This article first appeared on the OneStream website by Nicholas Cox
When it comes to corporate performance management (CPM), distilled down to the simplest terms, Finance has three basic roles to fulfill in its support for the organisation:
- Looking backward with processes such as the financial close and consolidation to produce an accurate book-of-record income statement and balance sheet to represent an organisation’s financial position.
- Looking forward to planning and forecasting to empower decision-makers with insights to support faster and more informed decision-making for the next month, quarter, and beyond.
- Providing right-time guidance for daily and weekly financial and operational decisions across the enterprise to drive organisational performance before month- or quarter-end.
Binding all three roles together, of course, facilitates effective financial reporting and operational management reporting. Why does this matter? Well, for all the reporting and analysis to be impactful and well understood, it first must be communicated to stakeholders in a timely, clear and actionable format.
Organisations now need to move forward with their finance and operational reporting to drive the increasing levels of agile decision-making expected. It is time to kick old, inefficient processes to the curb. Move away from the limitations of fragmented tools and truly deliver effective reporting from a unified, intelligent finance platform.
Limitations of Fragmented Reporting Tools
Many Finance teams struggle to meet varying stakeholder reporting needs. Why? Mainly it’s because such Finance teams rely on a fragmented mix of reporting tools – such as siloed spreadsheets, legacy CPM software, and stand-alone BI tools. Doing so means Finance teams must invest an inordinate amount of time and manual effort to not only copy and paste data but also then reconcile and format reports.
Ad-hoc reporting is also frustrating for Finance and Line-of-Business (LOB) managers who require accurate information to make effective business decisions. Finance teams must often choose whether to provide business partners with the training and access to yet another fragmented tool or to take the time to produce new reports on an as-needed basis.
Either way, the burden falls on Finance.
Effective Performance Reporting
To realise their full potential as strategic business partners, Finance leaders of sophisticated organisations require reporting capabilities that are aligned with their CPM processes but address the variety of stakeholder reporting needs. OneStream achieves all of that – empowering Finance to lead at speed with a single lens across the organisation while providing a single source of the truth and a high level of financial data quality for more effective and streamlined financial, statutory, and management reporting.
Why Is Effective Reporting Important?
OneStream simplifies both financial reporting and operational reporting by allowing users to focus on the quality and content of their data rather than constantly working through the mechanics of building reports. Here are just a few additional benefits OneStream offers for financial reporting and analysis:
- Unifies Financial & Operational Data: OneStream brings detailed operational insights to Finance and non-Finance users with built-in financial signaling. It intelligently aligns detailed data from multiple sources (e.g., CRM, HCM, or data warehouses) with financial data to produce the weekly and daily signals that drive performance.
- Streamlines Reporting & Increase Controls: OneStream eliminates reliance on Excel®, rogue databases, and manual processes for data gathering, reconciling financial data, and creating reports. Users can create reports with 100% accuracy through a unified platform for analytics and reporting.
- Automates Report Creation & Distribution: OneStream standardises reports for varying stakeholder groups with over 50 predefined report types. It automates report creation and distribution with the Parcel Service solution from the OneStream Marketplace.
- Creates Self-Service Visualisation: OneStream enables LOB and functional business partners to tell the story with easy-to-use, self-service visualisations. Users can further extend insights by blending operational and financial data in a unified dashboard.
OneStream Customer Success
OneStream’s unified, Intelligent Finance Platform (see Figure 1) with built-in reporting and analytics eliminates the complexity of fragmented reporting tools. Through built-in advanced reporting and analytic capabilities, OneStream empowers sophisticated organisations by offering a unified solution for financial close, consolidation, budgeting, planning, forecasting, reporting, analytics, and financial data quality.
By intelligently aligning detailed operational and financial data, OneStream’s flexible reporting and analysis capabilities eliminate the need for Finance teams to waste time manually copying data and creating reports. In other words, OneStream unleashes Finance teams to focus on providing insights and analysis to better support key decisions.
Below are details about how two OneStream customers achieved significant benefits from the reporting and analytics available within our unified platform.
Crane Worldwide Logistics – Crane’s goal to remain lean and provide meaningful business insight to management was well supported by OneStream. From a more efficient close cycle and dynamic reporting — including automated cash flow – to drastically reducing the days in the planning cycle, Crane realised a big return on their investment. Crane is now well suited to acquire new sites or create legal entities with full confidence in OneStream’s ability to handle the integration and deliver results.
Management can rely on OneStream to deliver quick results and make real-time decisions accordingly. “The nice thing about OneStream is that the platform has proven that our data is now correct”, said Katrina Celestine, Financial Reporting Manager at Crane. “Everything from reconciliations to cube views, to custom reporting has been huge. Best of all has been the drill-down functionality. When someone asks a question about an amount, I can drill into the detail and see exactly what’s pulling into it and provide support. With OneStream, the answer is always at your fingertips, which I really like”.
Sasfin – By implementing OneStream, Sasfin has achieved full data integration across the organisation – creating a single view of the truth. This integration is much more than mere automation. Rather, the integration unifies and streamlines financial processes so that the data is consistent and reliable at all times. Because processes are more efficient, Finance teams are released to add higher value to the whole organisation.
This paradigm shift in the role of the Finance function has been the greatest benefit to Sasfin. Where they previously poured resources into generating reports each month, the company is now empowered to apply their brainpower to analyze the information coming through the reports.
Drive Performance with Built-in Reporting & Analytics
The Finance organisation’s historical credibility in controlling financial data, metrics, analysis, and reporting gives it a unique voice of authority and trust among business leaders. That’s why OneStream’s Intelligent Finance Platform was designed to help the Office of the CFO drive performance with a wide range of solutions across Accounting, Finance, and Operations business partners. With OneStream, companies get built-in reporting and analytics, financial consolidation, and planning all within one unified solution.
As a result, OneStream is giving Finance leaders across the globe the ability to finally harness their data with the speed, scale, and control required to guide decision-making and drive performance —with a seamless user experience that doesn’t force Finance teams to compromise on business processes or technology.
Learn More
If your Finance organisation is being hindered from unleashing its true value, maybe it’s time to evaluate your internal systems and reporting processes and start identifying areas for improvement. To learn more, download our e-book on Reporting & Analytics today
