A robust planning and analytics function is a core component of any modern business, but it’s even more important when you’re a fast-growing company that is trying to manage the complexity of cutting-edge development and launch preparations, while still running a sustainable organisation.

In these scaling periods of a business life cycle, your ability to make the right forward-looking decisions often depends on your ability to wrangle your own data effectively and translate it into meaningful reporting that can support management decision-making.

That’s exactly the position that this mid-sized biotech company was in when they reached out to us here at Cubewise.

The company is a relatively small, but fast-growing biotech company based in California. They are committed to developing safe and effective therapies for people with rare diseases. They work closely with affected patients and work tirelessly to bring ground-breaking scientific innovations into the field utilising their years of experience and expertise. But none of that can happen efficiently if the business itself is not running in an optimal way. As such, in this case study, we’ll examine how Cubewise was able to assist them to transform their financial management through a sophisticated implementation of IBM Planning Analytics / TM1.

What were the challenges?

When a new executive director joined the company, there was no integrated planning or forecasting application process in place at the organisation. The finance team recognised that this needed to change if the organisation was to achieve its strategic objectives. They needed to rapidly ramp up a fully functional planning and reporting tool under a heavily constrained budget.

The company needed the ability to have all their key financial information readily accessible in one place – a single source of truth – so that they could make better forward-looking decisions about how to deploy resources. They needed to integrate actuals from NetSuite Cloud and combine these with the annual budget, quarterly forecast, and long-range plan information that would be coming directly from the business. From there, the team needed to be able to create key financial insight on demand and to provide accurate, timely reporting for both executives and business managers.

The company was going through a massive period of growth, anticipating a doubling of headcount, expansion of the number of departments, projects, and legal entities, as well as the addition of revenue – all of which would bring a range of challenges to navigate. While Excel tools had previously served the company well, it was clear that this approach was no longer practical.

What solution was implemented?

After a review of multiple planning applications and implementation vendors, IBM Planning Analytics / TM1 and Cubewise were chosen for the implementation due to the functionality of TM1 as the premier planning and platform in the market and the highly experienced Cubewise implementation team.

The cloud-based IBM Planning Analytics / TM1 model allowed the FP&A team to manage everything through a web-based application, including the loading of data, collection of budget inputs, and analyses of variances. This was a boost to data integrity, productivity, and team collaboration, which made a big difference in how the workflows could be streamlined.

Cubewise played a crucial role in supporting and facilitating the system implementation. The team leveraged their extensive experience in financial data management, implementation support, and industry-specific insight to help the client craft and rapidly launch a solution that was uniquely suited to their requirements. The Cubewise team, across multiple time zones, was always a phone call away to help with obstacles as they came up and as the team navigated a major operational transition in a very short space of time.

The executive director had this to say: “Some other software might be easier to use right out of the box, but having Cubewise means being able to do more using TM1. The functionality of TM1 and the expertise of Cubewise meant I could trust 100% that Cubewise would consistently deliver a solid solution to our needs and that’s not always the case when working with software or consultants.”

To make the implementation even more powerful, the company also used Apliqo to improve the data interfaces and usability of the system. The organisation was not large enough to have business unit super users; therefore, the management of various inputs was centralised with the finance team to ensure consistency across the organisation. Apliqo provided a highly intuitive interface to allow for efficient uploading of user inputs which made a significant difference when capturing user data.

The executive director continues: “Apliqo was a game changer for us as it allowed us to leverage our finance resources, quickly identify user data discrepancies, and rapidly turn around data loads. It’s the flexibility of the Apliqo interfaces that allows us to adapt.”

What were the results?

In just 3 months, the client was able to build a functional planning system that was fully integrated with the general ledger and could track the financials, capital expenditure, and headcount – while also providing operating leaders with the financial information to manage, grow, and expand the business.

The organisation now had a system that could provide the financial information that they needed accurately and timeously. This was crucial for a small, fast-growing company where there are constant ad-hoc changes to reports, layouts, and informational requests. IBM Planning Analytics / TM1 provided the flexibility and self-service analytics capabilities that the company needed to handle the rapidly expanding operations.

The IBM Planning Analytics / TM1 financial management tool has been instrumental in taking the client’s financial management to the next level. The company has evolved from a development-only company to one that now has a commercial drug in the US and European markets. A purpose-built and carefully configured planning and analysis tool was critical to enabling this transition that could support the complex efforts of the organisation.

In a tremendously exciting period of transformation, IBM Planning Analytics / TM1 and Cubewise made a decisive difference. It took the client from being a rear-view-focused company to one that is looking forward – and they will reap the rewards of that paradigm shift for many years to come.