Harnessing the Minutiae While Helping the World

By Saloni Madhok, Marketing Manager at Zuora

Bio-tech-nol-o-gy, noun, the use of living organisms or their components to produce useful commercial products; any of the various applications of biological science used in such manipulation.

Biotechnology probably isn’t the first industry that pops into your head as ripe for a revenue automation software solution, but you’d be surprised.

Let’s review conditions within a company for which a revenue automation solution could prove most beneficial:

  1. Complex revenue recognition policies
  2. Products representing a bundle of goods and services
  3. Multiple transaction sources
  4. Multiple revenue streams
  5. High volume of transactions
  6. Contract modifications

Now, consider the myriad of ways biological science and technology get mashed up to form companies which, in the most grandiose definition possible, heal the world (genetic research, disease detection tools), fuel the world (fermentation, biocatalysts, manufacturing process efficiency, biofuels, biomass waste products) and feed the world (crop herbicide tolerance, biotech crops, allergen and toxin reduction).

One such company which falls in that spectrum, harnessing DNA sequencing technology to help address genetic issues, uses spreadsheets to allocate revenue for three lines of business: instruments, consumables and reagents. The company enters the revenue automation ‘wheelhouse’ with its interest in un-tethering the sales and revenue processes, the allocation of items sold as bundles and the manual tracking of deferral and release of consumables.

Countless other use cases exist within the breadth of organizations in the growing fields of biotechnology, bioscience, healthcare IT and the like. The global biotechnology industry is forecast to exceed $320 billion this year, according to market research firm, Global Industry Analysts. With the market recovering from the economic crisis, the industry has benefited from increased R&D funding and government initiatives, particularly for efforts in agriculture and medical sciences. The genetic testing market alone is estimated to hit $4 billion in 2015, up from an estimated worth of $1.5 billion in 2010, reported RNCOS, a business consulting service.

As Ernst & Young stated in the 2015 Megatrends publication, Health reimagined,  “Companies from sectors once far removed from health care are entering the health business. Telecommunications firms are developing approaches to empower patients in managing their health. Information technology companies are entering the fray to tackle the challenge of data analytics.”

The piece also noted: “Health systems and players are under increasing cost pressure – driving them to seek more sustainable approaches, including incentives that emphasize value… An explosion in big data and mobile health technologies is enabling real-time information creation and analysis.”

With a number of firms in this sector among our stable of clients, RevPro team is confident in our knowledge and understanding of this unique, growing field.

To know more about revenue automation worth, click here.

Recommended for you

ZEOs Investing in Women this International Women’s Day
Strategic Insights from Zuora’s Subscribed Institute Executive Breakfast in London
How to create personalized subscriptions using Zephr