Post on 16-Jul-2015
Company overviewPublic company, operating since 1991
Annual revenue: $500 million
Number of full-time employees: > 1,200
North American head office: Salt Lake City, Utah
ERP: Oracle r12
ROI• Automation of all financial processes through
a single unified system
• Consolidated financials for Myriad’s global operations, including the ability to add new entities as the company grows
• Advanced reporting in numerous currencies with straightforward access down to transactional level details
• Improved analysis and scenario planning
• Ability to react to external market conditions, regenerating budgets and forecasts as necessary
IndustryLife sciences (biotechnology)
Seeking advanced software that would grow with the needs of their company, Myriad Genetics worked with Prophix to streamline their budgeting and forecasting processes, automate reporting and financial consolidation for their global operations, and provide them with the ability to react to changing market conditions.
Quick facts
Company backgroundMyriad Genetics is a leading molecular diagnostic company dedicated to making a difference in patients’ lives through the discovery and commercialization of transformative tests to assess a person’s risk of developing disease, guide treatment decisions, and assess the risks of progression and recurrence. Myriad’s portfolio of tests are based on an understanding of the role that genes play in human disease and were developed with a commitment to improving an individual’s decision making process for monitoring and treating disease. Myriad is focused on introducing new products, including companion diagnostics, as well as expanding internationally.
www.myriad.com
Myriad Genetics Prophix in-depth profile
Prophix in-depth profile
The business problemMyriad Genetics operates in 36 countries and all 50 American states. The company hosts its corporate headquarters and US laboratory operations in Salt Lake City, Utah, its international offices in Italy, Spain, France, Switzerland, and Great Britain, and its international laboratory operations in Germany. Even as Myriad acquired other business interests, the organization utilized a complex series of processes in order to conduct their reporting and financial consolidation.
Previous reporting and consolidation processes consisted of the following:
• Myriad’s Zurich-based International Controller provided month-end balances in Excel format to US accounting personnel
• US personnel would manually validate international data, consolidate balances, and perform foreign exchange conversion, all in Excel
• Adjusted Myriad international data was manually entered into Oracle
• Oracle data was imported into Hyperion for financial reporting
• No functional/native currency reporting took place
• All reporting was performed in the US and distributed throughout the company both domestically and internationally
• Process included multiple bottlenecks, which caused frequent delays
• Monthly close took approximately 5 – 7 days
Myriad Genetics also sought to address
fundamental problems with their budgeting and
forecasting. In order to track their finances, the
company circulated a single massive spreadsheet
that used extremely complex formulas. This file
featured more than 100 tabs. At times, users
would override a formula, and this generated
major security concerns.
According to Nathan McCurdy, Myriad’s Sr.
Financial Analyst, “Working in spreadsheets
denied us the flexibility that our business needed.
Companies in the life sciences business face
circumstances that change in an instant. Beyond
making predictions difficult, this means that we
often have to update our budgets and forecasts
in response to external factors.”2
Prophix in-depth profile
Myriad’s drive for international growth and the desire of its financials experts to develop more efficient budgeting and reporting processes convinced the company to identify an advanced software solution.
Considerations for a new solution included:
• Process efficiency º Automation to reduce delays to consolidation
and financial reporting
• System reliability º Support multiple users working simultaneously in
locations across the globe º Provide a user-friendly audit trail for external
auditors and compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley
• Price º Move away from Hyperion, as they did not feel
that the price was commensurate with their use of the product
º Flexible licensing options
• Initial and ongoing product configuration º Scalable to Myriad’s needs with the ability to
expand alongside the growth of the business
• IT support º Seamlessly integrate with their Oracle ERP and
other systems º Possess a structure that the accounting group
could manage/maintain with limited IT support
Assistant Controller, Ben Wheeler, explains: “We looked at Hyperion upgrades, but we settled on Prophix for its combination of price, simplicity, and power. The product appeared to offer functionality across the board. Most of all, we realized that we could expand our Prophix solution over time based on the needs of the company.”
Benefits
With Prophix as the solution for all of their financial processes, Myriad Genetics can leverage the full value of housing and analyzing their information in a unified system. The organization no longer relies on massive spreadsheet files. Myriad now produces budgets and forecasts that serve a predictive function, rather than simply incorporating views of the company’s historical performance. This allows them to foresee the results of an infinite number of scenarios.
The organization can also react adeptly to external market conditions, which change particularly fast in the developing field of genetics. In May of 2013, Angelina Jolie announced that she had undergone a preventive double mastectomy after genetic testing indicated that she had an 87% risk of developing breast cancer from a defective BRCA1 gene. Myriad Genetics developed the test. Public interest developed virtually overnight. The company needed to revise their budgets and forecasts within 1 week of completing their previous versions, and they developed these redrafts with ease.
3
Prophix in-depth profile
“Our initial understanding of the product’s power and scalability proved to be correct. After the initial implementation, we quickly began to add various elements to our solution, and attended Prophix’s annual User Conference to learn about the innovations developed by other users. We would definitely recommend Prophix to other companies in our industry.”
— Ben Wheeler Assistant Controller, Myriad Genetics
© 2013 Prophix Software
Head office 350 Burnhamthorpe Road West, Suite 1000 Mississauga, ON, Canada • L5B 3J11-905-279-8711 • www.prophix.com
Historically, presenting budgets and forecasts to Myriad’s executives had become very cumbersome. In many instances, executives located errors and the company’s accounting personnel would scramble to revise their figures—often 3-4 times before they could get everything right.
With their use of Prophix, the accuracy of Myriad’s information has improved dramatically. As Nathan McCurdy says, “We now present to our executives with a consolidated balance sheet, a cash flow statement, an 18-month rolling forecast, a 5-year forecast, and more. The executives were very surprised and impressed this year when we only needed to present to them once. In the future, we will present directly in Prophix, drilling down on specific salaries or other line items in order to weigh the impact of operational decisions.”
Myriad also enjoys streamlined reporting and financial consolidation for their global operations, including:
• Monthly close reduced by approximately 2 days º Reduction stems from fewer manual
processes and fewer errors that manual processes generate
• Accurate reporting of the company’s financial information in numerous currencies
• Myriad’s International Controller can easily create and run reports
º Reduced reporting burden on Corporate and Assistant Controller
• Greater transparency into international performance for domestic accounting personnel
• Improved analysis. Can determine if variances are due to operational factors or fluctuations in the value of currencies
• Provide more transparent audit trail of consolidation entries/adjustments
• Strengthen Sarbanes-Oxley controls framework for consolidation and financial reporting
• System easily maintained/updated by accounting personnel