How IntraBio's finance transformation fueled its global expansion

IntraBio, a privately held biopharmaceutical company based in Austin, Texas, develops innovative therapies for rare and common neurological diseases. With a focus on areas of high unmet medical need, the company works to advance the frontiers of drug discovery to improve outcomes for patients worldwide.

IntraBio turned to EY for help guiding it through its finance transformation. From the outset, EY teams made a concerted effort to understand the company’s situation, leveraging knowledge of its background, needs, competencies and goals to build trust within the organization and, ultimately, to instill confidence in the recommended solutions.

An Initial Public Offering (IPO) readiness assessment was decided as the best first step, before proceeding with financial audits. That assessment determined that IntraBio was going to need additional support to scale its commercial business and that further support would be needed if the company took the step of moving toward a public offering and meeting the regulatory requirements for that step. After reviewing this assessment with the company, IntraBio moved ahead with EY Integrated Finance Managed Services, a back-office solution tailored for high-growth companies, to support its commercial launch and expansion.

This offered a complete solution, EY Integrated Finance Managed Services leverages inputs from across the EY network, utilizing experience from a broad range of teams and services, including financial accounting advisory services, tax, consulting, strategy, transactions, managed services, client technology and the EY–SAP Alliance (EY and SAP’s collaborative partnership). In this case, the primary aim was to support IntraBio’s growth and allow the company to focus on core competencies such as drug development and commercialization, while EY provided back office and finance support.

“The process we usually see in the life science industry is to get an idea funded, go public, grow, hopefully commercialize, and then sell the company,” says Phil Howard, Partner, Ernst & Young U.S. LLP. “But as companies go through that process, they outsource to a lot of different service providers, and part of our service was to try to bring all that together and have a one-stop shop.  IntraBio has made its own unique path and needed a more innovative and more connected solution.”

EY licensed and implemented the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition enterprise management solution, helping to create a seamless, efficient and digitally driven finance function for IntraBio.

Leveraging EY’s preconfigured SAP accelerators, the solution streamlined all IntraBio’s finance, accounting, payroll, tax and treasury services, reducing complexity and helping the company avoid costly internal infrastructure development. Factor says that EY’s solution has “helped us maintain oversight and efficiency without building a huge internal infrastructure.”

“EY has heled us to work on what we needed to focus on: getting our drug to market and to patients as quickly as possible and increasing shareholder value, while helping ensure that we have the highest standards and best practices in financial management implemented by a world industry leader we can trust—EY.”

With a solution that combines EY’s experience and SAP's cutting-edge accounting technology, IntraBio is primed for efficiency and growth and now boasts an IPO-ready, commercial life sciences fit-for-purpose finance operation.

EY estimates that by helping manage IntraBio’s finance function, EY has helped the company to reduce its projected operating costs by nearly a third. These savings have translated into a more efficient and valuable workforce, with management and employees able to prioritize higher-value tasks and critical decision-making over time-consuming back office and finance tasks.

By centralizing the company’s treasury, tax planning, procurement and payments systems, EY has transformed IntraBio's financial landscape. The collaboration has introduced seamless processes and allowed the company to concentrate on breaking new ground in rare disease treatment. 

Integrating with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition has given IntraBio the means to manage global transactions more efficiently, providing the scalable systems needed to support the company’s rapid international expansion into Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. In addition to financial processes, the solution also automates subsidiary set-up, streamlining IntraBio’s expansion into these regions.

Moreover, the managed services aspect of EY’s solution has allowed for rapid scalability of the finance function, helping IntraBio to quickly adapt as the trajectory of the business shifts.

“We believe that there's a cost benefit,” Factor says. “There is also a cost in terms of complexity, but the benefits already outweigh that.”

Through EY Integrated Finance Managed Services, IntraBio can deliver reports and audits with greater speed and consistency. At the same time, the solution helps accelerate the company’s IPO readiness, should IntraBio choose to pursue that path, helping ensure the company is fully prepared to capitalize on a favorable IPO window — a critical period when market conditions are optimal for going public.

As IntraBio eyes monumental achievements in the commercialization of its first treatment, expansion into new markets and launch of new drug products, it does so with a partner and technology it trusts. Factor emphasizes that the relationship with EY goes far beyond a typical vendor-client arrangement. “We don’t consider EY a vendor. We consider them an integral part of the IntraBio team,” he says.

Howard echoes this sentiment. “We’re very excited to be on this journey with IntraBio and help the company achieve new levels of success,” he adds.

It’s clear that collaborating with EY has helped IntraBio to scale quickly and effectively without compromising its focus and agility, positioning the company for long-term growth and success in the pharmaceutical market. When the stakes are this high, aligning with a proven leader like EY helps ensure that IntraBio is not only prepared for today’s challenges but is also positioned to seize tomorrow’s opportunities.