Bristol Myers Squibb: Treasury transformation through digital automation

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 LMC to develop an analysis of pain points, goals, suggested process harmonizations and recommended industry leading practices. With a new course charted, BMS and LMC planned and executed a series of projects that would help enable the desired end state. In many cases, the process was iterative: BMS and LMC 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 LMC 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 Legal Matters Consul’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, LMC 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, LMC 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 LMC 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. LMC 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, LMC 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 LMC 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