This article first appeared on the OneStream blog by Craig Colby
The first quarter of 2020 has been a challenging one for most organizations around the world. A year that started out with positive economic growth for most countries, and record highs being reached in the major stock markets was changed abruptly by the COVID-19 pandemic. It has brought segments of the global economy to a screeching halt with major impacts on virtually every private or public sector industry or agency in the world.
Work from home, shelter in place, or quarantine are now the mode of operation for almost every organization. While every function is impacted, accounting and finance functions are especially challenged to keep their business processes running while working remotely. We want to assure our customers that OneStream has the technology, processes, and security in place to make working with OneStream from home seamless and secure for our customers.
OneStream’s Commitment to our Customers
OneStream is committed to being responsive to our customers’ needs during this difficult time. We’ve taken several steps to protect the health, safety and well-being of our customers, partners, employees and local and global communities. Nearly 100% of our employees have been working remotely since early March to minimize any contagion or spread of the virus to our employees and their communities. Because OneStream uses secure cloud operations, our employees are able to perform their functions in our geographically dispersed offices or remotely from their homes (including consulting services for on-going or new implementation projects).
There are contingencies in place for both people and systems to limit single points for failure and a specific pandemic exercise was performed in advance of COVID-19 being declared a pandemic to prepare for the situation we now find ourselves in. We have also started a “C-Check-In” initiative to call every customer to ensure we are doing everything in our power to support them during this difficult time. These check-in’s are in process and as you can imagine will take some time to get in touch with each and every customer.
Leverage OneStream To Help Keep Finance Running Effectively While Remote
We’ve always seen our platform approach as an advantage to the Office of Finance and as a OneStream customer we urge you to take advantage of it. Below are a few examples we’ve heard during our check-ins about ways customers are using the OneStream platform and OneStream MarketPlace to help navigate through this disruption. Again, these are just a few examples to get your creative juices flowing regarding ways you can tap into capabilities at your disposal to help you adjust to the new normal. For example:
- A customer in the aerospace industry, which obviously is significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, is able to evaluate multiple business scenarios for the coming months, at quite a granular level. In the past it would have taken them weeks of Excel work to create these scenarios.
- One customer that recently implemented OneStream XF Cloud for Account Reconciliations, replacing Excel spreadsheets and manually-signed account recons stored in physical binders commented, “We cannot imagine what would be occurring right now as we are now enforcing remote work. This solution was a miracle to be in place at this time.”
- Another customer commented, “In this difficult time our investment in OneStream has proven to be more valuable than ever. We have one version of the truth and we are able to follow our cash flow using the Cash Planning We have control over our financials and planning. If there were any doubts within our organization about this investment, then this is the time to prove otherwise.”
During uncertain times cost containment is top of mind so remember that solutions currently available on the OneStream MarketPlace are downloadable at no cost as part of your existing license agreement. So, take a few minutes to review what’s available that might help you more quickly adapt in this rapidly changing environment. As always, we are here to help so please let us know how we can best support you.
Maintaining our Focus on 100% Customer Success
As we are maintaining our full OneStream workforce in a remote environment, we want to highlight a few key points in terms of project delivery and our continued commitment to 100% customer success. We are fortunate in our industry to be able to be effective and deliver results for our clients remotely. Our services, support and partners are very capable of managing new and on-going projects in a remote fashion. For more information on remote implementation review this blog post by Steve Mebius, our Chief Enablement Officer.
Our 100% customer success mantra is in our DNA, so rest assured that we are prepared to help you navigate through this difficult time in any way we can. Let us know how we can help. Stay safe, stay home and stay in contact and we will all get through this together.
