By Michael Milligan, President of AccuNet
I have talked with hundreds of CRO’s, CTL’s, non-profit research and GCP Labs, all are struggling to integrate four business systems.
- Finance
- CTMS and/or LIMS
- Business Development and Quoting
- Document Management and Quality Control
Finance- “The” Hub
The hub in my opinion is finance and to run a “project centric” business effectively we need a project oriented accounting system with a billing engine that allows for contract billing. It is finances job to control but not impede the quality of information presented to business development, operations, and management.
- Finance must be able to set cost levels used by development to bid and quote. However, that information must be easy for development to access and incorporate in quotes.
- Finance must have the ability to control the accounts, projects and tasks but cannot impede the work of operations once a project is won.
- Finance produces the invoices but must have a system that allows easy access for study/project managers to approve invoices, expenses, and time that go into those invoices.
Why operations should not wag the dog
Many business owners will rightly state that operations’ is where the work is performed so that is where the investment needs to be made first, leading many businesses towards a very serious and strategic mistake that will haunt them forever! Remember the old saying. ”Don’t let the tail wag the dog!” Operations will interview vendors for solutions to streamline and automate “their” department’s business processes but minimize the rest of the organization especially the financial arm. Organizations need to start thinking as an enterprise, taking a look at the complex activities that happen within the organization as a whole. I have counted over 100 different CTMS systems and dozens of LIMS systems, all competing for operation’s business. These systems are all over the place in features and delivery method. Some are web based, some are cloud based, some are on premise, some are subscription, and some are even semi-custom developed for each customer! All of them draw the line between operations and finance differently. Any separate system implemented by operations leads to silos of information rather than one integrated enterprise system. Separate systems lead to multiple versions of the “truth” and many versions of spreadsheets trying to bridge the gap.
The best run companies realize that information should be controlled and validated by finance. I argue that finance is the “central hub” to your information flow that reduces the number of permutations and insures all the departments communicate as efficiently as possible. Listed below are the key components to an efficient business system:
- Core accounting, Ledger, Payables, Receivables, inventory, and purchasing
- Project Management – which includes, budgeting, scheduling, resource planning, revenue forecasting, and quoting
- Contract Billing – an engine that can bill based on count, milestone, percent complete, handle grants, change orders, pass through expenses, investigator billing, and samples.
- Time and Expense Management
- Requisitions, Fixed Assets, HR and Payroll are options but personally I think Payroll and HR can be outsourced more efficiently for most companies.
- Web Reporting and Scorecards for operations and management
It is possible to get all these business processes in the core finance system where finance can insure integrity of the information and still satisfy the information needs of all parties. Now, how do we tie down the other pieces of the system?
SharePoint- the solution for document management
Let’s start with an easy one, Document Management and Quality Control. I have one word here and it is SharePoint. A must have for your finance system is integration with Sharepoint. Features like a one button selection to create a Sharepoint site for each new project or study created are just one benefit of SharePoint. Important documents like the contracts, SOP’s, important calendar dates, internal blog posts, change orders, and invoices store in Sharepoint are available for all users to easily self serve. Sharepoint can even handle signatures, version control, access rights, notifications, work flow and approvals, which are all key features for clinical research. The average QA, compliance or finance person can use the out of the box features but you can also purchase Sharepoint apps to do Master Schedule, Part 11 compliance, CTMS, and a growing list of applications for business in general and our industry. The document management system must be able to pull information from accounting. Accounting controls the integrity of the data so there is no need to create two separate systems. SharePoint can eliminate duplicate entry and add these features on top of the accounting. If you can satisfy your reporting, Master Schedule, or CTMS needs with SharePoint then you have reduced the number of variables and keep your system tight and clean. I will talk about CTMS integration with non Sharepoint systems later.
To tie it all together
To review the four “must haves” if we let finance be the hub and stack Sharepoint on top of it with the features I have recommended, we only have a few loose ends. Sales and quoting with the possibility of a CTMS, LIMS or other specialized system. Let’s talk about those systems. Now the requirement for any new system coming into your business is that it integrates with finance. In a CTMS system that means adding sites and participants to studies and creating check requests for investigators or subcontractors. A modern CTMS system will be able to use web services to talk to a modern accounting system. Since you are requiring the CTMS system to integrate with your finance system you have weeded out 100’s of small or old technology based CTMS systems. You now have just dozens to evaluate and there are plenty to choose from to satisfy operations and finance. LIMS is another system that needs to communicate billing milestones with a Master Schedule and to accounting. A word of caution here on volume. If you are processing twenty samples or tests per month, integration is probably not worth it. Create a form and procedure, either manually or use Sharepoint to automate it. If you process more than twenty tests a day, it is well worth integrating with accounting.
Sales – the source of new projects
Finally, let’s talk about Business Development. In general, the days of fat contracts and big back logs are over. Businesses can still be profitable and growth is expected but development needs to be managed to insure success in today’s competitive global market.
Management wants to see the opportunity pipeline so they can predict revenue and forecast resource demands. Management also wants to know that a sales person is doing the right activities that will produce new business. Sales people want information and the ability to produce accurate competitive quotes. You may have noticed that I included quoting and proposal generation in the accounting system features. Many businesses use a big grid in Excel or try to build a quoting system in CRM, this is not the best place and here is why. An Excel based quoting system is working from dated information, prone to errors and does not setup projects, billing rules and rates once a project is won. Building your own quoting system in a CRM system that is integrated to accounting solves the connectivity issues but this can be a costly development project! Why re-invent the wheel when it has already been done?
Here are the key features of a good CRM system
Marketing – I am not talking about glossy ads in industry magazines. I am talking about setting up a campaign to track the cost and performance of every business generating activity you decide to perform. A newsletter is a campaign that will have costs, touch all your clients and prospects and if well written will generate leads and business. A trade show will be a campaign, customer retention policy will be a campaign, a planned schedule of calling, e-mails and letters to prospects is a campaign with costs and results. All these campaigns together are your marketing program.
- Activity Management – sales people are the sum of the activities they perform and the sales they produce. A good CRM system will make performing those activities easier and faster for the sales person and make measuring their performance by a manager clear cut.
- Opportunity Management – each business is slightly different but they all have a sales process. A good CRM system will formalize that process so you can predict revenue. Ask any sales manager and they know from experience some rules of thumb; like we win 35% of the proposals we do for new prospects, we win 80% of all proposals we do for existing customers, if we present a proposal most take 90 days to make a decision. These rules of thumb can be imbedded into a CRM system so you can estimate your new revenue by a sales person 30 days or six months out.
- Integrated with accounting – sales information and studies need to be displayed through CRM so sales people can have visibility into past and current sales activity.
- Integration with Sharepoint – a CRM system that works with Sharepoint enables the sales person to view contracts, change orders and deliverables to customers. Sharepoint also can route quotes produced by the sales person for approval. Keeping older versions and approved quotes on file for future reference.
Finally, the sales person needs access, they need access from the web, contacts need to sync with their cell phone, it needs to be integrated with Outlook for e-mail and work with Word and Excel.
Conclusion
As a business owner for over 24 years, I have made most of the mistakes that can be made and lived to fight another day. If you follow the order and guidelines set forth in this article, you will lead your company to a successful selection of the four common pieces of an enterprise business system. If you would like to discuss your particular enterprise system challenges, I am always happy to help share experiences and plan strategy.
Contact Michael Milligan at 614-899-9900 ext. 119. mmilligan@accu.com
To learn more about AccuNet, please visit our websites:
www.peoplereadycro.com
www.accu.com
