ABS attended and exhibited at the annual International Bio meeting in Philadelphia last week. As an entrepreneur and scientist, it was an interesting and exciting event. I have no doubt that many of the talks were interesting and well worth attending, but that is not what I am talking about.
For ABS, Bio was an opportunity to connect with and learn what other companies are doing so that we can better serve our clients and continue to grow by either partnering with them or adding to and improving what others do.
Nearly all ABS services are conducted in-house by ABS staff. These focus on our areas of expertise. This is how we maintain reliability, speedy deliveries, and a high level of service. However, there are some non-core activities where we may employ outside services. For example, we work with skilled pathologists at our network of hospitals and employ some outside pathology consultations, but do not have a full-time Board-certified pathologist at ABS. This reduces costs, but still ensures high quality products and services for our clients.
Likewise, at Bio we looked for cutting-edge technologies that are complimentary to our focus. We will evaluate and test their quality in our laboratories before ever considering offering them to a client. In that way, we are extension of your laboratory doing testing and QC of whatever we provide because we stand behind everything we offer.
This year at Bio was new for us in that we were actively looking for acquisitions. Potential acquisitions are evaluated in the same manner as we evaluate any partnership. We look at operational systems for the perspective of quality, speed of delivery, and ease of use by our clients.
Since 1990, ABS has steadily grown solely because our clients have valued what we do for them. We are driven to provide value to our clients, not by the demands of any outside investors, but by the vision our company has. While this approach may have initially limited growth, we have maintained our values of quality, speed, and service; and this strategy has paid off. We are now at the point where we are actively looking at companies with those same values that provide either innovative technologies or complimentary expertise that will benefit our clients. We will keep you posted on future developments.
