After the carve-out from Sanofi, Zentiva faced complex challenges. One focus was on overcoming a heterogeneous system landscape for planning, management and legal reporting, as well as IFRS consolidation. With the introduction of the Board platform, the company bundled planning, forecasting, reporting, and consolidation into one integrated solution.
Automated SAP interfaces, a central SQL staging layer, and a harmonized chart of accounts now create the technical basis for a single source of truth. The result is a monthly closing that is shortened by two days, higher data quality, and more detailed reporting down to the country and regional level. This significantly strengthens Zentiva’s strategic control capabilities.
Why This Story Matters
During the carve-out, Zentiva redesigned and implemented numerous systems, processes and roles. This was done in order to increase the focus on business development and profitability. Questions arose regarding the consistency between planning and consolidation, and management and legal reporting, as these were mapped in different systems.
Board enabled Zentiva to bring financial planning and consolidation into one unified solution. Zentiva is benefitting by:
- One single platform: Hosting FP&A, Consolidation/Close and Reporting
- One source of truth: Board ensures total alignment between planning as well as legal and management reporting.
- Closing Faster, Work Smarter: Accelerated monthly close by 2 days while freeing local teams from manual tasks.
- Future-ready platform: A single platform for HQ and local entities, built to scale into ESG and AI.
The Company
Zentiva is a leading European generics (pharmaceuticals) manufacturer providing health and wellbeing for all generations. Headquartered in Prague, Czech Republic, Zentiva develops, produces, and delivers high-quality, affordable medicines to more than 100 million people in over 30 countries across Europe. Zentiva has four wholly-owned manufacturing sites and a broad network of external manufacturing partners to ensure supply security, and employs more than 5,000 colleagues.
Zentiva was carved out of Sanofi in 2018 and acquired by Advent International. Since then, the company has pursued rapid growth, integrating ten acquisitions since 2019 and building a pan-European platform for generics.
Stanislav Drahoš
With Board, financial planning and consolidation come together in one integrated platform — delivering confidence and control across the business.
Key Benefits
- Perfectly aligned figures– Having financial planning and financial consolidation on one unified platform assures data accuracy and reduces preparation time.
- Faster management insights – Automated data provision accelerates monthly close by several days.
- Trust through transparency – One source of truth for both IFRS and management reporting ensures reliable and auditable data.
- Integration across the organization – Legal and management consolidation now run in one platform, unifying HQ and local entities.
- Flexibility for users – Power users across the group can develop reports and manage uploads independently.
The Challenge: Fragmented Systems and Lack of Transparency
As part of the carve-out from Sanofi, Zentiva redesigned and implemented a wide range of systems, processes, and roles. With a stronger focus on business development and profitability, new challenges emerged—particularly around ensuring consistency between planning & management reporting and legal reporting.
Zentiva decided to design a new financial planning, reporting and consolidation platform from scratch. The goal was to increase the level of detail and thus improve transparency. A common and reliable source of data should relieve the finance team from fixing figures, giving more time to analyze data and gaining insights.
At the same time, C-level expectations were rising, as Stanislav Drahoš recalls: “Our management has a clear focus on fast, reliable access to monthly results. Therefore, a highly performant solution was one of the main criteria for selecting our system.”
The Solution: A Unified Platform for Planning and Consolidation
Zentiva launched a structured vendor evaluation with the help of an external partner. The company required for a platform capable of handling legal consolidation according to IFRS, while also supporting management consolidation, planning, and forecasting.
Board was selected after a detailed proof of concept, offering
- All solutions under „one roof“, i.e. legal consolidation, management reporting, and budgeting
- Flexibility
- Relative independence from external supplier in system maintenance
Stanislav explains: “We knew Board was excellent for planning and forecasting, but we also needed to be sure about consolidation. The proof of concept and provided customer references convinced us Board could master all.”
With implementation support from BIOS Management, Zentiva built a modern finance architecture:
- SQL staging layer and SAP connectors ensure automated data provision.
- All data aligned and stored centrally in the Zentiva database as a single point of truth.
- New chart of accounts and harmonized reporting structures were defined.
- Integrated processes cover actuals, budget, forecast, long-range planning, along with financial consolidation and reporting in one system.
Planning and Financial Consolidation with Board
The planning process in Board covers actuals, budget, forecast, and long-range plans using the same reporting structures, enabling straightforward comparisons between actual and planned figures.
Consolidation with IFRS-based annual reports, including disclosure notes, are prepared within the same system, supported by intercompany reconciliation, transparent data transfer from ERP, and full audit logs for
- Reliable, high-performance consolidation with a dedicated staging and reporting database for granular analysis
- Flexible, standardized integration via automated SAP interfaces and flat file uploads
- Step-by-step consolidation: data uploaded by legal entities is validated, reconciled, and consolidated — from P&L to balance sheet to cash flow
The solution also manages intercompany reconciliation and elimination of margins on material level, ensuring accurate group results. This level of detail allows Zentiva to calculate upstream margins across the supply chain and to provide insights into cost variances, efficiency, and profitability.
The Benefits: Faster Close, Greater Transparency, More Flexibility
With Board, Zentiva established a single source of truth that integrates legal and management consolidation, planning, and reporting in one platform — based upon a harmonized chart of accounts creating a consistent reporting foundation.
“Board has significantly strengthened our ability to respond to market changes”, said Stanislav. “It provides enhanced visibility into budgeted data, ensuring transparency and better control. Its fast adaptability allows us to update plans quickly, streamlining processes, and reducing delays. This agility enables quicker delivery of forecasts, so we can react faster to changing conditions and uncover weak points early – leading to more accurate forecasting and informed decision-making,” Stanislav concludes.
Stanislav Drahoš
Board enabled us to shorten the monthly close by two days and deliver more granular financial statements, including detailed cash flow at group, regional, and country level.
The impact of the new system was quickly visible. “Board enabled us to shorten the monthly close by 2 days. The time savings would have been even greater if we had maintained the original data granularity. However, the introduction of new reporting layers and increased transactional-level detail add of course more complexity. But these enhancements significantly improve data traceability, transparency and data quality across the reporting framework. The results are more granular and more accurate financial statements, including detailed cash flow at group, regional, and country level”, Stanislav is pleased.
- Acceleration: The monthly close was shortened significantly, giving management timely financial insights.
- Transparency: Both legal and management consolidation now run in the same system, reconciled with SAP — fully auditable, and available down to regional and country levels.
- Automation: Automated data loading alone saves local teams one to two days of work each month.
- Granularity: Detailed reporting with income statements, balance sheets, networking capitals, and cash flows at group, regional, and country level.
- Integration: Board is used not only at HQ but also in local subsidiaries for their own reporting and planning.
- User empowerment: Power users in finance can create reports and manage uploads without relying on external consultants.
With Board, Zentiva has transformed financial planning and consolidation into a faster, more transparent, and more user-driven process. Local subsidiaries and power users in finance actively adopt the platform — creating reports and managing uploads without external support. “It is so satisfying to see country heads using Board data to prepare their presentation,” Stanislav smiles.
Conclusion
Unlike previous tools, Board delivers both the speed and depth required to support Zentiva’s ambitious growth trajectory. Faster access to reliable numbers enables leadership to make confident business decisions, from daily operations to mergers and acquisitions. The automation of routine tasks with the automated interface saves financial experts one day, translating directly into cost savings and freeing up finance teams to focus on value-added analysis.
Most importantly, the platform is future-ready: Board provides the foundation for upcoming ESG reporting requirements and offers the flexibility to integrate AI-driven forecasting and advanced analytics. In this way, Zentiva is not only solving today’s consolidation and planning challenges but also meeting the financial and regulatory demands of tomorrow.
As Stanislav concludes: “Transparency and acceleration are essential for steering our company. With Board, we have achieved both – and we are ready to take the next step.”
