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Annie Wang, FP&A Manager at Genevant, shares how Adaptive Insights’ flexibility and Carlson’s responsive service help her team drive greater visibility into financial performance and ownership of the reporting process.

Please provide a description of your organization and mission.

Genevant’s industry-leading lipid nanoparticle (LNP) platform has enabled clinical development of the most advanced RNA-based therapeutics. Our LNP platform is the only clinically validated LNP delivery technology with safety and efficacy evaluated in over 400 patients across multiple clinical programs. It is the first and only LNP platform to enable an approved therapy and has enabled the first siRNA NDA submission filing through its licensed use by Alnylam Pharmaceuticals for the delivery of patisiran, a therapy to treat patients with hereditary ATTR amyloidosis.

Genevant’s mission is to deliver RNA-based therapeutics to the world. It currently has 51 employees.

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

As the FP&A Manager, I develop the budget and forecast for Genevant. My team and I also provide management reports to the executives. We also manage the variance report for the entire organization.

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

Our organization faced the challenges of conducting the forecasting and budgeting processes in Excel. We had to be very prudent with checking for accuracy. Also, distributing and sharing Excel files through email can be time intensive.

We also wanted to automate the process, so that when budget owners build out their budgets and forecasts, the report automatically reflects those updates. Rather than spending so much time collecting data and verifying its accuracy, the FP&A team can focus on analyzing it and sharing their results.

An automated CPM solution would also give our budget owners more visibility into financial performance. We wanted a system that would enable budget owners to drill down into actuals, compare them to the budget, and perform their variance analysis online.

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

Before we implemented Adaptive Insights, our parent company was using another FP&A tool. During the year we used that tool, I felt it did not offer the reporting flexibility and drill-down capabilities we needed.

We also evaluated PBCS, a solution from Oracle. After doing a comparison, we decided that Adaptive Insights has the flexibility and dynamic reporting capabilities we need in a CPM solution.

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

The primary system we are using Adaptive Insights with is NetSuite. The integration’s key benefits include the smooth transfer of information. The platform can import many types of data.

Adaptive Insights easily and seamlessly brings in large volumes of data through the query, giving us informative results when we drill down and evaluate our actuals.

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

Adaptive Insights has broadened the scope of what we can accomplish during our variance analysis process. Prior to using the platform, we could only select certain departments to be in the variance report reveal. We did not have the capacity to deliver all information to all departments.

Now with Adaptive Insights, we can involve all departments in our periodic financial review, making the process more collaborative.

At Genevant, we have a strict turnaround for deadlines because everything is available online. Adaptive Insights keeps pace with our business. It makes our monthly close smoother and quicker, saving us about 1-2 business days.

What are some of the other benefits you have experienced that may be less quantifiable?

Adaptive Insights makes our budget owners happy and excited about their newfound abilities. They can view the financial actuals online and drill down into those values. That capability is fantastic. The budget owners have been looking forward to greater ownership of the process, which they now have. It has helped a lot with their analysis because they can provide more enriched feedback to us as quickly as possible.

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

The Carlson team members who work on our project – Renee Sinha, Amy Kee, Johnny Townsend, and Dmitry Stramilov – are very helpful. Every time I have questions, their turnaround is fast. They are highly knowledgeable in their respective areas of expertise. They also teach us best practices in Adaptive Insights. Because they understand our business, they deliver FP&A and business planning solutions that fit our needs and timelines.

Their service is very impressive. For example, I was once working on an executive report using our newly implemented system. The report was due that night or early the next morning. While working on the report, I encountered a glitch. When I connected with Renee on the matter, she was so responsive. She worked quickly, so I was able to deliver the report on-time that same night.

That prompt attention and care brings great results to Genevant.

Why do you recommend Carlson Management Consulting?

Carlson Management Consulting has a team of knowledgeable consultants who are focused on collaborating with their clients to help them achieve their goals on a timely basis.

Why do you recommend Adaptive Insights?

Adaptive Insights is a flexible FP&A and business planning solution that adapts to the needs of your life sciences organization. It provides many ways for organizations to grow and explore possibilities for making their reporting, budgeting, and forecasting processes easier and more dynamic.