Managing Payments of All Kinds: How Boehringer Ingelheim strives for global platform & payments perfection.
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Founded in 1885 by Albert Boehringer in Ingelheim am Rhein, Germany, Boehringer Ingelheim has grown into one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies with €24.1 billion in net sales in 2022. This family-owned company has three key business areas: Human Pharma (HP), Animal Health (AH) and Biopharmaceutical Contract Manufacturing (BIO). As a global corporation, Boehringer Ingelheim has 176 affiliates, more than 53,000 employees and 25 R&D sites for Human Pharma and Animal Health.
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Boehringer Ingelheim’s Treasury & Payments Challenges
Knowing very well that there is no such thing as “general perfection” in the complex and constantly changing world of global payments and cash management, Boehringer Ingelheim nonetheless started their Treasury transformation journey with the objective to find the perfect solution for their specific needs. Like any internationally operating company that grew organically and through acquisitions over time, Boehringer Ingelheim had a plurality of systems architectures in place (e.g. SAP, Oracle). While it is per se difficult to find a way to establish connectivity, harmonization and integration between all these different technologies, in Boehringer Ingelheim’s case, there was an additional complexity: different HR payroll providers were used for salary payments in more than 46 countries.
As a result of this multiple system architecture, Boehringer Ingelheim’s Treasury recognized room for improvement in regard to visibility and transparency of their global payment flows and processes. Sanctions screening as well as fraud prevention were handled decentralized via different processes and different depth. In short, streamlined and standardized payment approval processes and a global KPI overview were missing. This in the end led to inefficient processes and a heightened risk of fraud and potential financial losses.
Solving these challenges with an inhouse IT-project was expected to be quite expensive, time-consuming, and resource-intensive. Therefore, Boehringer Ingelheim decided to issue an RFP with the objective to find a cloud-based, multilayered solution with extensive connectivity capabilities, which would enable them to streamline their global payment flows, enhance cash visibility, centralize KPI reporting, and increase overall security and compliance through advanced solutions.
To learn more about Boehringer’s Ingelheim’s treasury and payments project – including how they deployed the TIS cloud platform to achieve greater efficiency, automation, and control – download the full success story below!