Life Sciences Industry Panel Series: Part 6 – NetSuite Makes it Easier to Go Public

The coronavirus pandemic has nearly impacted every business in some way or another, and biotech organizations are no exception. We recently sat with a panel of life sciences executives to discuss how the pandemic has impacted their businesses, and while each had different experiences, all of them noted how much technology helped them persevere, especially when it came to automating business processes. Last time, we discussed what these organizations would have done differently with their ERP implementations, knowing what they know now. Now we’re getting into how NetSuite makes it easier for life sciences organizations to go public.

NetSuite Makes It Easier on Accounting

Paul Gacy, founder of In The Black Consulting, started off by saying the biggest benefit of implementing NetSuite before a company goes public is simply the familiarity of the system. “An IPO, going from private to public, for the accounting team is such a big transition in and of itself,” he explained. “And if you’re layering in an ERP changeover six months after your IPO, that’s a ton of change for a team.” Kuram Choudhry, the accounting manager at Imara, Inc., agreed with Gacy, saying that since his organization had to move from QuickBooks to NetSuite, the IPO ended up “becoming like a moving target.” “What I know now can be done in NetSuite, it would have been huge instead of just going through QuickBooks,” he added. “Auditors also trust systems like NetSuite more than you would think of QuickBooks. Getting stuff over to upper management also would have worked so much better in NetSuite, because the data is readily available and you wouldn’t have to manually do things in Excel.” “I hate to think where things would be if we didn’t have NetSuite at this point,” Choudhry laughed.

NetSuite already has everything an IPO needs

Kevin Nee, Controller at Collegium Pharmaceutical, said that he joined Collegium shortly after it went public, but he also said he couldn’t imagine going into an IPO without NetSuite already in place. “When you go public from a process perspective, you have to start reporting quarterly,” he explained. “When you’re in that IPO process, and your IPO date gets delayed and you need to refresh numbers, the data integrity is just so much easier through NetSuite as opposed to QuickBooks or even Great Plains.” He went on to explain that since NetSuite has everything the auditors need to look right away with the IPO, already having it place makes going public far easier than switching software either during the IPO transition or afterward. This post is part 6 of a 7-part blog series from our Life Sciences Industry Panel regarding adapting to new technology. You can watch the full webinar here. The next post in the series will discuss what business processes the life sciences organizations were able to streamline the most with NetSuite. Follow the entire series here.