SNAPSHOT
Customer: AmSpec GroupIndustry: Testing, Inspection and Certification (TIC) Sector Region: Global LocationsUse cases: BLISS SQC+, Instrument Pro, Laboratory Efficiency, Data Automation
About AmSpec
AmSpec is a testing, inspection, and certification company serving the energy, chemicals, agricultural, minerals, and environmental industries. With laboratories across multiple continents, their work sits at the center of some of the most time-sensitive transactions in the energy sector, such as custody transfers and product exchanges, where the accuracy and speed of test results have direct commercial impact.
Datacor spoke with Michael Bailey, Vice President of the Western Hemisphere at AmSpec, about the company's experience deploying SQC+. AmSpec has been a customer since 2021, when the product was offered under the Baytek name. As Baytek became Datacor, that relationship expanded from an initial limited deployment driven by regulatory requirements to an unlimited license with a plan to roll SQC+ out across AmSpec's global laboratory locations.
The Challenge: Managing Quality Control Across Global Sites Without a Common System
AmSpec's legacy quality control environment was, by Bailey's description, disjointed. The program the company used to control its equipment often corrupted, had no interconnectivity of data, and was prohibitive in the way it managed the data flow from analyst to executive review.
"We were struggling to stay on top of how to manage our equipment, manage our testing capabilities, manage our staff in terms of how they interact with QC," Bailey said, "because we were using a legacy Excel-based challenging spreadsheet to manage something that was as sophisticated as a multi-site laboratory could have."
The manual workflow compounded the problem. Analysts transferred results from instruments, performed calculations outside the system, and captured traceability information separately — all steps that slowed the path from completed test to deliverable result.
Each of those steps added time and introduced the possibility of error. For a company whose customers rely on test results to make custody transfer decisions and manage time-sensitive product exchanges, slow turnaround had direct commercial consequences.
Operating across global sites also means maintaining consistent compliance with industry standards, including ASTM D6299 for statistical quality control of analytical measurement systems, and EPA fuels regulations under 40 CFR Part 1090, which requires laboratories to demonstrate measurement reliability through a performance-based framework. In a fragmented, manual environment, demonstrating that consistency across hundreds of locations was difficult to achieve and harder to document.
AmSpec needed a statistical quality control solution they could quickly implement and scale, and they evaluated several systems before selecting SQC+. According to Bailey, other options did not have the native features or the native understanding of the company's operational needs. The team had encountered Datacor's BLISS SQC+ (formerly QC/PLUS) and recognized it as a solution built for the specific requirements of laboratory-based quality control. After a pilot deployment, they quickly realized that it could handle the complexity of their operation and scale across their global lab network.
THE DECISION: FROM REGULATORY MINIMUM TO STRATEGIC INVESTMENT
AmSpec's initial deployment of SQC+ in 2021 was driven primarily by regulatory requirements: specifically, the need to meet their customers' compliance obligations. That scope was limited by design.
What happened next was not.
"We began our journey with BLISS SQC+ in a very limited deployment and quickly expanded the scope of it across all global labs, which is like 200-plus facilities," Bailey said. "It was a huge jump from our legacy technology to something that could support us growing substantially and future-proofing our quality control."
The early results were strong enough that AmSpec made a significant strategic commitment: the company purchased an unlimited license for SQC+ with a plan to deploy it across all global laboratory locations. The rollout is currently active at approximately 100 sites, with the full global expansion underway.
Beyond the product itself, AmSpec needed a vendor that would respond when something needed to change. Datacor's ability to customize features and turn around software updates quickly was a meaningful factor in the decision and something that has continued to hold true through the relationship.
"None of them seemed to have the native features and native understanding of what our needs were as Datacor [SQC+] could." - Michael Bailey, VP Western Hemisphere
What's Working: Visibility, Staff Capability, and Instrument Uptime
For Bailey, the value of SQC+ shows up in three areas.
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Centralized visibility across distributed sites. SQC+ allows quality and operations leadership to monitor equipment status and laboratory capabilities at multiple facilities from a single location. In the legacy environment, that level of oversight was not achievable at scale. The ability to manage a broader footprint from a smaller administrative burden is a direct operational improvement.
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Staff competency. The system presents quality control data in a way that is intuitive for analysts. Bailey noted that this is not just a usability benefit — it translates to better understanding of what the data means. Analysts who interact with information in a structured, consistent way retain and apply it more effectively. "It's increasing the knowledge and the content understanding of our staff," he said, "because they're interacting with a system that is intuitive to them, that works well, that presents information in a manageable way, not only are they being more productive, but they're understanding the content that they're absorbing much better."
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Instrument uptime. Better-informed analysts who are working within a structured quality control environment are catching issues earlier. The result is more time on instruments and less time managing equipment failures and the downstream disruption they cause.
Expanding the Platform: Instrument Pro
AmSpec has also recently deployed Instrument Pro, Datacor's solution for connecting laboratory instruments to their LIMS system. The goal was straightforward: get as close to a zero-error lab environment as possible by removing manual data entry from the equation. Rather than an analyst manually transcribing results, performing calculations outside the system, and separately documenting traceability, the data will move directly from the instrument into the system to reduce steps and bring data into structured systems faster.
The deployment of Instrument Pro alongside SQC+ reflects AmSpec's broader goal of moving away from a fragmented set of tools that were not built to communicate with each other. Both products are part of the Datacor platform, and the integration work between them is currently in progress.
"Connecting the instruments to our LIMS system and automating the reporting helped quicken our pace as well as just make our analysts more productive," Bailey said.
"It was a huge jump from our legacy technology to something that could support us growing substantially and future-proofing our quality control." - Michael Bailey, VP Western Hemisphere
The Results
Bailey describes the return on investment in terms of two compounding factors: time recovered from analysts and platform consolidation.
Removing manual data transfer, redundant calculation steps, and fragmented software from the analyst workflow returns time that is redirected to actual analytical work. That productivity recovery alone, Bailey says, justifies the investment. The second layer is consolidation, replacing multiple disparate tools with a single platform, which reduces overhead and creates operational leverage that amplifies the initial return.
"The ROI is definitely there for a solution like this," he said.
For AmSpec's customers, the payoff is also direct. Much of what AmSpec produces goes into custody transfers and time-sensitive product transactions. "Getting that data quickly into their hands is what builds a lasting relationship with our customers," Bailey said. "Anything that facilitates that is going to be a win for us."
"The increased analyst productivity is enough of a return. But then to also consolidate disparate software solutions into a single platform that we're able to leverage is an accelerator of the ROI." - Michael Bailey, VP Western Hemisphere
Looking Ahead
With approximately 100+ sites active and an unlimited license in place, AmSpec's deployment of SQC+ is set to extend to the full global laboratory network.
For Bailey, the value of accurate, timely quality data extends beyond AmSpec's own operations. "Compounding our efforts across multiple organizations that rely on our data is moving the industry in a way that is really better for everybody involved."
Schedule a free consultation with Datacor BLISS SQC+ experts today.
AmSpec is a global testing, inspection, and certification company serving the energy, chemicals, agricultural, and environmental sectors. Datacor's SQC+ is a statistical quality control solution purpose-built for multi-site laboratory environments in industrial and process industries.
