Ragic as LIMS: Powering Techtron, USA’s Only Environmental Testing with Results in Hours, Not Days

In 2017, Techtron Environmental Solutions, a full-service environmental testing company since 1988, providing rapid testing for asbestos, mold, lead, water, and more, serving homeowners, contractors, and government agencies across the Midwest kickstarted a growth plan.

That same year, they adopted Ragic as their Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS).

They also began working with mobile labs, a service they would later expand. In 2020, Techtron launched its first full-time mobile lab. With that expansion came greater operational demands—managing more samples, more clients, and faster turnaround times—which Ragic helped them meet..

Those two moves came together to transform Techtron into the only environmental testing service in the U.S. capable of delivering same-day lab results—an industry where three to five days is the norm.

Getting Rid of Bad Audit Trails

Before Ragic, Techtron’s system wasn’t exactly built for speed or efficiency.

“In the past we used Filemaker Pro at times. It’s an application you can download and create your own database too, but it’s not online,” says Josh Kranz, Techtron’s Director of Operations. “A lot of things were handled in office apps, printed out, passed around, edited, with handwritten notes and retyped versions. Not a good audit trail for those things.”

This kind of process, messy handovers and scattered records, made compliance difficult and slowed everything down. To grow, Techtron needed a centralized, digital system for sample tracking, scheduling, analysis, and reporting. One that aligned with ISO 17025 standards.

“We’ve turned Ragic into a Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS),” Josh explains, “handling client data, sample tracking, lab results, and reporting”

🧪 Ragic as LIMS: Customized for Speed, Exactly How Techtron Needs It

Techtron’s entire operation is centered around Ragic, but here are a few key ways they’ve customized it to work as a LIMS built just for them.

📅 Scheduling

Back in 2017, when Techtron introduced their mobile labs, scheduling got more complicated. It wasn’t just about dispatching hygienists to collect samples or sending analysts to sites—it now involved deploying mobile labs to perform on-site analysis.

As the business grew, so did the complexity. Today, Techtron is expanding into branches, joint ventures, and franchising. That means scheduling needs oversight across multiple teams, labs, and locations.

Using Ragic’s powerful server-side JavaScript workflows, Techtron has integrated Ragic directly with Microsoft 365, allowing any Scheduler to create calendar events for any hygienist by clicking a button. This has made their myriad employee calendars much more reliable and user-friendly.

“Ragic is very powerful without any code, and our original scheduling functionality was no-code. We used Zapier to integrate Ragic & Outlook, and the only reason we used JavaScript for a direct integration instead was because we had the skills to do so.”

🧫 Sample Tracking

In this industry, you typically see two kinds of players: on one side, there are large corporate labs that separate field from lab services. These companies usually have the resources to build expensive, custom systems tailored to their exact needs.

On the other side are locally owned businesses doing both field and lab services, often without the luxury of a custom-built system. Often, their report is pieced together manually with a Word document. A workflow might go like this: an analyst is sent to the site, retrieves the sample, fills out the Chain of Custody form, and ships the sample back to the lab. Then someone at the lab enters the results, prepares a report manually, and emails or scans it to the client. Every step is slow, repetitive, error-prone, and difficult to standardize.

With Ragic, Techtron has been able to create a powerful, user-friendly system that can handle field services, lab work, and even mobile labs that perform on-site analysis. Time spent on each project has decreased dramatically while simultaneously improving the quality of their products – results get sent out faster, and clients are happier.

Every sample – whether it’s asbestos, mold, lead, or water – is tracked from collection to analysis. Ragic keeps the chain of custody clear, the data organized, and everything aligned with ISO 17025 standards. It replaces the usual files chaos with a centralized, audit-ready system.

Take their mobile labs, for example. When dispatched to a site, samples are collected and tested on the spot. The analyst enters the results directly into the system, and the report is generated. No commuting. No retyping. No analyst has to write the same project number on three different forms anymore. It’s a big part of how Techtron is able to deliver results in hours, not days.

Accreditation assessors have been impressed seeing how Techtron’s reporting systems have grown. Initially, with Techtron’s no-code solutions, assessors commented how Techtron’s Ragic data collections and training program were in the top 20% of labs they’ve assessed. Since adding improved automation and data validation with JavaScript, their assessor has said this is one of the best systems they’ve seen.

Chain of Custody Sample Data

🗂️Project Management

The core of this whole operation is project-centric. Client data, samples, lab results, and reporting—all of it ties back to a project. Each project is essentially a client’s testing request, like a mold inspection or an asbestos survey.

Hence, the Project sheet in Techtron’s LIMS—this is the core of their operations. When there’s a testing request, a customer entry is created in the Contacts sheet to record the client’s information. With just a click of an action button, a new entry related to this customer is then generated in the Project sheet.

Contact Sheet Sample with Create Project Action Button

The Project sheet has different layouts that share the same data but are tailored for specific purposes. For example, the Scheduling version is streamlined so users can quickly enter the key details needed to book a project. The Financial version focuses on project costs and revenue, designed for the accounting team. Meanwhile, the main Project version gives employees a complete view to manage every other aspect of the project.

Techtron has also built a few functionalities within their Project sheet to smooth out their operations. For example:

1. With Link and Load: when a specific laboratory is selected, the relevant equipment and reagent fields are automatically filled. When a service is chosen, the corresponding hourly rate and minimum charge are also loaded.

2. By combining Link and Load with Conditional Formulas, they’ve created a built-in price calculator to estimate project costs once all relevant details are filled in.

3. Reporting Documents are created using Action Button and Mail Merge.

By connecting the dots between sheets and making relevant data just a click away, Techtron has simplified how they manage the entire lab process.

📊 Report Generation and Management

As a testing service, reporting is a crucial part of Techtron’s workflow. Ragic serves as their central database, and with its built-in Mail Merge feature, they can easily export structured data to Excel. From there, they use VBA scripts to apply more advanced formatting and logic, building reports that meet both internal standards and client expectations.

This kind of openness is one of the reasons Techtron has stuck with Ragic for so long. While Ragic offers solid reporting features, it isn’t built specifically for reporting. When more sophisticated needs arise, it supports integration and provides the openness required for advanced workflows.

🧫Equipment and Resource Management

With Ragic as their LIMS, Techtron set up a workflow to manage both equipment and resources more easily. For example, each piece of equipment is logged as its own entry, with all the relevant information and documents organized in one place, also all the calibration history related to this equipment shown as a table.

Equipment Sheet Sample Data

🧑🏻‍💻”We have not run into any real “can’t do” scenarios.”

“So yes, the efficiencies that we've gained have been many fold. And John has done astounding work since last fall to increase that level of efficiency to new heights.”

Josh praises both the system, Ragic, and the person he has hired to push Ragic’s boundaries even further—John, their Database Architect since 2024.

Techtron pushes Ragic to its limits, and Ragic keeps up.

Beyond native features like Link and Load, Mail Merge, and Formula, they rely heavily on custom code, especially for complex reporting. John uses a combination of JavaScript and VBA to build advanced workflows and automations that save time and reduce errors.

“JavaScript enables complex automation,” John says. “We have not run into any real “can’t do” scenarios. Ragic has been extremely flexible and I'm very pleased with all the things we can do with the server-side code. Your developers have done a great job of giving us pretty much all the options that I can think of.”

With Ragic’s flexibility, pushing the boundaries doesn’t feel like a struggle; it’s just part of how Techtron works now.

Cyclical Business Myth Debunked, Data Driven Business Decisions Achieved

Eight years. That’s how long Techtron has been using Ragic, and over that time, they’ve gathered enough data to rethink how they run their business.

It was often stated in the company that the business cycles are difficult to predict and find trends, often believing it ran on intuitive cycles. As more data was collected in Ragic, that assumption started to shift. They reviewed their project history, began spotting patterns, and started using those insights to guide real decisions.

One example stood out.

They had a client they’d worked with for years, likely even before Josh joined. The client was demanding, and reporting alone could take anywhere from a couple of hours to thirty hours per project. Their team didn’t enjoy the work, but they never had the numbers to show just how much time and effort was going into it.

Eventually, with enough data in Ragic, they did the math. On the worst projects, they were making just ten dollars an hour. They finally decided to stop taking on this work that drained their team and shift focus to projects that made more sense for the business.

“Ragic made it simple to gather and show that data, which gave us the confidence to finally take that burdensome client off of our testing team’s plates.”

Scaling with Ragic

Techtron is preparing to scale its operations, planning to expand through joint ventures and potential franchises. Each new partner will be able to use their system, built around Ragic, along with access to their mobile laboratories.