The engagement did not slow down after go live. It changed shape, from building the system to extending it. — Archer Insights engagement team
About the client
A specialist in neuromodulation therapies
The client is a medical device manufacturer that develops neuromodulation therapies. The company operates as a single parent subsidiary, with finance, sales, and operations consolidated on one NetSuite instance. Archer Insights and the client entered into the engagement, beginning with a NetSuite Evaluation project scoped to assess the company's environment ahead of any configuration work. The relationship has since grown into several parallel workstreams alongside an active monthly support engagement.
As a device manufacturer that makes payments and other transfers of value to physicians, the client carries reporting obligations under the Physician Payments Sunshine Act in addition to the SOX-level controls expected of a growing commercial-stage company. Those two requirements, compliance reporting and financial control, shaped the entire sequence of the engagement.
The challenge
Manual controls in a company subject to SOX and Sunshine Act reporting
Before engaging Archer Insights, the client ran core financial and compliance processes on a mix of manual workflows and disconnected spreadsheets, a setup that could not hold as the business scaled.
- Employee expenses moved through split card architectures with no centralized system of record, slowing reconciliation.
- Journal entry and purchase order approvals followed documented workflows but relied on manual review with no formal segregation of duties, a gap against SOX expectations.
- Financial reporting depended on Excel based exports of Trial Balance and raw data rather than live dashboards.
- Inventory used standard text field configurations with no lot-level traceability, limiting the client's ability to support recalls, complaints, or audits tied to a specific production lot.
- Transfers of value to physicians and teaching hospitals, such as consulting fees, meals, travel, and royalties, had no structured way to be captured or aggregated by recipient, putting the annual CMS Open Payments disclosure under the Sunshine Act at risk.
- Retiring employee access and duplicate billing actions required direct, ad hoc remediation rather than a systematic control.
- Accounts payable ran on manual invoice entry with no automated capture, and bank reconciliation had no direct system connection, adding manual work to an already stretched finance team.
Why Archer Insights
The partner best positioned for a compliance-driven build
A generalist NetSuite partner could configure approvals, expense, and reporting modules. What the client needed was a partner who treated SOX controls and Sunshine Act reporting as the starting requirement, not an afterthought layered on top of a standard build. That distinction drove the selection of Archer Insights.
A few things set the engagement up for that outcome:
- Exclusive focus. Archer Insights works only with life sciences and healthcare organizations in NetSuite, which meant the team arrived already fluent in Sunshine Act reporting and SOX-ready approval architecture for device manufacturers, rather than learning the regulatory context during the project.
- Evaluation before configuration. Archer began with a structured NetSuite Evaluation rather than moving straight into configuration, producing a Business Process Document that mapped the client's environment, standard operating procedures, and entity structure before any build work started. That sequencing meant every downstream decision, from role design to inventory structure, was built against a documented baseline instead of assumptions made mid-project.
- A track record in the sector. Archer Insights is a 5 time NetSuite Alliance Partner Spotlight Award winner, 2022 through 2026, recognized specifically for its work in the Life Sciences sector. Every engagement is scoped and delivered by a team that works exclusively in life sciences and healthcare, which is a narrower bar than most NetSuite partners set for themselves.
The solution
From structural evaluation to governed, production-ready controls
Archer started with a NetSuite Evaluation that produced a Business Process Document, that document set the reference point for the build that followed: SOX-ready core entity configuration, the Sunshine Act Module, and a multi-role Approvals App, which went live in production following user acceptance testing. Since then the engagement has run as managed support, with new work delivered through change requests rather than a new implementation cycle each time.
The engagement has since extended beyond approvals and expense. One additional workstream is bringing automated procure to pay processing into the same environment, and another puts a recurring testing discipline around every NetSuite upgrade so the controls already built do not silently break.
| Module | What Archer built |
|---|---|
| Sunshine Act Module | Dimensions that tag transfers of value by payment category, recipient, and form of payment at the point of entry, ready for the annual CMS Open Payments submission. |
| Approvals App | Multi-role, role-based, and amount-based routing across 5 defined roles: accounts payable, accounts receivable, CFO, controller, and executive or sales. |
| Expense Application (T&E app) | Centralized mobile and web expense management with configured tax pass throughs, replacing the prior split card architecture. |
| SOX-ready core entity configuration | Retiring employee access revocation and duplicate billing restrictions built into the system rather than handled manually. |
| Lot-numbered inventory and fulfillment architecture | Standard items transitioned to lot-numbered inventory, with lot numbers printed on sales orders and packing slips. |
| Invoice OCR Capture | Automated invoice ingestion paired with direct bank connectivity through FISPAN for payment reconciliation. |
| Release Preview Testing | Structured regression testing run, validating workflows, custom fields, and role permissions against each NetSuite upgrade. |
| Managed support | Ongoing change request execution, including a recent request for PDF invoice templates and promotion code logic, plus production analytics dashboards replacing Excel exports. |
Managed support in practice
What the ongoing relationship actually looks like
Once the core architecture was in production, the work did not stop. It moved into a standing support engagement with its own operating rhythm, distinct from the project-based work that preceded it.
Archer consultants access the client's NetSuite environment through a dedicated administrator credential and commit to an initial response within 24 hours of case creation during business hours. Minor changes and how-to questions are handled under this standing engagement; anything projected to exceed 4 hours of development work is scoped separately rather than absorbed into support, which keeps the support relationship predictable on both sides.
In a recent review period, the client logged 28 support cases, more than any other Archer client in the same window, a sign of how actively the system is used once it is live. Reporting and data requests made up 32 percent of cases and travel and expense support another 21 percent, meaning most tickets were requests to refine a system that was already working rather than fix one that was broken. The support desk answered the first response within a 4-hour median and closed half of all cases within 2 days, even with a handful of larger customization tickets in the mix, including one tracking a custom item fulfillment workflow.
The Approvals App kept evolving under this model: initial routing was configured per employee, and support work has since moved it to a named role-based configuration to tighten compliance without a new implementation project.
Outcomes
What changed as the engagement matured
- Segregation of duties is enforced in production, not just documented, across 5 roles.
- The client can produce its Sunshine Act transfer of value data by recipient and category on demand, ahead of the annual CMS Open Payments deadline, rather than reconstructing it from disparate records.
- New account onboarding runs through change requests instead of a new project, cutting the turnaround time for scope like PDF invoice templates and promotion code logic.
- Finance reporting moved off manual Excel exports and onto live dashboards, with outdated GL accounts removed from active views.
- Lot-numbered inventory is rolling out across the fulfillment structure, closing the traceability gap identified at the start of the engagement.
- Approvals routing moved from an employee-specific configuration to a named role-based model, tightening compliance without a new implementation cycle.
- The most recent NetSuite upgrade cycle was validated under the recurring testing discipline with no negative downstream impact, confirming that the compliance configuration holds up against platform-level change.
The Archer edge
What makes this different from a standard NetSuite implementation
Generalist NetSuite partners configure software. Archer engineers compliance into the architecture from the first evaluation, so a change request extends a compliant system instead of triggering a new project.
Archer Insights is an Inc. 5000 company and a 5 time NetSuite Alliance Partner Spotlight Award winner, 2022 through 2026, recognized specifically for its work in the BioTech and BioPharma sector. Every engagement is scoped and delivered by a team that works exclusively in life sciences and healthcare.
The same discipline shows up after go-live. Rather than letting enhancement requests pile up and get resolved ad hoc, Archer bundles them into scheduled monthly release cycles, the same rhythm used for upgrade testing. A specialist partner is not just the one who builds the system correctly the first time. It is the one whose support model does not force a client to choose between responsiveness and discipline.
Call to action
Building for Sunshine Act and SOX readiness at the same time
If your compliance reporting and financial controls are still running on separate manual processes, Archer can show you what a governed, production-ready NetSuite environment looks like for a company at your stage.