Nick Cernese

Global Health Sciences & Wellness Consulting Partner at Ernst & Young

Speaker

Nick Cernese is a Principal at Ernst & Young LLP and leads the Life Sciences industry sector within EY’s Finance Transformation Consulting practice. He has over 20 years of consulting and business advisory experience working with pharmaceutical, medical technology and biotech companies engaged in large-scale information technology and business transformation programs. Within the Finance domain, Nick advises CFOs, Controllers and functional & regional finance executives to optimize the full range of finance capabilities including transaction processing, tax, treasury, internal audit, planning & analysis, reporting and accounting policy, and has led end to end transformation programs including creation of overall transformation vision and mission, process re-engineering, outsourcing, automation, shared services design and implementation support, organizational change management strategy, financial information systems implementation, statutory and regulatory controls design and compliance, and global program management.

Nick holds a BA in Economics and Political Science from the College of Arts & Sciences at Boston University. He is a Certified Information Systems Auditor.

Select Project Experience across the Finance domain:

• Speciality BioPharma: Financial Statement Close Process reengineering / transformation, including deep-dive analysis of close activities and opportunities to streamline and reduce close efforts

• Fortune 100 Consumer Products: End to End Finance transformation, including vision for future-state finance function, business case for transformation, process reengineering of Record to Report, Invoice to Cash and Procure to Pay processes, creation of shared services strategy and implementation plan including migration of key activities from regional finance functions into global shared services functions

• Speciality BioPharma: Finance Vision & Roadmap, working with CFO and Finance leadership team to consider industry trends and customer feedback and establish a roadmap to transform the Finance function, including process reengineering, shared services & outsourcing strategy and technology roadmap

• Speciality Pharma/Generics: End to End finance transformation including functional benchmarking, vision for transformation including outsourcing strategy and technology roadmap and creation of multi-year transformation program with targeted cost reduction targets aligned to overall vision and business case

• Global Medical Device Manufacturer: Accounts Payable functional transformation, including current state analysis, transformation roadmap development, business case and benefits target, process reengineering, outsource provider selection and migration, technology selection and implementation, and creation of shared services center and migration of activities and functions into the center

• Fortune 100 Industrial Products: finance shared services strategy and implementation, including analysis of process improvement opportunities and business case / implementation approach for migration of core processes into shared services

• Regional Energy/Utility Provider: Finance vision & transformation roadmap, including development of an end-to-end process taxonomy and maturity model for the finance processes, assessment of global finance processes and development of improvement roadmap focusing on enhancements to processes, technology and organization operating model

• Fortune 10 Global Diversified Life Sciences / Consumer Healthcare: numerous projects across various finance functions including:

• Accounts Payable Transformation: implementation of SAP for Accounts Payable, including program management, accounts payable process design, change management, communications and training, controls and compliance, integration and user acceptance testing and data conversion, including overall project strategy, project structure and business case and all elements of the implementation accounts payable process design, organizational change management and transition of key activities to an off-shore shared services function.

• Controllership Vision & Transformation Roadmap: creation of a vision and mission statement for the Controllership function, including a multi-year transformation program including key initiatives to enhance processes and technology, as well as people/talent strategy

• Management Reporting Strategy & Report Development: development of strategy to support management reporting requirements, and creation / implementation of key reporting tools used for management decision-making

• Internal Audit Vision, Roadmap & Technology Enablement: development of vision and mission for the internal audit function based on Voice of Customer and Voice of Employee survey data and creation of end-to-end transformation roadmap including selection and implementation of technology to enhance the audit planning, execution and reporting process

• Shared Services Risk & Compliance Strategy: deep-dive analysis of risk & compliance activities performed within Shared Services including recommendations to streamline compliance activities and opportunities to enhance overall approach to compliance monitoring and testing

• Tax Vision & Transformation Roadmap: development of vision and mission for the tax function based on Voice of Customer and Voice of Employee survey data and creation of end-to-end transformation roadmap including opportunities for the tax function to enhance business partnering with other finance functions and key stakeholders, as well as technology enablement to support the new ways of working

• Internal Audit Functional Transformation: end-to-end transformation of key internal audit processes, including risk assessment, audit planning/execution, SOX testing and monitoring, FCPA/Investigation execution and reporting strategy