Promega(opens in a new window) is an established leader in life sciences, providing pioneering biological reagents and integrated systems used in research and applied technology. Their products, used by companies worldwide, have led to significant advancements in areas of therapeutic discovery, clinical research, and forensics.
Promega’s widespread integration of ChatGPT helps them deliver quality products faster to the biotech ecosystem—an effort that started from the top. “Innovation is something that is our lifeblood, and our future is based on developing solutions from the talent and ideas that our people have,” said Bill Linton, CEO of Promega. “AI works perfectly with this vision, helping people to see more of what they can do.”
Expanding ideation org-wide with OpenAI
Promega’s journey with OpenAI began when Poncho Meisenheimer, VP of Research and Development, introduced Linton to ChatGPT.
Linton immediately recognized its potential to help employees manage the company’s thousands of products and over 60,000 accounts: “I could envision our team co-creating with ChatGPT, using it as a coach, expert, or an extra set of hands to complete projects more efficiently,” he said.
Enthusiasm for ChatGPT spread with Linton’s buy-in, prompting the company to launch a pilot program to identify key use cases. Today, ChatGPT is an integral part of Promega’s workflows, with over 1,400 custom GPTs used by 80% of the company.
Enhancing anticipation and planning in manufacturing
Promega’s manufacturing operations are complex. With the manufacture of 4,000 products, readiness means constant planning in advance. This complexity is multiplied by customer needs for custom specifications.
ChatGPT helps Promega employees anticipate these needs. Kristen Yetter, a General Manager at Promega, uses ChatGPT to forecast equipment replacement timelines and costs. “ChatGPT outlines all the assumptions behind its forecast timelines and costs, which I can then modify,” Yetter explains. “Within minutes, I have a yearly projection of investment needed to replace aging instruments.”
Others have built custom GPTs to amass complex knowledge faster. “I help clients who need to develop custom assay,” says Caitlin Stallings, a research scientist at Promega. “Designing these projects often requires gathering protein specifications from various databases. My custom GPT, which calls public APIs behind the scenes, streamlines this process by fetching all relevant information in seconds with just the protein name.”
Members of Promega’s Quality Assurance team automate customer requests and responses with a custom GPT that integrates with their Power Automate workflow. “With this AI-powered solution, we provide timely, accurate responses to over 250 quality surveys a year,” says Abigail David, Director of Quality Assurance. “The automation reduces internal workload by more than 600 hours annually and delivers key documents, like certifications and quality policies, effortlessly to our customers.”
Enriching customer relationships with custom GPTs
Promega’s sales and marketing teams also sought to simplify their work, given the company’s vast product portfolio. They developed custom GPTs to scale their outreach efforts with solutions like:
- My Prospecting Pal GPT, which quickly identifies vital information about a given prospect and suggests potential Promega offerings. “The GPT can highlight key research initiatives that might benefit from Promega solutions, or even common interests between the salesperson and the prospect to enable a natural dialogue. This has cut our lead analysis time by 1–4 hours per prospect, allowing us to focus more on relationship building,” says Franchestia Flennory, a Promega Account Manager.
- Email Marketing Strategist GPT, which halves the time from content creation to campaign execution. In months, hundreds of marketing emails were deployed in half the usual time, saving 135 hours of work. “The time we get back from aligning on the strategy of emails can be invested into the user experience,” says Kari Siegenthaler, a Marketing Strategist with Promega. “I don’t know the last time I wrote an email without using this GPT.”
Driving ChatGPT adoption through leadership
Promega credits the success of its ChatGPT adoption to the leadership team’s proactive and data-driven approach, managed through its AI Advisory Council.
Representing senior leaders from different departments, this group spearheaded initiatives to encourage AI adoption and experimentation, leading to a list of key learnings the team could take to other departments:
- Empower your teams with enough licenses to flex their creativity, then put more resources into those with the highest impact.
- Track enterprise usage to identify high-impact use cases early.
- Make learning AI fun with regular workshops and share-outs.
- Support employee confidence with data: Promega learned even employees using basic prompts in ChatGPT outperformed those not using the tool.
- Leadership has to set the example by using ChatGPT regularly.
Differentiating through AI proficiency
Promega’s drive to empower departments with AI skills shows no signs of slowing down. “Our vision is to seamlessly integrate ChatGPT and other AI tools into all of our employees’ workflows,” Linton said.
Looking ahead, he sees AI proficiency as a differentiator in the competitive life sciences market. “Our ability to harness AI will be a powerful advantage, particularly in creating tools that help researchers explore meaningful advancements in research and discovery.”
