Costing trust
Product and conversion costs had to move from spreadsheet correction cycles into a system-driven model.
Case pattern
Overhauling manufacturing operations so costing, reporting, and commitments could be trusted.
An international biotech manufacturer needed a post-acquisition transformation across people, process, and technology: new transaction processes, system-driven costing, routing logic, inventory discipline, reporting, and what-if analysis that could support pricing, margin commitments, and future acquisition readiness.
Mandate
Move manufacturing and costing from manual correction cycles into a system-driven operating model.
Engagement leadership: Interim Executive, Technology & Operations Transformation
This was a complete overhaul of how manufacturing activity was routed through the system. The business needed new transaction processes, clearer operational discipline, mature cost definitions, and reporting that could turn NetSuite into the trusted source for product costs, conversion costs, pricing decisions, margin commitments, and scenario planning.
Pricing confidence
Costing logic and reporting needed to support pricing decisions and margin commitments.
Routing intelligence
Different production paths, work centers, materials, and locations needed to be modeled and compared.
What made it hard
Manufacturing costing exposes the full operating model: how products are built, where they are produced, which materials are used, which work centers and routings are involved, how conversion costs are captured, and how those assumptions flow into pricing and margin commitments. The team needed system trust, but the underlying numbers also had to be matured and defined with a non-accounting manufacturing team.
How the work created value
- Operational clarity: translated legacy manufacturing and inventory activity into a practical future-state operating model.
- Costing trust: moved costing away from Excel corrections and toward NetSuite-driven product costing, conversion costing, and reporting.
- Pricing confidence: translated system costing into custom reports that supported pricing decisions and margin commitments.
- Route-level visibility: analyzed individual routing options, work centers, production locations, material choices, and preferential production paths.
- Cost-accounting maturity: worked with manufacturing leadership to define the non-accounting inputs needed for system-driven costing.
- What-if analysis: supported analysis of alternate routings, material choices, and production paths so the business could model how cost would flow under different scenarios.
- UAT confidence: supported scenarios that let the business test operational reality, not just system screens.
- Leadership alignment: connected manufacturing, inventory, finance, and leadership around the same version of the work.
- Go-live readiness: created a roadmap for data migration, issue resolution, cutover readiness, and go-live decision-making.
What this looked like in practice
The work moved between macro and micro constantly. At the 10,000-foot view, the business needed a costing methodology that could support pricing strategy and margin commitments. At the individual-product level, the team had to define routings, work centers, production paths, materials, conversion costs, and the assumptions that would allow NetSuite to calculate the cost of products produced.
A major part of the work was translating manufacturing knowledge into cost-accounting inputs the system could use. That meant working with manufacturing leadership to mature the numbers, define the logic, get the data into the system, and build reporting that made the outputs useful for pricing, analysis, and decision-making.
Why it mattered
The value creation was trust and commitments. The company needed to trust that the system could calculate product costs, conversion costs, and margin implications without relying on spreadsheet correction cycles. That trust made it possible to price more confidently, analyze manufacturing alternatives, and understand whether the business could meet its margin commitments.
What it proves
This case shows the ability to connect manufacturing reality, cost accounting, system behavior, reporting, pricing, and executive commitments. It demonstrates both strategic operating-model thinking and the ability to go deep enough into routings, work centers, materials, and conversion costs to make the system trustworthy.