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BIO is the world’s largest trade association representing biotechnology companies, academic institutions, state biotechnology centers and related organizations across the United States and in more than 30 other nations. BIO members are involved in the research and development of innovative healthcare, agricultural, industrial and environmental biotechnology products. BIO also produces the BIO International Convention, the world’s largest gathering of the biotechnology industry, along with industry-leading investor and partnering meetings held around the world. BIOtechNOW is BIO’s blog chronicling “innovations transforming our world” and the BIO Newsletter is the organization’s bi-weekly email newsletter.” Subscribe to the BIO Newsletter.

Corporate members range from entrepreneurial companies developing a first product to Fortune 500 multinationals. They also represent state and regional biotech associations, service providers to the industry, and academic centers. Their members help foster a healthy economy by creating good-paying, biotechnology jobs. In 2013, BIO launched Bio Jobs to connect job seekers with companies looking for talent. They also host the largest cost-savings program in the life sciences industry, BIO Business Solutions, which saved $315 million in aggregate for 3,000+ companies last year.

BIO also works towards enriching the industry with networking, partnering and education opportunities. They organize the BIO International Convention, the global event for biotechnology, along with many other industry-leading investor and partnering events held around the world. Arguably the industry’s leading partnering software, BIO One-on-One Partnering™ facilitates 50,000 face-to-face meetings each year among investors, biotechs, pharmaceutical companies, academic institutions and non-profits at live events.

Situation:

The project was to stand up a Budgeting and Planning solution along with Executive and Financial and Dashboard Reporting. Host Analytics was chosen for both its Excel familiar planning front-end as well as its ability to stand up multiple connected planning models. The project duration was approximately four months.

Key Requirements:

• Key business drivers identified included; department, project and employee compensation planning

• Client identified that the ability to easily rollup departments and project budgets across the organization was a critical success factor

Key Challenges:

• Multiple diverse departmental planning templates

• Multiple diverse event planning and travel templates

• Standardizing travel expense planning across the organization

• Categorization of project rollups within multiple business segments

• Planning for all Marketing events at the event level

Benefits:

BIO now enjoys a simpler presentation through customized budgeting and planning templates (Departmental Operating Expense, Travel, Projects) tied together minimizing any duplicate data entry. They have significantly greater insight into Departmental, Project, Marketing and Travel Planning, all major functions of the expenses controlled by Finance, and have trained administrative staff to provide training and support to remaining budget contributor population. Their new Employer-Paid Employee Expense Tracking is well beyond their previous capabilities.

 

Relationship Executive(s)

Shereen Mahoney, CPA, Partner