Based in San Diego, California, Amplyx Pharmaceuticals was founded on a mission to save lives by developing a new class of antifungal medicine that would overcome the severe limitations of today’s therapeutic options. They are developing first-in-class products for the treatment of life-threatening infections, with a near-term focus on deadly fungal pathogens in vulnerable, immune-compromised patients.
I recently spoke with Jennifer Lam, Controller for Amplyx Pharmaceuticals, and Rebecca Veuger consulting team member, about their transition off QuickBooks, their experience of working with Sage Intacct partner, LBMC Technology Solutions, and how Sage Intacct’s best of breed approach has allowed Amplyx to revolutionize their efficiency.
Andrew Sevillia: Thank you for chatting with me today, Jennifer and Rebecca. To start, can you share a little bit about your previous accounting system and some of the challenges you incurred?
Jennifer Lam: Thanks for having us, Andrew! Amplyx Pharmaceuticals, Inc. had been using QuickBooks since the inception of the company in 2006. Although QuickBooks is easy to use, it lacked the internal controls that we needed. It also didn’t have the functionality to make electronic approvals of invoices and purchase order, and also lacked robust reporting. We found that we had to do a lot of data manipulation out of the system.
Andrew: What was it about Sage Intacct that appealed to you and your organization?
Jennifer: We ultimately chose Sage Intacct as our accounting software to transition from QuickBooks for several reasons. One is that Sage Intacct is cloud based. Secondly, it didn’t cost a lot of money and resources to implement. Third, we were looking for a software that has workflow approvals out of the box, so we didn’t have to buy additional or spend more money to get something configured. And lastly, we were looking for a robust financial reporting tool, and a system that is scalable because we’re looking to grow.
Andrew: That’s great to hear, Jennifer. I’m glad to hear that the solution has worked out so well for Amplyx Pharmaceuticals. Can you talk to me a little bit about the implementation process next?
Rebecca Veuger: Of course! We decided to work with LBMC Technology Solutions as our business partner. For myself, being in a consulting role and having gone through these experiences numerous times before, I think it’s really important that your business partner has a sense of engagement in your business, and that it’s not a cookie cutter approach to your implementation.
LBMC made us feel like they wanted to understand our business, and that they could help us deploy the tool in a way that was going to benefit our business the best. It was a fantastic decision to choose LBMC.
Andrew: Fantastic! What kinds of benefits and time-savings have you seen since going live with Sage Intacct?
Jennifer: Since going live, I’ve found that Sage Intacct allows me to spend less time pulling and linking numbers and downloading spreadsheets and instead use that time to analyze financial data to see how each department’s performing. As a controller, I want to be able to interact with the departments and Sage Intacct allows me to do that and provide them the financial data that they need.
We have already seen process improvements in several areas. One is the purchase to pay process. We are routing a contract for review and signature, approving a PO, and approving an invoice all within Sage Intacct. That process has been a huge improvement not just for the accounting team but for the rest of the company.
The other process improvement we’ve seen switching from QuickBooks to Sage Intacct is the financial reporting process. In Sage Intacct, we can run financials in a click of a button, rather than having to export and manipulate our data..
In addition, our CFO has access to our financials via a dashboard, so he can look at this information anytime, anywhere and drill into transactions without having to come to the accounting department.
With these process improvements, significant time has been freed up. We are able to evaluate and analyze data versus pulling reports together, which has been extremely valuable. As a controller, I feel like I understand the transactions better.
Rebecca: Yes, the volume of transactions that go through the company is really large, so managing and tracking all those approvals is difficult. Sage Intacct offers features that allow us to do a lot of unique and custom workflows right from the core application and extend its functionality.
We also see Sage Intacct as being very scalable. We saw that the core features gave us that workflow functionality and the ability to go, essentially, paperless within the first couple of weeks of using the application.
But it was also important for us to see that, through additional business partners in the Sage Intacct marketplace, we can truly extend the software into best of breed. It gave us a confidence that we had a great solution now and we really feel like we’ll have a great solution for the long term.