A dearth of available talent is keeping life sciences leaders up at night. In fact, 33% of C-suite and human capital leaders in the life sciences and pharmaceuticals sector view talent scarcity as a “major pain point” for the sector, which found itself in the midst of a hiring spree last year. And with national unemployment rates still hovering at 50-year lows, those labor challenges followed life sciences organizations right into the new year.
With demand for life sciences products expected to grow faster than the global gross domestic product over the next few years, 45% of life sciences leaders say the main reason they are looking to hire is to prevent talent scarcity from slowing their businesses.
“As a recession-proof business and one of the few sectors which saw its employment base expand during the pandemic, COVID-19 contributed to skyrocketing demand for a broad variety of technology skills in the life sciences,” Randstad Sourceright reports. “Organizations have seen demand for data scientists grow as they work to bring new innovations to market.”
Turning to Technology & Automation for Help
To offset their mounting labor challenges, more life sciences firms are turning to technology for help. Rather than relying on the disparate software solutions, spreadsheets and manual solutions that got them where they are today, these innovative firms are working with partners like ScaleNorth to implement NetSuite, a cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform that gives life sciences organizations everything they need to run their businesses, including:
- Automated accounting and financial management that effectively replaces basic solutions like QuickBooks, which only provide rudimentary financial capabilities.
- Streamlined reporting that eliminates the need for spreadsheet-based reporting, relieves staff of monotonous work and reduces error rates. NetSuite is preferred by grantors due to its audit capabilities, for example, and is also a top choice for private equity investors. As such, life sciences firms that are running on NetSuite have a better chance of securing funding and investor interest.
- Improved visibility across the entire organization, including international subsidiaries, contract manufacturers and other stakeholders that can access the solution 24/7/365 in the cloud.
- Business process outsourcing (BPO), or the delegation of one or more IT-intensive business processes to an external provider that, in turn, owns, administrates and manages the selected processes based on defined and measurable performance metrics. As a NetSuite BPO provider, ScaleNorth offers a single, flexible solution for life sciences companies of any size—including developing businesses, startups and Global 2000 corporations.
- Simplified, automated compliance for a highly-regulated sector that has to report regularly on its activities—both to government agencies and to its investors and other stakeholders. Instead of becoming overwhelmed by the ever-evolving regulations and rules, employees have a unified source of truth that provides the data and reporting needed to successfully complete audits, maintain compliance and avoid legal issues.
The Go-To Choice for Life Sciences
The go-to choice for both pharmaceutical and life sciences companies, NetSuite provides integrated financials, fund management, supply chain, inventory, quality control and manufacturing in a SaaS cloud-ERP package, thus eliminating countless spreadsheets and deficiencies of QuickBooks or other on-premise options.
Some of the other core NetSuite features that many life sciences companies are already leveraging include:
- Customer relationship management (CRM)
- Human capital management (HCM)
- Batch and lot tracking
- Regulatory compliance management
- Quality assurance
- Process management
- Documentation handling
- Shop floor control
- Supply chain management
- Procurement
- Planning and scheduling
Once in place, NetSuite also helps life sciences firms eliminate IT expenses and free up their IT teams to focus on more important projects. There’s also no need for hosting, private servers, maintenance or upkeep. And because NetSuite is paid for on a subscription basis, it helps firms “do more with less” on the capital expenditure front.
Finally, NetSuite is updated twice yearly in the background, which means all users are on the same version of the ERP at all times. This eliminates version lock or having to “catch up” on new versions at a later date.
Other key benefits that life sciences firms can expect from NetSuite include:
- Run your financials on a single, true cloud platform. Equip your business with real-time cloud financials for streamlined reporting and faster month end closes.
- Know your business like never before. Gain insight from real-time data gathered across your organization and empower your employees with the information they need.
- Get a 360-degree view of your customers. Automatically record every interaction in a single, searchable system—from phone calls and emails to sales transactions and support tickets.
- Run your business on your own terms. Access your business data anywhere, anytime.
Get NetSuite in Your Corner
With NetSuite in your corner, you’ll spend less time on activities like inventory management or the month-end close and more time on revenue-generating activities. A true-cloud ERP, NetSuite is the perfect solution for growing life sciences businesses that run complex operations and/or that intend to expand globally.
With NetSuite OneWorld, for example, companies can manage multiple subsidiaries, business units and legal entities—domestic or internationally—from a single solution that provides real-time financial and operational visibility and control at the local, regional and headquarters levels.
Working with a partner like ScaleNorth, which has extensive experience in the life sciences sector, you can get up and running quickly and efficiently on NetSuite. Basic software solutions and spreadsheets will be a thing of the past; compliance will be vastly simplified; and many other functions that were handled manually will be automated—leaving team members to work on more important, value-added projects.