Biota Holdings
"Without WennSoft and QlikView, we could not derive the information necessary to comply and keep our US contract."
Karen Adams
Biota Financial Controller
Biota is a leading anti-infective drug development company based in
Melbourne, Australia and Oxford, UK. Although the company conducts
research into a number of respiratory and other diseases, it is currently best
known for the development of Relenza, the first-in-class drug commonly used
to treat Swine and Avian Flu.
Biota Holding Limited has four wholly-owned subsidiaries – Biota Scientific
Management which is the company’s research and development arm; Biota
Europe Ltd, which manages all UK activity, plus Biota Respiratory Research
and Biota Investment, both of which hold intellectual property assets for the
group. Locally Biota employs around 80 research and development staff
plus an administrative team of 15. In the UK, there are an additional 13
employees.
SEEKING SUPPORT FROM THE US
In 2008 Biota applied to the US Government for a multi-million dollar
research grant to carry out the advanced development of Laninamivir, a
second generation influenza treatment that, unlike its predecessor, will require
only a single dose to become effective. Over the next three years, Biota
progressed along the grant short list and was visited by contractors who
advised Biota management of the extensive reporting and administrative
procedures that would be required by the US Government should Biota win
the grant.
Karen Adams, Biota’s Financial Controller explains, “The contractors
identified what our current financial system, Microsoft Dynamics GP, could
do and how we could map the necessary information. It involved some
cumbersome approaches with additional general ledger classifications.
Importantly, we also needed to be able to capture information at a more
detailed level which included job cost numbers.”
Recognising that she needed help, Karen sought advice from
Professional Advantage, Biota’s long-term IT partner. After
careful consideration, Professional Advantage proposed
WennSoft’s Job Cost and purchase order modules to capture
the additional job-related financial information, and QlikView,
a business discovery platform that delivers self-service business
intelligence, to provide the depth and variety of reporting that
would be required. Both solutions offered seamless integration
with Microsoft Dynamics GP, thereby maximising the use of
existing financial data and minimising the data capture and
reporting effort required of Biota staff.
“If we won the grant we knew we would have to report
information in a different format and that we would have to
pull data out of Microsoft Dynamics GP in a way that could
easily be put into the Earned Value reporting tool that the US
Government uses.” Adams says.
A US $231 MILLION BOOST
On 1st April 2011 Biota Management received the news
they’d been hoping for. The Office of Biomedical Advanced
Research and Development Authority (BARDA) within the Office
of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response
(ASPR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
(HHS) awarded the company an estimated US$231 million
contract. The grant will be received over a period of five years,
contingent upon the delivery of key milestones.
With the contract and therefore the new reporting regime due
to begin within the month, Biota had to work quickly. Adams
says, “We’d done all the background work, all the mapping
out of account codes and we were waiting for the go-ahead.
When that came, Professional Advantage dropped everything
and got it under way for us. They immediately came in and set
up the WennSoft Job Cost and Purchase Order modules, and
configured QlikView in a very short time period.”
THE BENEFITS
Since April 2011 Biota has been using its combination of
Microsoft Dynamics GP, Wennsoft and QlikView to create
board and job cost reports using consolidated data from
across all Biota subsidiaries. All transactions are entered into
the integrated system, consolidated in QlikView then exported
to Microsoft Excel for easy reporting.
Adams notes, “We don’t have to manipulate data any longer
and it eases our workload at the crucial time of month end
when we are focused on getting reports out. We have project
codes for every research and development program and job
codes within these. We need to be able to look at who’s
spending what in which pocket; what’s been spent in total;
and then to slice and dice the data using QlikView any which
way – by company, division, job cost, project code, or by
period including current month, actuals, forecast and prior year
actuals.”
Biota’s invoices to the US Government can run to nearly 200
pages and every line item must include all relevant supporting
documentation. “Using QlikView we can drill down through
the figures right back to the original document and have it all
ready very quickly. Without WennSoft and QlikView, we could
not derive the information necessary to comply and keep our
US contract,” Adams asserts.
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE
At present QlikView is primarily used by Adams, another
financial accountant and two book keepers within the research
and product development divisions. Over the next 12 months
Adams plans to expand access to include key staff in each of
the divisions so that they can better analyse data directly and
prepare their own reports.
“Use of the system will grow,” Adams confirms. “Among those
managers using it, it is already providing more insight into
costs. This extra visibility helps to raise questions and keeps
everyone accountable. Really, the opportunities for analysis
are unlimited. It’s up to us as to what we want to get out of the
system,” she concludes.