After the completion of an Initial Public Offering, this drug development and microbiome company—pioneering microbiome therapeutics for serious diseases—realized they needed a more robust solution to handle the financials, reporting and regulatory requirements of a public company.
Having relied on an existing QuickBooks solution for financials, the company’s senior management also required support for their procurement processes, that had been handled by a third-party system. The company sought a solution that could both support the company’s immediate financial and procure-to-pay processes, while also possessing the ability to handle anticipated future manufacturing requirements—something QuickBooks was not equipped to do. To support the implementation of Oracle Cloud Financials and Procurement, the company turned to longtime Oracle partner and seasoned experts at Apps Associates to lead the charge.
About the Company
Knowing the new solution had to be able to support a large volume of financial data and various workflows, the company completed a rigorous evaluation of potential systems that included Oracle, Microsoft and NetSuite. But in nearly every category, Oracle stood out as the best solution to provide strong support for financials, as well as a self-service procurement solution that automated the procure to pay process. Oracle also helped to set a strong foundation for future capabilities, with support for inventory, manufacturing, and quality requirements—all on a true cloud-based infrastructure.
Finding the Right Solution
Following their decision to move forward with Oracle as their new system of record, the company knew they would need support and guidance from industry experts to correctly implement the robust solution. Standing above the competition, Apps Associates’ extensive expertise with Oracle Cloud ERP also encompassed all of the key areas in scope for this particular project:
- Financials
- Procurement
- Manufacturing
- Genealogy
- Inventory Management
With Apps Associates, the company was also getting a partner with significant background in working with bio-pharma companies with similar requirements to this company’s needs—including dozens of emerging pre-commercial biotechs. “Apps Associates is a go-to company for any new implementations or configuration changes” based on their expertise and support in guiding the Oracle ERP migration, said the company’s internal project lead.
Bringing in the Experts
The large amount of data that needed to be migrated to the new Oracle Cloud ERP solution, coupled with the number of processes that it had to support, led Apps to propose a two-phased implementation approach. This method allowed the company to start with a relatively simple solution for Financials and Procurement, which in turn, provided a foundation for future growth as the company scales toward commercial launch.
Following the completion of Phase 1, Apps focused deeper on Procurement for the second phase, including Self Service Procurement and Inventory—a portion of the company’s business that is integral to their future manufacturing growth plans. Having also purchased additional modules for Manufacturing and Quality, the company is currently in the process of implementing these areas as they prepare for anticipated commercial launch in 2022.
Phased Approach Wins the Migration Race
Since the completion of their new Oracle Cloud ERP, the company has immediately realized benefits. From streamlined purchasing and settlement processes to simplified AP reporting for an improved user experience, to overall greater security and control with a new role-based security process. Built into the system, the role-based access management enables the company to limit information that users can see, only providing what is relevant to them, establishing greater protections for its proprietary information.
The most notable improvement, however, has been the overhaul of the company’s traditionally manual procurement process. Before, the sales team was conducting business online or over the phone. But now with Oracle, sales representatives can conduct all purchasing through the Oracle cloud system, resulting in better management spending and expenditures, as well as a new structured approval workflow in place for each sale. Finally, with the added flexibility of digital payments, employees no longer have to go into the physical office to print checks—something that was instrumental for employee safety during the COVID-19 pandemic. That would not have been possible had the company still been operating with QuickBooks or another disjointed, legacy system.
Of the migration’s success, the company’s internal project lead stated, “the value of the system is the information you can gain from it. With Oracle, we can extract the data that is required the moment it is needed. It provides the information our company needs to run the business successfully. That value is not only measured in dollars but in business enablement—we can now do things we could not have done to keep our business growing.”
With this new ERP system, the company will also see ROI gains from its inventory, manufacturing, quality, and supply chain planning modules, which include:
- The ability to track and trace inventory and spend
- Improvement in quality and safety due to the ability to track
- Manage and track cost and inventory as it moves through the SCM
- Improved reliability/predictability to deliver product in the desired way