Rebuilding a OneStream System for Streamlined & Accelerated Reporting
The Siutation
A PE-backed aerospace company, during a fresh carve-out and in the process of building a corporate FP&A team, purchased OneStream licenses and hired a project manager and dedicated multi-person consulting firm team to implement close/consolidation, planning, and managerial reporting functions. The anticipated outcome was a single source of truth, automated managerial and financial reporting, shortened close cycle and end user budget input model. After 18+ months of both project management, consulting fee costs, and multiple large classroom end user trainings, the OneStream system was still not useable for any of the original desired outcomes. A combined lack of relevant reports, slow system speed, convoluted dimensions and metadata hierarchies, and inconstancy of the numbers created a complete rejection by users.
Services
Metadata & Extensibility Dimension Clean Up
Re-Train Business End Users
Automated Consolidations
Implement Budget & Forecasting Process
The Execution
OneStream Functional Rebuild:
- Evaluated and compared metadata, business rules, and overall structure to end user reports and desired reporting capabilities.
- Deleted large hierarchies of unneeded metadata and wrote transformation rules to encompass more raw data – eliminating a lot of the one-to-one system drag rules.
- Traced back source data to ERP tables and a wrote an SQL report to optimize the correct level of data with the ability to load on a more regular basis.
- Accelerated data loads from once during close, to once a day throughout the month.
- Ensured that data refreshed daily so that financials were not a black box throughout the month – allowing managers and executives gain control and make true strategic decisions.
- Created workflows with mulit-level security to allow end users to only see what was relevant to their needs.
Reports:
- Re-wrote reports in a visual format, matching what functional managers, finance leads, and executives were used to seeing (customized colors and familiar fonts were chosen).
- Created a desktop file version of the excel or PowerPoint report for some higher-level executives – as people had the tendency to be more comfortable with what they were used to (another step towards overcoming the previously negative OneStream environment).
Training:
- Took a “Train the Trainer” approach and ran concurrent for two full month-end closes and forecast cycles.
- Ensured that these periods were restricted to the Trainer group and ran in parallel to the manual “band-aid” methods being used.
- Validated report-generated numbers and took any corrective action through a share screen step-by-step process – allowing the Trainers to see and learn the back end of OneStream and significantly spring boarded the change management process.
The Results
Accordion not only played a pivotal role allowing the PE sponsor to use the software it was contracted for, but also shortened close by 7 days into a 3-day close cycle. A monthly forecast was produced by the end of the week of close vs 7-10 after close, but executives were able to immediately start using the reporting for strategic decision-making for-profit enhancement and risk mitigation.