The life sciences industry faces increasing and ongoing pressure from new regulations, fierce competition, and growing demands for price reductions and transparency. Model N invests significantly in product innovation, regularly introducing new features and functionality that help customers reduce revenue leakage, streamline processes, and ensure compliance.
To keep pace with industry change, manufacturers need a revenue management platform that evolves with them. The Model N SaaS delivery model simplifies how customers stay current, enabling more manageable updates and faster access to new functionality and regulatory changes than traditional, large-scale upgrade cycles.
Outdated installations make it harder to keep up with industry and regulatory changes and scale as business needs evolve. Additionally, delaying updates can hinder future implementations, especially if regulatory release packs or new features are unavailable for the version of software a company is running. In these cases, organizations can face larger, more complex upgrade efforts—often requiring additional time, planning, and cross‑functional coordination. This is exactly what the Model N SaaS approach is designed to help customers avoid.
Taking a proactive approach to updates
A leading pharmaceutical manufacturer needed systems that could adapt quickly without disrupting the business. This long‑time Model N customer leverages Model N SaaS to take incremental updates annually, enabling faster access to regulatory changes and new capabilities with minimal operational impact.
The manufacturer’s Operations Leader spoke at Model N’s annual customer conference this spring and credited the move to Model N SaaS as being a critical business enabler. He recounted learning as a new employee—before moving to Model N SaaS—that their system would be shut down for five to seven days for an update. This process was especially disruptive to his team, which needed to process daily price changes. Transitioning to SaaS delivery has enabled the company to implement regulatory updates and realize the benefits of newly introduced features much faster than with an on-prem deployment.
“We no longer have extended blackout periods and complex coordination across the business,” the operations leader stated. “We’re able to execute releases over a weekend with minimal impact. It’s been a major shift in how the organization experiences change.”
He continued, “Our approach to annual system updates is rooted in disciplined planning, modern architecture, and strong cross-functional collaboration.” He credits three key practices that have made these updates manageable and sustainable over time. These practices are enabled by Model N’s modern SaaS architecture, which allows the pharma company to plan, test, and deploy updates in smaller, lower‑risk increments.
First, the pharma manufacturer relies on a clear, transparent system roadmap. Its digital team maintains a single, consolidated view of all key platforms used, including Model N. Planned releases are mapped out multiple years in advance. “The roadmap is foundational,” explained the Operations Leader “It allows us to anticipate the change, align our priorities, and proactively plan resources and timelines rather than reacting to upgrades as they approach.”
Second, the company has deliberately invested in automated testing. It built a robust library of automated test scripts that materially reduces the risk of each upgrade. The Operations Leader stated, “As the quality of the scripts and our comfort with automation have increased, upgrades have become more predictable and far less resource-intensive than in the past.”
Lastly, and most importantly, the company credits the strong, collaborative relationship it has with Model N, where updates are approached as a shared, well-orchestrated process rather than a disruptive one‑off event. “The partnership among our business and digital teams, Model N, and other stakeholders is ultimately what gets us across the finish line,” said the Operations Leader. Preparation, planning, and shared ownership are all established well before an update. This preparation enables the company to have an execution routine that does not overwhelm the business.
Stay ahead of the innovation curve while minimizing business disruption
Model N SaaS enables customers to maintain continuous compliance and leverage the latest industry best practices. Updates are incremental, eliminating the need for large implementation and testing teams and onerous, expensive projects that can take upward of 16 months to complete. The Model N team works with every customer to determine an annual update schedule that minimizes the impact on their business while maximizing the value they get from taking regular updates.
Having seen firsthand the benefits of a proactive approach to updates, the Operations Leader has some advice for others: “Annual updates don’t become easier by avoiding them. They become easier with institutionalized planning and a modernized infrastructure, and when you leverage automation and treat upgrades as a shared responsibility rather than a one-time event.”
Experiences like this one highlight how far SaaS-based revenue management has already come, shifting upgrades from disruptive events to more predictable, low-impact routines. Looking ahead, Model N is continuing to invest in this evolution with Model N One, its next-generation SaaS roadmap focused on continuous delivery, faster access to innovation, and greater flexibility over how and when new capabilities are adopted.
Together with expanded APIs and extension points designed to support greater integration and extensibility, this roadmap reflects Model N’s long-term vision: a revenue management platform that evolves alongside customers, reduces the operational friction of change, and helps manufacturers stay current in an increasingly dynamic industry.
