For the PIs themselves, how their precious grant funds are spent is …
About a year ago we undertook an exercise to define “personas” – descriptions of semi-fictional users of our Elements software that get used as part of marketing discussions and other customer-focused conversations internally. They were based on a number of interviews with current TOPAZ users. It was an interesting exercise, particularly when it came to understanding the …
The use of RFID technology to ease the tracking of cages in the animal facility has taken a long time to take off. It was at least 15 years ago when TOPAZ presented RFID technology to our Annual User Conference in the full expectation that within a few years, everyone would be using it! In practice the …
One topic our customers often consult us on is disaster recovery/business continuance. These are actually similar, yet distinct, subjects. From a high level, one deals with the IT function of rapidly restoring systems to serve the needs of the business. The other deals with the business continuing to operate after a loss of computing resources (while …
When we were building the Biosafety Protocols module of TOPAZ Elements many years ago, we spent time talking to some of the NIH officials who, at the time, were working to implement the audit program for institutions receiving NIH funding. The primary messages were clear and simple; The IBC should have it’s own protocol form, not “piggy back” …
As many of you know, TOPAZ was acquired in June of 2016. We became part of Cultura, which is, in turn, part of Volaris, which is, in turn, part of Constellation Software Inc. Constellation Software Inc is a publicly traded company, listed on the Toronto stock exchange (CSU.TO) with a current market capitalization of $14B and annual revenues of over …
With the 2018 CALAS show approaching rapidly, it seemed a good time to talk about Canadian regulatory reporting! TOPAZ will be in the Exhibitor Hall at the symposium, so come and say “hello” if you’re attending. Animal Facility Software generally contains a range of features that are agnostic between different countries. A mouse is a mouse no matter where …
TOPAZ and our fellow vendors in the Compliance and Animal Facility Management software market share certain problems with other software vendors in highly vertical, “niche” markets. The software is often complex, and user expectations are high, but the market overall is relatively small (compared to applications for the general public). The end result of this, in our …
Affordable Compliance and Facility Management software for smaller sites Read More »
Almost 21 years ago, when I joined TOPAZ, integration between software systems was unusual and exotic in our market. On the rare occasion when a customer wanted to integrate a third party system with our software of that era (GRANITE), it involved direct access to the database using SQL scripts, and many warnings from TOPAZ …
When working with our Human Protocols module users (aka “IRB”) we often encounter questions about the “new common rule” and how the rule changes are supported within Elements. As you probably know, implementation of the rule has been delayed by the DHHS until (at least) July 19th, but many institutions are wisely gearing up to …
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