{"id":104336,"date":"2026-05-27T17:47:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T16:47:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nexergroup.com\/uk\/?p=104336"},"modified":"2026-05-28T08:22:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T07:22:16","slug":"life-sciences-erp-digital-transformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nexergroup.com\/uk\/2026\/05\/27\/life-sciences-erp-digital-transformation\/","title":{"rendered":"Life Sciences ERP Digital Transformation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\t\t
\n\t\t

From Five Months to Three Weeks<\/h1>\n\t\t

WHAT CONNECTED DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE CAN DO FOR A LIFE SCIENCE MANUFACTURER<\/p><\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n

A Number Worth Paying Attention to<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Five months. That was how long it took a large DNA plasmid manufacturer to fulfil an order when Merit Solutions first engaged with them. For their customers, many of them biotechnology companies working to advance gene therapies through clinical trials, that timeline was not simply inconvenient. In some cases it was a material constraint on their ability to progress. The therapies these organisations were developing addressed serious and often rare conditions. Delays in obtaining GMP-grade starting material had real consequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, that same manufacturer fulfils orders in three weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bill Burke, CEO of Merit Solutions, a software company exclusively serving life science and regulated industry manufacturers with GxP-compliant ERP and quality management software built on Microsoft Dynamics 365, shared this story in a recent conversation with Matt Birtwistle, Manufacturing Industry Lead at Nexer. It is worth understanding in some detail, because it illustrates what becomes possible when digital infrastructure is genuinely connected, and what is at stake when it is not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How a Five-month Cycle Time Develops<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The manufacturer was running on an older, heavily customised version of NetSuite, with data distributed across six or seven separate systems. Manual steps had accumulated at every stage of the order process. Information that should have flowed automatically between functions had to be entered, reconciled, re-entered, and followed up across systems that were not communicating with each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result was not only operational friction. It was, as Bill Burke described it in their conversation, a situation that was literally going to impact lives while simultaneously opening their market to new competition. Other organisations were beginning to enter the space. The manufacturer recognised that two things needed to change: the digital infrastructure had to be integrated so that data entered once was available everywhere, and the order delivery time had to come down below one month. Both were strategic requirements, not just operational improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After implementing a connected platform built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 with Merit’s GxP layer, the order cycle time dropped to three weeks. The change came not from redesigning processes or adding capacity, but from removing the manual steps between systems and allowing information to move the way it was always supposed to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why the Outcome Was Strategic<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The efficiency gain mattered on its own. But the longer arc of this story is what makes it worth telling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time Merit engaged with them, the manufacturer was operating at approximately $185 million in revenue and had identified three factors that could prevent them from reaching their goal of a significant acquisition. One of the three was the state of their digital infrastructure. A potential acquirer at the level they were targeting would expect to see a technology foundation capable of supporting step-function growth. Running on fragmented, heavily customised legacy systems would not support that narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three years after the implementation, the company was acquired for $9.8 billion, approximately 14 times revenue. They were the headline story at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference that year. As Bill noted, what the connected platform enabled was a change in the competitive dynamics of their market. Once the order cycle time came down and quality remained high, the company was able to gain market share consistently, which ultimately made it an attractive acquisition target for one of the top-20 global biopharma companies. That acquirer has continued to invest in the Microsoft and Merit platform as the business has scaled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Broader Lesson for Life Science Organisations<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It is easy to read this as a story about a remarkable exit. The more transferable lesson is about what the operational change made possible: the ability to move when it mattered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biopharma, biotech, and medical device companies progress through distinct stages. Clinical development, regulatory approval, commercial scale-up. At each transition, the demands on digital infrastructure change. Bill Burke’s advice, shared in their conversation, is to look ahead to the infrastructure you will need at each of those stages, work backwards to what you need to have in place and when, and invest deliberately so that you are ready rather than scrambling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The companies that fall behind on this find themselves unable to act quickly when the window opens, whether that window is a clinical readout, a regulatory approval, a manufacturing scale-up, or an M&A process where the quality of your operations is part of the valuation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Starting the Journey<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Matt Birtwistle’s observation is a useful one for organisations at an early stage: you do not need to implement everything at once. Organisations that begin by addressing data quality issues, working through integration priorities, or modernising one area of their operations are often better prepared for a full ERP implementation when they reach it. The work done earlier reduces the complexity and the rework later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What matters most is having a clear view of the journey ahead, knowing what the digital infrastructure needs to look like at each stage of growth, and working with a partner who has navigated those stages with other organisations before. The combination of that experience with the right platform and ecosystem is what allows companies to move with confidence rather than discovering constraints at the moment they can least afford them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information, please contact
Matt Birtwistle<\/strong>
Manufacturing Industry Lead
Matt.Birtwistle@nexergroup.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Five Months to Three Weeks: What Connected Digital Infrastructure Can Do for a Life Science Manufacturer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":104343,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[396],"tags":[],"cases_countries":[],"cases_business_areas":[],"class_list":["post-104336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","pp_force_visibility":null,"pp_subpost_visibility":null,"pp_inherited_force_visibility":null,"pp_inherited_subpost_visibility":null,"pp_post_mime_type":"","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nJob not found - Nexer Group<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Job not found - 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