AFT Pharmaceuticals
Keeping pace with worldwide growth: AFT Pharmaceuticals migrates to NetSuite with Project Salsa
Industry
Manufacturing – Pharmaceuticals
Challenge
Lou Buxton, Manager, Financial Planning & Analysis, says the increasing complexity and scale of AFT’s operations was the biggest driver for change. As the business extended beyond New Zealand and Australia into the UK, South Africa and Canada, MYOB Greentree presented some limitations. Operating across multiple markets meant dealing with multiple general ledgers, transaction codes and logins, and switching between systems. This created friction, introduced risk and limited visibility at an executive level. AFT also wanted greater flexibility and stronger planning and budgeting capability.
Results
Buxton says month ends are now accelerated. Finance has gone from consistently running late on deadlines to being able to hit them, while improving the quality of its work. Being able to pull and analyse data at will has given far better visibility, and AFT has completed a year end that went well, with the auditors kept happy. Most importantly, AFT now has a system capable of scaling rapidly and easily across territories and currencies. Buxton says the business no longer feels its system is a limitation on growth.
The presence of a trusted supplier that knows its business has helped AFT Pharmaceuticals to a successful migration to an Oracle NetSuite solution better able to handle its international operations and future ambitions. Project Salsa, the NetSuite-focused division of ERP specialist Verde Group, handled the migration from MYOB Greentree, delivering a smooth transition. The result provides AFT Pharmaceuticals with improved functionality and performance, and a long-term roadmap capable of indefinitely meeting the growth-focused company’s needs.
AFT Pharmaceuticals is a New Zealand-headquartered global company with a vision of developing innovative products that help people. Operating in territories including Australasia, the United Kingdom, South Africa and Canada, AFT’s success is built on research and development, which it puts at the heart of its value proposition of developing new products or improving existing ones. Listed on the NZX under the AFT ticker, the company has a market capitalisation approaching half a billion dollars.
SITUATION
The company’s Manager, Financial Planning & Analysis Lou Buxton says it started out with Xero and moved on to MYOB Greentree around 2016. “Back then, we were a Kiwi company and soon expanded into Australia. As a binational company, Greentree worked very well for us, but then we started taking on additional territories. So, the biggest reason for a move was the increasing complexity and scale of our operations.”
Available options included ‘sticking with Greentree’ and investing more into the existing system. “However, we wanted greater flexibility, and we were also noting the updates in other ERP systems, especially around planning and budgeting,” says Buxton. “And there was an increasing sense that Greentree presented some limitations in terms of extending to our scaling operations in the UK, South Africa and Canada. Multimarket brings much more complexity, and we found we were dealing with multiple General Ledgers, transaction codes, and various logins and switching between systems.”
All of that, he notes, creates friction and interferes with productivity. It also introduces risk and limits visibility across operations from an executive level.
"We wanted something that mainstream and widely supported, rather than a niche solution that might fall by the wayside in a decade”
SOLUTION
Going to market presented two broad selections, from a shortlist of competitive bidders; Buxton says AFT Pharmaceuticals had either Microsoft Dynamics or NetSuite as its preferred software vendors. “We wanted something that mainstream and widely supported, rather than a niche solution that might fall by the wayside in a decade,” Buxton notes.
In evaluating five bids, he says there was a clear advantage in Verde Group’s existing knowledge of, and long successful track record in, supporting AFT’s business. “That eliminates a lot of the background work necessary to get a migration going,” Buxton notes. “Not only that, but as a focused provider, there’s no need for corporate consulting; there was already a close cultural fit, and a track record of trust.”
Buxton adds that there is also a cost and risk reduction benefit to Verde Group spanning the Greentree and NetSuite ecosystems. “They understand the old system and the new one, because it's under the same umbrella.”
NetSuite was selected for its multicurrency, multi-region capability, as well as the ability to rapidly 'copy and paste' its configuration as AFT adds regions to its footprint. A further draw was NetSuite Planning and Budgeting (NSPB) for improved planning and forecasting. "The planning and budgeting capability was a real attraction for us," says Buxton.
As a specialist enterprise performance management module, NSPB is delivered through NetSuite's certified alliance partners. Project Salsa brought in Pivot2 Solutions, an enterprise performance management and business intelligence specialist, to lead that part of the implementation, giving AFT dedicated expertise in the module alongside Project Salsa's end-to-end delivery of the wider NetSuite platform.
Buxton smiles when asked how the migration went, in a program spanning 9 months. “These projects are always demanding, but the phased approach worked well with three months for planning and six for rollout. Going in with open eyes, I knew it was going to be tough and demanding but, if we can avoid it being horrific, we’ve done a good job. Overall, we did very well, we delivered the project on time without any unforeseen cost overruns.”
He has praise for Project Salsa, saying close project management and clear commitment to a positive outcome was apparent throughout. “The teams worked really well together; we had an internal project manager, which allowed clear focus and coordination, and as a result even though there’s a lot of extra work while also running business as usual, it got done without excessive overtime.”
That collaborative approach was particularly important given the complexity sitting behind the implementation. Craig Anderson, one of Project Salsa’s Senior NetSuite Consultants who worked on the project, says bringing AFT’s operations into a single NetSuite environment involved solving some genuinely complex business requirements.
“AFT isn't a simple business. Eight subsidiaries, more than 16 currencies, intercompany trading, joint ventures, and rebate and royalty arrangements that stack across multiple parties. A lot of that was being managed on paper or in spreadsheets outside the system. Our job was to bring it all into one OneWorld environment so the finance team could see the whole group from a single login, with the processes running inside NetSuite rather than around it.”
Rebates were one area where that complexity was particularly apparent. “Rebates were one of the areas we knew would be quite challenging. They're genuinely complex at AFT, and much of the work had been done manually in spreadsheets. Getting rebates accruing and settling properly inside NetSuite was one of the bigger process changes in the project, and it's taken a real load off the team.”
“Overall, we did very well, we delivered the project on time without any unforeseen cost overruns.”
RESULTS
At present, Buxton says AFT has matured its NetSuite to be comparable with the state of the one it replaced. Already, the potential for dramatic improvement is becoming clear. “Bear in mind, it is always a learning process, especially with a powerful and feature rich system. We’re now in a regular cadence of reporting, and that involved a fair bit of work in terms of rebuilding those functions, but we’ve run an end of year which was great. And we kept the auditors happy.”
Month ends are accelerated; we have gone from a department that was consistently late with month-end deadlines to a department that can hit those deadlines and increase the quality of our work. “It’s a big gain, and not only that, but the quality of our reporting has increased. Being able to pull data and analyse at will means far better visibility, far better ability to do more with our information and more value we can add to the business.”
But probably most important of all, says Buxton, is that AFT is now equipped with a system capable of rapidly and easily scaling across territories and currencies, supporting the company in its goal to bring affordable pharmaceuticals to more territories. “Complexity and administrative overhead can limit growth; with NetSuite, we no longer feel that’s a system limitation,” he notes. “And we’re also part of a bigger user group now; engaging with others, seeing what they are doing…we’ve got a long way to go, with a lot of potential, and that’s exciting.”
“Complexity and administrative overhead can limit growth; with NetSuite, we no longer feel that’s a system limitation.”
Founded in 1998, AFT Pharmaceuticals is a New Zealand-headquartered pharmaceutical company listed on the NZX, operating in territories including Australasia, the United Kingdom, South Africa and Canada. Guided by a vision to develop innovative products that help people, AFT looks for opportunities others may have missed and fills gaps in the market with products that can provide positive health outcomes for those who need them. Research and development sits at the heart of the business, driving both new product development and improvements to existing ones. This focus has helped AFT grow year after year and meet the health needs of people in Australasia and around the globe.
For more information visit AFT Pharmaceuticals.
