Hepion Pharmaceuticals Charts Growth Path With NetSuite and Archer Insights

Hepion Pharmaceuticals is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company that’s focused primarily on the development of drug therapy for the treatment of chronic liver diseases, including non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Hepion went public in 2014.

Based in Edison, N.J., the firm’s lead drug candidate is Rencofilstat, an inhibitor of cyclophilins, which are involved in many disease processes. Rencofilstat is currently in clinical-phase development for the treatment of NASH, with the potential to play an important role in the overall treatment of liver disease — from triggering events to end-stage illness.

Until December 2021, the company was using Sage 50 to manage its finances and accounting. Because it was set up by general ledger (GL) account number, the ERP provided little in the way of reporting for the firm’s multinational entities.

“We were working with both US and Canadian account numbers, so the reporting really wasn't helpful to us,” said Michael Mannarino, Hepion’s director of financial reporting.

In Need of Something More

Hepion was in hiring mode and needed to define roles within its ERP for internal control purposes — something else its existing business system couldn’t accommodate.

For example, Mannarino’s role as reviewer and approver means that he can’t post entries, whereas a newly hired junior or senior accountant will be able to post entries but not necessarily review and approve.

Mannarino used NetSuite at a previous company, so he looked at both it and SAP, ultimately choosing the former as Hepion’s new business system. After receiving a recommendation for Archer Insights from the company’s IT consultant — who had worked for another company that had enlisted the NetSuite Alliance Partner — Hepion signed on with Archer to implement its new ERP.

“We spoke to the controller of the company that Archer Insights had worked with, just to see what she thought,” said Mannarino. “She gave Archer a very good recommendation.”

Ease of use was another main factor in the decision, he said, along with finding an ERP that would support Hepion’s international growth aspirations.

“In the future, we are going to do a lot of entity reporting,” said Mannarino. “Right now, we just have the United States and Canada, but the plan is to open offices around the world. We want to be global, and we felt NetSuite was an excellent choice for that.”

‘It All Goes Through Me’

Hepion went live in January 2022 and is using NetSuite for accounts payable, invoice processing, posting journal entries and financial reporting. As it continues to grow and work toward its commercialization target, the company wants to further improve its internal control processes.

“In Sage, all of our users could basically do anything they wanted in the system,” Mannarino said. “Right now in NetSuite, we are able to manage roles and what people use the ERP for. That has helped us immensely with our internal controls and is one of the major benefits that I noticed right away.”

Hepion’s previous system also allowed any user to post a new entry without any required review process.

“You could just go in, hit enter, and boom, the entry would be there,” said Mannarino. “Now, we have a process in place whereby our junior and senior accountants and accounts payable associates can enter information and post it, but I have to approve it. It all goes through me. There is an extra level of review in there that has been really helpful.”

He’s also looking forward to an easier SEC filings process, compared with the spreadsheet-based method currently in use.

“Once we're fully live on NetSuite, we’ll be able to customize the financials so that they will look exactly like our SEC filings and be easier to download into Excel,” he said.

More Growth Ahead

Hepion is currently getting all of its employees on NetSuite using employee center licenses and rolling out the ERP’s electronic expense report module. Hepion is also working with Archer to connect its banking system with NetSuite.

Looking ahead, Mannarino said the company will continue growing as its drug therapy progresses through clinical trials. As that happens, Hepion will expand its operations in strategic regions and move toward commercialization.

NetSuite will be there to scale right along with this growing entity as it seeks to help patients with chronic liver disease.

“We wanted to implement a system that we thought would help the company in its growth and be around for ten-plus years,” said Mannarino. “We didn’t believe that Sage was capable of doing that.”

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