Boston Scientific Corporation Supports Organizational Growth through Finance Transformation Initiative

 

Main Challenges:

• Significant growth due to aggressive acquisition strategy, causing an increase of finance costs and a decrease in the finance team’s capacity
• Launch of Global Business Services structure and utilization of a BPO

Key Objectives:

• Eliminate manual work and increase finance capacity without increasing cost
• Enforce a transparent, documented workflow by increasing visibility and control

Boston Scientific Corporation (BSC) is a continuously expanding international business with significant opportunities in emerging markets.

44% of BSC’s sales are international, but the U.S. is currently BSC’s largest market. BSC’s growth strategy relies on an aggressive acquisition stance, which created complexities and difficulties in how the organization’s Office of Finance completed the Record to Report (R2R) process.

Due to their aggressive acquisition strategy, Boston Scientific Corporation (BSC) set out to solve the many financial close challenges their Office of Finance was facing including:

• An increase in time and effort to support their Record to Report (R2R) workload, especially with a heavy reliance on manual processes and legacy tools
• No standardized workflow documentation
• Lack of process visibility, as well as an absence of ensured control framework

Additionally, BSC was in the process of launching their Global Business Service structure, and utilizing a BPO — all of which further compounded the struggle that their Office of Finance faced in both keeping the organization afloat during periods of intense growth and supporting BSC’s vision for the future.

What Boston Scientific Needed For a Successful Financial Close

• A financial close solution that would help them increase their efficiencies and effectiveness across their global accounting processes
• Increased transparency and standardization to deliver value for the entire organization

After reviewing other Record to Report solutions, they chose Cadency® by Trintech — specifically Cadency Reconciliation Certify®, Cadency Close® and Cadency Journal Entry®.

 

Solution in Action

BSC’s first step was to implement Cadency (Reconciliation Certify, Close and Journal Entry) across their Global Business Centers in the Americas, EMEA and APAC regions. From there, BSC launched the solution across their local finance teams in the EMEA and APAC regions, as well. They then formulated a strategy for their acquired companies to be onboarded onto the solution; as entities are acquired, they utilize Cadency Reconciliation Certify and Close as part of the organization’s integration plan.

“We are an SAP® company, and an active acquirer of companies,” said Brian Burbach, Global Process Steward of Account-to-Report at BSC. “So, we add in those entities as they come into SAP® as part of our integration plan. We utilize Cadency on a global basis with most entities on Cadency Close and Reconciliation Certify, and a growing number on Cadency Journal Entry.”

Currently, Cadency Reconciliation Certify is utilized by 86 BSC entities in 53 countries, Cadency Close is used by 93 entities and Cadency Journal Entry is used by 67 entities in 35 countries. 29,000+ accounts are housed within Cadency, with more than 4,400 of those accounts set to auto reconcile.

“Overall, we’ve seen significant indirect cost savings with Cadency by way of auto-reconciling accounts, risk-stratifying the balance sheet and enabling RPA in several instances, taking time out of our finance processes,” said Burbach. “These result in direct cost savings and capacity increases.”

Additionally, BSC has experienced increased productivity and time savings, greater visibility and standardization across their balance sheet reconciliation and previously manual JE processes. The automation features inside Cadency have increased their efficiency, as well in areas such as SOX sampling and testing. As a global organization, BSC has benefitted from improved collaboration and communication among teams across the globe, especially when the company had to rapidly shift to a completely virtual workforce.

The company continues to contribute to process improvement initiatives and controls, such as the organization’s focus on transitioning from SAP® ECC6 to S/4HANA. “Now we have the opportunity to embark upon further business transformation initiatives within Cadency, partner with SAP®, and have companywide support behind us to increase the rate of transformation as we go forward over the next few years.”

With Cadency, BSC has not only optimized their own processes and future plans but has become a partner for best practice accounting processes. Their experience with Cadency has given BSC a better sense of “the art of the possible” for leading-edge technology, processes and opportunities to leverage in the future.

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About Boston Scientific Corporation

Boston Scientific Corporation is a global medical manufacturing company with over 36,000 employees. Boston Scientific operates across 130 countries and 141 sites, including 16 principal manufacturing centers worldwide. The business is organized into three categories: international cardiology, medical surgery and rhythm and neurobiology neuromodulation.

Industry: Biotech, Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences

Annual Revenue: $9B

Trintech Solutions in Use: Cadency Reconciliation Certify, Cadency Close and Cadency Journal Entry

ERP: SAP® Business Suite and Oracle®