Modern life science labs run on precision. Every sourcing delay, misplaced vial, or stockout carries significant consequences—both for scientific progress and for the budgets that sustain it. Yet despite these high stakes, many labs continue to rely on spreadsheets, siloed systems, and reactive ordering.

The result is as you’d expect: wasted spend, frustrated researchers, and diminished productivity.

Marathon Pacer’s technology platform was designed to change that reality. By combining advanced inventory software and integrated analytics, you achieve real-time visibility, cost transparency, and operational control across your lab. For executives and scientists alike, the outcome is a lab that runs more efficiently, more predictively, and with fewer operational bottlenecks.

The Visibility Gap Holding Labs Back

Life science organizations often face the same challenge: not knowing what products they have in stock, where they are located on-site, or when they will run out.

• Stockouts and research delays occur when critical chemicals or consumables are depleted without warning.
• Overordering and waste become commonplace as teams compensate by stockpiling.
• Budget discrepancies emerge when costs cannot be accurately tracked by department, project, or cost center.
• Data silos make it difficult for leadership teams to see inventory trends across sites or align purchasing with actual consumption.

In an era where research timelines are compressed and budgets are scrutinized; these inefficiencies are more than an inconvenience—they are a liability.

Marathon Pacer’s technology directly addresses this gap, giving labs the tools to monitor, manage, and forecast inventory with the same vigor they apply to scientific discovery.

Core Capabilities of the Marathon Pacer Technology

At its core, Marathon Pacer’s technology platform can be broken down into four key capabilities. Each is designed not only to streamline inventory management, but to produce measurable business benefits.

1. Mobile Tracking and Real-Time Inventory Updates

Through on-site support specialists and barcode-enabled mobile scanning, every inventory transaction is captured. Whether chemicals re consumed or supplies are moved around, the system always displays the most up-to-date information.

Benefits:

• Eliminates manual data entry and reduces errors.
• Provides lab managers with confidence that what they see in the systems reflects what is in their stockroom.
• Frees scientific staff from administrative tasks, allowing them to remain focused on research.

2. Advanced Reporting and Analytics

The customer dashboard aggregates real-time and historical data, offering customizable reporting on inventory valuation, usage trends, and replenishment needs.

Benefits

• Identifies consumption trends, enabling smarter purchasing decisions.
• Tracks spend at the cost center level for greater financial accountability.
• Empowers teams with visibility into off-site storage inventory to prevent double purchases.

3. Off Site Storage and Rapid Delivery

Marathon Pacer offers secure local off-site warehousing for critical, high-moving, and hazardous inventory, tightly integrated with consumption tracking and replenishment workflows. Products are client-owned and stored as needed based on dynamic par levels.

Benefits

• Reduces on-site footprint helping labs avoid overcrowded stockrooms and compliance risks associated with hazardous inventory.
• Safeguards access to critical products stored locally with visibility to quantity on hand, consumption trends, and lead times through the customer’s dashboard.
• Science continues without interruption due to predictive replenishment.

4. Data-Driven Insights for Smarter Decisions

Combining usage data with lead time analysis provides the foundation for predictive modeling. Instead of reacting to shortages as they arise, inventory levels are automatically adjusted to accommodate for extended lead times to prevent stockouts before they occur.

Benefits

• Complete visibility to suggested re-order points in your customer dashboard.
• Strengthens compliance by maintaining traceable, auditable records of material usage.
• Minimizes waste by preventing stockouts and limiting unnecessary overstock.

From Efficiency to Quantitative Impact

While software features are important, the true value of Marathon Pacer’s technology lies in its measurable outcomes, such as:

• Inventory accuracy: Real-time visibility ensures the right materials are available at the right time, preventing costly delays.
• Cost control: Transparent allocation of spend by cost center allows organizations to make more informed budgeting decisions and reduce unnecessary spend.
• Scalable infrastructure: As organizations grow, whether expanding to additional sites or scaling production, technology ensures inventory management keeps pace without introducing bottlenecks.
• Improved operational efficiency: Automation of tracking and reporting reduces administrative overhead, freeing staff to focus on core competencies.

These outcomes extend well beyond inventory. By removing operational friction, Marathon Pacer enables researchers to focus on what matters most: advancing science and accelerating therapeutics.

Technology as Part of a Holistic Solution

For added convenience, Marathon Pacer’s technology fully-integrates th the broader program. On-site support teams, scientific expertise, strategic procurement, and off-site storage solutions form the foundation. Technology ties these elements together, providing the digital infrastructure that makes the program cohesive and scalable.

• On-site staff are empowered with visibility and mobile tracking tools to always stay up to date with inventory levels across the laboratory, ensuring complete inventory accuracy.
• Procurement teams leverage data from advanced reporting to inform sourcing strategies.
• Scientific teams gain reliable access to materials when and where they are needed.
• Off-site storage is seamlessly connected, ensuring critical inventory remains fully visible and accessible on short notice.

Together, these features create a closed-loop program where inventory management is proactive, transparent, and strategically aligned with your laboratory’s goals.

A Practical Example: From Reactive to Predictive

A mid-sized biotech in Cambridge was running multiple therapeutic programs, each with its own timeline and material requirements. Scientists often discovered mid-experiment that critical materials, such as growth media or chromatography resins, were missing from stock. Lab managers would scramble to overnight replacements, incurring expedited shipping fees and forcing researchers to pause assays.

To avoid further disruptions, scientists began overordering so they would not stockout. Shelves filled with duplicate materials, many of which expired before they were ever opened. The finance team had little visibility into which projects were driving the overspend, and operational leaders struggled to defend rising costs.

Later that year, after implementing the Marathon Pacer program, the lab shifted from reactive firefighting to predictive planning:

• Mobile scanning in stockrooms ensured on-site support specialists kept track of every reagent, plate, or column pulled from storage was logged in real time.
• The reporting dashboard revealed that one oncology program was consuming twice the amount of cell culture media projected at initiation.
• Usage data informed more accurate reorder points, reducing both stockouts and overstock.
• Through off-site storage, stockrooms and lab spaces were optimized, freeing up an entire new tissue culture room for research use that was previously used for overstock.

Within six months, the lab cut emergency orders, eliminated expired inventory, and gave scientists back valuable hours each week that were previously lost to manual inventory tracking and ad-hoc purchasing. More importantly, projects advanced without the constant threat of stockouts and operational delays.

In Conclusion: Technology That Moves Science Forward

Inventory management may not be the most visible part of life science research, but it is among the most critical. When inventory systems fail, progress slows, costs rise, and opportunities are missed.

Marathon Pacer’s technology platform ensures that does not happen. By delivering real-time visibility, data-driven insights, and predictive analysis, it transforms inventory from a source of frustration into a process you can confidently rely on.

For organizations determined to accelerate discovery while maintaining operational consistency, the message is clear: the right technology is not optional, it is essential.

Are you ready to see how Marathon Pacer’s technology can streamline your lab operations? Contact MarathonLS today to schedule a full demonstration and learn how your lab can turn inventory management into a reliable, well-managed process.