Webinar Recap: The Importance of Comprehensive ELN Data Preservation

ZONTAL recently partnered with Astrix for our webinar, “Safeguarding Research: The Importance of Comprehensive ELN Data Preservation,” featuring Danielle Moore, Senior Product Manager at ZONTAL. This session explored the critical challenges of ELN data management, the importance of long-term data preservation, and how ZONTAL’s FAIR data platform ensures accessibility, compliance, and innovation.

Table of Contents

Key Takeaways from the Webinar

Addressing the Growing Challenges in ELN Data Management

Managing scientific data across multiple ELN systems presents significant challenges, especially in large pharmaceutical companies navigating mergers, acquisitions, and shifts in vendor platforms. Data is often fragmented across ELNs, limiting accessibility and continuity. This fragmentation results in high licensing costs, as companies are forced to maintain multiple ELN systems due to incomplete migrations.

In addition to operational inefficiencies, fragmented ELN data introduces serious regulatory and compliance risks. Gaps in audit trails make it difficult to support regulatory submissions, while the loss of institutional knowledge makes historical research data increasingly difficult to locate and apply.

How ZONTAL’s FAIR Data Approach Solves These Challenges

ZONTAL’s FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) data platform transforms ELN data into a structured, AI-ready, and scalable solution that enables long-term data preservation. By unifying and standardizing ELN data across systems, ZONTAL supports enterprise-scale digital continuity and reduces dependency on individual ELN vendors.

The platform provides full audit trails to ensure data integrity and legal defensibility while also automating data standardization for improved consistency and reusability. With data structured for AI and machine learning, organizations are better equipped for advanced analytics and automation. Additionally, by enabling the decommissioning of outdated ELNs, ZONTAL helps reduce licensing costs and IT overhead.

ZONTAL’s ELN Preservation Platform: Unlocking FAIR Data Insights

Unlike traditional ELN archiving solutions that move data into static storage, ZONTAL’s digital preservation approach ensures continuous access to ELN data for scientific, regulatory, and business needs. This structured, searchable, and interoperable environment enables organizations to reuse their ELN data more effectively and compliantly.

For pharmaceutical companies managing multiple ELNs after acquisitions, ZONTAL simplifies data harmonization. It ingests and standardizes disparate data sources, consolidates records into a centralized repository, and enhances data governance for full traceability and regulatory confidence.

By providing traceable data lineage, robust metadata, and secure preservation, ZONTAL ensures that organizations can retain and leverage their research data well beyond the lifespan of the original ELN software.

Case Study: Addressing Patent Litigation with ZONTAL

During the webinar, Danielle Moore presented a real-world example where a ZONTAL customer faced a time-sensitive patent litigation case. The legal team needed access to experimental ELN records stored across multiple legacy systems. Traditional searches failed to retrieve the data.

After integrating the records into ZONTAL’s FAIR data platform, the organization successfully retrieved critical experimental data, accessed enhanced audit trails, and strengthened their legal position. This case underscores the strategic value of structured ELN data preservation in protecting intellectual property and supporting legal compliance.