Successes Across Finance and Other Functions Using OneStream Technology
Companies today often enact technology initiatives seeking to unlock benefits such as moving from manual to automated approaches, unifying processes across functions, and elevating leaders’ ability to make decisions. At the same time, technology leaders are transitioning from the headaches of managing on-prem infrastructure in favor of cloud-based solutions, while selecting tools that can support their business processes and, where possible, streamline the number of applications or offer ways to reduce unnecessary complexity.
The complex nature of each company shapes how it evaluates technology:
“A key point of consideration for companies today is the desire to select a tool that offers one solution that will provide flexibility, give all functions within the organization the ability to scale, and avoid the need for data to move between applications. Ultimately, companies want to use the same software solution for multiple purposes—planning, reporting, monitoring, and the ability to modernize accounting, finance, and other functions as well, and OneStream technology aligns to meet these needs.”
-Talha Zamir, Manager, Riveron
Here are some highlights of recent journeys to realize improved business possibilities using OneStream:
Replacing end-of-life legacy software with a scalable OneStream solution
One company’s modernization journey:
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A need for an updated technology solution commonly occurs when a company’s existing technology is nearing end of support. For example, many organizations use Oracle Hyperion, or “HFM.” In one such case, a commercial real estate company evaluated several options that could replace HFM and meet the evolving needs of their organization, and the company engaged Riveron and implemented OneStream. The solution enabled several new possibilities, including using the same technology to improve the company’s financial planning processes.
In this case, the technology enabled the business to make several improvements, including: (1) moving away from a time-consuming, Excel-based approach in favor of automated processes that allow professionals to spend more time on highest-value efforts; (2) modernizing the finance function by offering a single platform application that supports the entire office of the CFO within the organization and elevating cross-functional visibility because the technology could also support and expand the capabilities of human resources, operations, and other areas beyond finance; and (3) supporting better decision making by removing manual bottlenecks and allowing rapid, decentralized access to information. In addition, the cloud-based software easily integrated with the company’s existing human resources (HRIS) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, and these integrations continue to promote more seamless ways of working.
Technology can streamline processes and better enable growth:
“We’ve engaged with many organizations in growth mode, often through inorganic growth when companies have been highly acquisitive and will leverage technology to support their new financial reporting requirements. Usually, they seek to consolidate financials for newly acquired businesses and need a platform that is really helpful for enabling efficient growth and scalability, and companies have found it to be very effective to integrate the financial results of their acquired organizations into OneStream.”
-Ben Novak, Director, Riveron
Uncovering the unexpected: extensible possibilities and unified systems enabled by OneStream
When organizations set out to modernize their organizations by implementing new corporate performance management (CPM) technology, it often stems from a desire to better support financial analysis and other aspects of company operations and resource management. Some organizations select OneStream because it addresses these goals and find the platform provides added possibilities because of its extensible nature. Extensibility is the capacity to broaden the usefulness of a system. That is, users can get more value out of what is already configured, taking information that is originally set up in the CPM platform for one purpose (such as actual corporate financial information) and use it for another purpose (such as business unit reporting and operational processes).
Technology extends new possibilities:
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One healthcare organization wanted to enable better alignment across its corporate functions and various business processes. When partnering with Riveron to support this effort by implementing a CPM solution, the organization specifically sought to improve driver-based planning across the core trial balance, focusing on cash flow and individual people planning, and enhance its budgeting and forecasting processes. The technology solution also revealed deeper benefits by allowing the company to unify dozens of charts of accounts and streamline other processes through the unique extensibility offered by OneStream. Here, driver-based forecasting allowed many individuals that had disparate approaches to come together and conduct business and decision-making with consistency across the organization. By building the driver-based forecasting process, individuals could use the system to enter a handful of drivers (for example, related to people planning, drivers might include an employee merit increase or bonus percentage by level) and obtain all the necessary information for each of the business units, forecasted automatically with the touch of a button. The technology enabled better approaches to understand and manage cash flow, optimize people-planning efforts by providing a level of detail that had not been available previously, and much more.
Organizations can uncover new possibilities enabled by technology:
“Clients have come to expect faster analytics, more automation, and streamlined data integration when implementing a new technology like OneStream, but once the implementation takes shape, organizations become pleasantly surprised by the extensibility of the technology and its ability to move dozens of systems into one system. This expanded benefit is something that client teams typically haven’t envisioned until we start working through the design and demonstrate the broad range of possibilities.”
-Todd Cilio, Managing Director, Riveron
Whether companies seek out new technology because they need to replace a legacy system or simply want to implement a more unified approach, these examples of effective journeys show how CPM technology like OneStream can help businesses uncover new possibilities and realize improved results across finance and operations.
