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Bethany Cavanagh, Executive Director of FP&A at CRISPR Therapeutics, shares how Adaptive Insights gives the organization enhanced capabilities in program reporting and saved time during their monthly close cycle.

Please provide a description of your organization and mission.

CRISPR Therapeutics is focused on the development of transformative medicines using its proprietary CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing platform. Our company is headquartered in Zug, Switzerland with R&D operations in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and select business operations in London, United Kingdom.

Please provide a description of your role and responsibilities within your organization.

I am the Executive Director of FP&A. In my role, I head up the financial planning function for the entire organization, extensively supporting the R&D function and managing the external partnership with Vertex as the finance lead.

The Challenge:

Please describe the challenges that your organization faced which led you to seek out a new cloud-based CPM solution.

As a matrix organization, organized functionally and by program, it was becoming too difficult to manage our finances using Excel while being able to report without significant effort. In addition, it was time-consuming trying to manually budget and track spending for our partnerships because our process spanned several functions.

The Decision:  

What factors made you decide that Adaptive Insights was the right solution for your organization? Did you look at other solutions?

Having everything in the system is key to reporting. When I joined CRISPR, I knew I had to implement Adaptive. I did not even evaluate other solutions due to my prior great experience with Adaptive Insights.

Implementation Partner:

How did you find Carlson? What factors made you decide that Carlson was the right partner?

In 2013, Adaptive referred me to Carlson. Even though Adaptive performed my first implementation, I wanted to work with people who have highly specialized expertise in the Adaptive system.

When I met with Ethan Carlson and Chris Pinto, they immediately impressed me with their knowledge of Adaptive. During a key improvement, Chris helped us build a revenue cube sheet that allowed us to bring revenue planning into the system.

The Implementation:

Please describe the key benefits and qualities that Carlson brought to your organization during and after the implementation. How did Carlson help you solve your challenges?

Throughout our experience working with the Carlson team, their extensive knowledge of the Adaptive system and FP&A expertise were essential to our organization. Because our implementation consultant, Renee Sinha, has a background in FP&A for the life sciences, she provided effective solutions to the reporting issues we were experiencing. She also always provided a variety of options when making recommendations.

During a budget cycle when we had to change our organizational structure, she worked quickly and turned a key initiative around within 24 hours.

Which systems are you using Adaptive Insights with? What are the key benefits? 

We are using it with Oracle Fusion and are also uploading full time equivalent (FTE) allocations from Excel to get a fully loaded program view. Renee helped us build an FTE cube that would allow us to upload data by program and function.

Adaptive has remarkable reporting capabilities. Having centralized information is critical to reporting. The less manual intervention, the better.

The Results and ROI:

With Adaptive Insights, what abilities do you now have that you did not prior to implementation?

With Adaptive Insights, we now enjoy the main ability of program reporting. Prior to implementing Adaptive, we could never easily report by program because we planned by function. Furthermore, we are now able to generate a cash flow statement through system automation. Previously, we had to manually export the P&L to Excel and manipulate it to generate the cash burn and ending cash balance. Through automation, we now save time on our financial tasks.

Please describe some of the benefits you experienced after implementing Adaptive Insights with Carlson Management Consulting. 

The primary ROI we are experiencing is the saved time and effort it takes us to complete our monthly close. Whereas we did everything manually before, we are now able to refresh reports quickly and update the analysis. As a result, we have saved a whole day in the FP&A close process, from six days to five days.

We can also be proactive during the accounting close, helping ensure we have accruals where necessary and view early budget versus actual reports. 

The Carlson Experience:

Can you please describe the customer experience you enjoy at Carlson that makes the most difference for you? 

Ever since I was introduced to Carlson, I have been continuously impressed with the services the Carlson team members provide. They are experts in the use of Adaptive, and they always meet deadlines. Most recently, I have closely collaborated with Renee. She has extensive knowledge of the system, as well as a background in FP&A. She helpfully advised on how to best design the system to achieve our reporting goals.

Concluding Thoughts:

Why do you recommend Adaptive Insights?

I highly recommend Adaptive Insights as the go-to business planning cloud system. Easily configurable and flexible, it meets a lot of different needs as well as leads to improved and accurate reporting without manual manipulation required.

Why do you recommend Carlson Management Consulting?

Carlson Management Consulting is the best choice for Adaptive implementations. They provide continuous financial improvements and support that can help your organization thrive. Their experience and insights are invaluable.