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CLIENT
INDUSTRY
Pharmaceutical and life sciences
FEATURING
Deals
Finance Transformation
Automation
$5M+
in annual bank and liquidity optimization benefits
~95%
reduction in data entry errors by enabling straight-through processing for financial transactions
50+
distinct projects and small automations achieved with PwC’s help, saving many hours of recurring annual work across teams
Building enterprise-wide trust amid mergers, company transformation and new ways of working
SITUATION
More than a merger: BMS prepares to transform its treasury function
Mergers and acquisitions can present various challenges, but they can also offer visionary businesses the opportunity to undergo transformative changes. In the case of Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) acquiring Celgene, the task at hand was merging two well-established treasury functions. BMS approached this challenge by adopting a treasury-forward mindset that leveraged the strengths of both companies and fostered a culture of continuous improvement. To bring its ambitious “Treasury Forward” initiative to life, BMS collaborated with PwC and embarked on a series of successful projects. These initiatives encompassed automations and large-scale process harmonizations across international treasury, global cash and insurance functions. As a result, the BMS treasury function emerged as a modern, fully digital operation.
Mergers and acquisitions can be a challenge for any organization. They require innovation as well as tried-and-true knowledge, big-picture thinking as well as attention to detail, and expansive planning as well as focused execution. Managed properly, they can be transformative, realizing the value of a deal and helping to position a company for a strong future. But it takes significant effort and experience to complete an M&A deal that results in an integrated, high-functioning organization that’s ready to achieve its goals from day one.
When BMS announced its acquisition of Celgene, its finance function undertook several mission-critical projects related to the acquisition. In particular, merging the treasury functions would require strategic thinking and careful execution.
The BMS treasury team needed to integrate personnel and processes without disrupting operations — no small feat, even for a professional. BMS brought in PwC to advise the organization to help meet pressing needs and tight deadlines, address merger-related challenges and prepare itself to emerge as a stronger and more strategic organization.
Charting a new course
Integrating two teams of similar scale — each with its own processes, systems and culture — requires trust, dedication and a mindset shift during a high-pressure period. To operate as one company, both entities should find synergies as they integrate their ways of working and merge their operating models. To build its blueprint and reach its goal of a consistent integration, the BMS treasury team had to clear a few hurdles.
The transaction required a high volume of focused, executional work that left BMS and Celgene with little free time to plan and act on an improved future state. This was true across finance but especially within the treasury function, where any delays in execution can have significant economic and reputational consequences. The BMS and Celgene teams had different ERP systems, treasury systems, workflows and governance models. These systems had to be merged, integrated and reconciled without causing disruption. In parallel, BMS treasury leadership also wanted to take advantage of process enhancement opportunities.
Despite resource constraints and a tight timeline, the BMS treasury team had a clear vision. It aimed to help drive business continuity and value while positioning the company for future success. Its proactive approach and ability to navigate these changes are what set the company up to thrive in a post-merger environment.
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SOLUTION
Honing a Treasury Forward vision
Once the merger and integration of the two companies was well underway, BMS saw a chance to further develop an exceptional, modern treasury operation that could live on long after the deal. Both organizations wanted to reorient toward shared goals and new outcomes. At the same time, reaching the share goals required operational and technological improvements that would be immediately apparent in employees’ day-to-day activities.
Leaning in to industry leading practices
The Treasury Forward initiative marshaled people, processes and technology in service of three main objectives: automating treasury activities, accelerating data and insight generation, and digitally upskilling the team. With these goals in mind, the BMS treasury team worked closely with PwC to develop an analysis of pain points, goals, suggested process harmonizations and recommended industry leading practices. With a new course charted, BMS and PwC planned and executed a series of projects that would help enable the desired end state. In many cases, the process was iterative: BMS and PwC developed and improved programs in stages that evolved in line with the Treasury Forward vision — a testament to the culture of continuous improvement that BMS treasury established. As success built on success, the initiative gradually drew in more departments, teams and functions.
In the end, the BMS treasury team participated in over 50 Treasury Forward projects across the business. Each one centered on the concept of continuous improvement and further alignment with modern finance and treasury leading practices. The main areas of focus were within international treasury, global cash operations and insurance.
International treasury
BMS worked with PwC to help develop new automated models, workflows and tools for international treasury tasks, including training materials, upskilling and ongoing support. BMS’s funds flow process, for example, benefitted from automation of predictable tasks like workflow approvals across departments including tax, legal and accounting. Other automations helped effectively fund transactions and streamline loan documentation renewal. BMS then built on these solutions to create more complex tools like a minimum cash model, which helped monitor liquidity in BMS-held accounts around the world. All these improvements contributed to expedited funds flow, clearer visibility into international treasury data and overall improved liquidity management.
With PwC’s help, BMS also implemented AtlasFX, an industry leading exposure management program, that provided strategic and operational support along the way for tasks like hedge design, testing, reconciliations, controls and management reporting. The rollout of AtlasFX proved a game changer, helping the organization better mitigate, manage and report currency risk.
Global cash operations
BMS modernized its global cash operations with new automation and analytics tools. This started with a series of assessments and evaluations on the best way to handle cash positioning, cash forecasting and bank administration — which identified opportunities to enhance existing processes. In several cases, PwC automated reporting protocols to replace manual tasks, then presented BMS with new data analytics tools and custom dashboards to bring it all together.
The BMS team selected and implemented a system for cash forecasting and working capital analytics that helped it aggregate, analyze and forecast its global cash positions with more precision and timeliness than ever before. Separately, PwC programmed an efficient way to visualize the global bank account landscape, a cash dashboard, a bank account update tracker and new workflows for cash positioning approvals and documentation — all enabled by automation.
Insurance
Insurance policies for pharmaceutical studies, drug development and pharma and life sciences industry. BMS envisioned a new suite of tools to help manage insurance workflows. BMS treasury and PwC collaborated to create an automated clinical trial insurance toolkit to improve cycle times, reduce risk and help simplify management of complex processes. The result was an end-to-end automated process hosted on an internally built web portal that includes dashboards to improve visibility over ongoing studies, process inefficiencies and the clinical trial pipeline.
Award-winning project: Clinical trial insurance certificate tracker
In one mission-critical, award-winning implementation, BMS enhanced its clinical trial portfolio with a clinical trial insurance certificate tracker. Since trials of a new drug can’t begin without insurance, speedy documentation helps prevent delays in drug development. With the merger doubling its portfolio of clinical trials, the BMS insurance team knew it was time for a faster, better way. PwC was brought in to develop an automated clinical trial insurance toolkit, which could help automate insurance certification from the time a clinical trial enters the pipeline to the time it closes to reduce coverage gaps.
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RESULTS
A reinvented BMS treasury function
The BMS-Celgene merger demonstrated that M&A deals don’t just happen on paper. Combining people, processes and technology for the long-term demands daily executional rigor and vision, commitment and investment in the process throughout the organization. After the Celgene acquisition, the BMS treasury team strengthened itself as an industry leading-practice operator within a modern finance framework. Along the way, PwC provided BMS with executional bandwidth and overall assistance across its treasury functions, with a focus on process improvement and automation throughout.
The engagement, which spanned multiple projects and departments, raised productivity and lowered risk. It bridged not just the Celgene merger but two other major acquisitions and integrations, creating a template for effective integration and enabling a continual growth mindset. Together, BMS and PwC helped implement 16 system and process harmonizations during the merger, with plans for 20+ more. During the initial launch, just 10 new treasury automations saved over 1,500 hours of recurring manual work each year.
Overall, the treasury team used the opportunity to build trust internally at BMS even through mergers, transformation and new ways of working. As a result, the BMS treasury team adopted leading-practice processes and technologies that can help drive future growth. The company benefited from its merger with the help of its forward-thinking approach and investment in digital transformation.
Integration without disruption
A unified integration was always the goal. There was a wave-by-wave integration of Celgene’s financial processes and data into the BMS backbone with no interruption to customer-facing operations. The new workflows increased capabilities and lowered risk across the finance organization. Each new integration helped bring the companies closer together, uniting two cultures into one entity with a shared vision.
Industry leading: BMS treasury wins ‘top team’ award
As a result of the Treasury Forward initiative, BMS won the Treasury Today Adam Smith Award for Top Treasury Team. The award reflects the fact that the entire BMS treasury team, based in New Jersey and Ireland, was involved in the initiative and transformed the organization. Encouraged by a senior leadership team that nurtured a strong culture of innovation, the treasury team participated in more than 100 projects that improved treasury processes by leaps and bounds — an assessment supported by multiple benchmarking exercises. Due to the treasury team’s relentless focus on automation and dedication to continual, proactive improvement, a lean and nimble team was able to cement its role as a trusted partner for the rest of the business.
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As a leading-practice operator within a modern finance framework
“The merger was the right time to raise the bar across the organization. We had a vision to take the treasury team to the next level, and PwC helped us execute.”
“BMS embraced change to set a new standard in treasury operations. Along the way, we were able to build new tools and automations that helped the business achieve its vision.”
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