How Primary Health cut 80% of manual work by replacing NetSuite with Lensing

Primary Health launched in 2020 as a fast-moving, volunteer-driven response to the greatest public health crisis of our time. Within weeks, they’d developed a technology platform to manage COVID-19 testing and vaccinations. Over the next two years, they expanded rapidly—and so did the complexity of the business. They entered into contracts with state governments, labs, pharmaceutical companies, and insurance providers—which led them to new billing models, compliance requirements, and reporting challenges.

Like many SaaS companies, Primary Health initially turned to the mainstream ERP platform NetSuite, whose team promised to automate their processes. But after investing over $200,000 in an implementation, they calculated that more than 80% of their financial workflows still ran through spreadsheets. And they were constantly building new workarounds. Revenue was complex. Reporting was painful. They eventually realized they needed to switch to a platform that could actually support their business.

After a lengthy evaluation, Primary Health chose Lensing’s ERP because it was built by finance professionals with a deep understanding of SaaS. That combination meant Lensing came ready-made with the capabilities Primary Health had been missing: automated deferred revenue, unbilled revenue management, and standalone selling price (SSP) analysis. The Lensing team was able to show them feature after feature that either replaced spreadsheet workarounds or gave them new capabilities they’d always wanted, but wouldn’t have had time to do. 

The transition was easier than one might expect because Primary Health had already been operating outside of NetSuite, in spreadsheets. And because of that acute pain, they’d essentially already documented their key workflows. In moving to a newer ERP, they eliminated all that manual effort workflow. Lensing required a much smaller upfront services contract, because less needed to be custom. Much of the functionality they needed came out of the box. That meant the time to value was quicker than expected. 

Primary Health began conversations with Lensing in the fall and was fully up and running by January. While there were some bumps along the way, Lensing worked quickly and collaboratively with Primary Health to resolve them—including 24-hour turnarounds on hotfixes. This too was also a vast departure from what they’d experienced with NetSuite.

Vanessa Lombardi, Primary Health’s Controller, said the implementation process felt more like a partnership than a traditional vendor engagement. Lensing’s team brought deep SaaS and finance expertise, and Vanessa felt she’d traded the prior vendor’s generalists for people who deeply understood the software business model. There was far less for her team to explain.

The Lensing implementation transformed the way Primary Healths’ business operations work. The team uses Lensing’s live sandbox to de-risk changes and work faster. Anyone on the team can simulate changes and run “what if” analyses on contract modifications and see how they’d interact with live production data, safely. Now, company executives, including the CEO, log into the system to review scenarios modeled in live sandboxes. 

With Lensing, Primary Health now has:

• Revenue recognition aligned with ASC 606
• Fixed asset depreciation and prepaid amortization
• Multi-entity intercompany journal entries
• Real-time dashboards for executives
• Cloud cost allocation integrated with AWS usage

Since moving to Lensing, Primary Health has:

• Eliminated more than 80% of spreadsheet-based processes
• Reduced close timeframes by more than 60%
• Automated revenue recognition, deferred revenue, and SSP allocation
• Gained real-time visibility into ARR, unbilled revenue, and financial performance
• Reduced system complexity and total cost of ownership compared to NetSuite
• Empowered business users and executives with self-serve financial tools

Primary Health’s move to Lensing marked a turning point in how their finance team operates. It eliminated hours of manual work and gave them real-time insights that helped them be better partners to every area of the business. If you could use that too, contact our team and see how Lensing can help.