Purpose-built software applications to support these processes have been available for over 25 years, but today’s cloud-based financial close and consolidation software (FCCS) solutions offer new capabilities that can help organizations streamline these processes to ensure more timely and accurate delivery of financial results.
Gartner’s View of the Market
This was the focus of the recently published Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Financial Close and Consolidation Solutions1 where OneStream was named as one of only three leaders. (see figure 1).
In the report, the Gartner analyst team recognized our broad capabilities provided through OneStream’s Intelligent Finance Platform as well as additional solutions available from our Solutions Exchange such as Account Reconciliations, Transaction Matching, ESG Reporting Blueprint and Tax Provision.
Key strengths for OneStream that were highlighted in the report include:
- Financial Consolidation – including broad capabilities, Extensible Dimensionality®, guided workflow and advanced financial intelligence.
- Data Integration – with the ability to integrate data from a wide variety of source systems, with error-handing, validations and notifications provided through our built-in Financial Data Quality Management.
- Sales Pricing – with a flexible, user-based pricing model.
Overall, we are pleased to be recognized as a Leader in this Gartner Magic Quadrant report and we believe this is well-deserved based on the breadth and depth of capabilities that we offer, and our strong momentum in the market. Over 1300 organizations globally have chosen OneStream as a replacement for legacy applications such as Oracle HFM, Oracle FCCS, SAP BPC and BFC, IBM/Cognos Controller, Longview and Infor as well as point solutions such as Blackline and Trintech for account reconciliations. And we’ve replaced thousands of Excel spreadsheets as well!
Delivering Positive Business Impact
Organizations that have adopted OneStream for financial close, consolidation and reporting have improved consolidation performance vs. legacy products, while handling much larger data volumes than they could with their prior solutions. They have shortened their period-end close processes by several days and are delivering more timely and accurate financial results to stakeholders. And they have reduced technical debt, saving millions of dollars per year in IT and admin costs.
Here are some examples:
Costco Wholesale: Replaced Oracle HFM and Excel with OneStream for OneStream for financial close, consolidation, reporting, cashflow, and budgeting. Their financial close process was reduced from 2-3 days to 1.5 days and eliminating Excel enabled the Costco team to re-allocate 25% of FTE time to value added work.
Terex: Replaced Oracle HFM, FDMEE, Prophix and Excel with OneStream for financial close, consolidation, reporting and planning. Integrating data from 28 ERPs, full system consolidation time has decreased from up to 20 hours to less than 30 minutes with OneStream. Eliminating multiple point solutions has improved data quality and also yielded significant cost savings.
Lindsay Corp: Replaced Microsoft Excel with OneStream for financial close, consolidation, reporting, planning and forecasting. Their monthly close process was shortened by 25%, and the company is also saving 2 days per month on forecasting.
These and other customer successes have translated to a 4.8 out of 5 rating and 95% “willing to recommend” score for OneStream for financial close and consolidation on Gartner® Peer Insights™.
Key Market Requirements and Evaluation Criteria
For those new to the Magic Quadrant process, Gartner defines FCCS solutions as “applications that enable corporate controllers and their teams to manage the organization’s group close, consolidation and reporting processes.” The most common business challenges, or use cases, that Gartner identifies for FCCS include enabling efficiency, driving regulatory compliance and supporting a complex business environment.
In evaluating the various software solutions available to support FCCS, Gartner identifies the “must-have” capabilities as:
- Financial Close Management
- Financial Consolidation
- Financial Reporting
Additional standard and optional capabilities identified by Gartner include:
- Financial Statement Reconciliation
- Journal Entry Processing
- Financial Reporting Risk Management
- Disclosure Management
To be included in the Gartner FCCS Magic Quadrant, vendors must support all the must-have capabilities mentioned above, and these must-have capabilities should be available within the native vendor solutions and not offered through partnerships with other vendors. In addition, the vendors must operate in at least two global geographies, the software must be deployed as a cloud service and be available as a standalone solution, devoid of any bundling with ERP suites.
Learn More
Financial close, consolidation and reporting are critical processes that shouldn’t be managed with legacy applications, point solutions or spreadsheets that lack the capabilities required to meet today’s complex business requirements. If your organization is ready to make the leap to a modern, cloud-based solution, download the Gartner Magic Quadrant report to learn more about the key market requirements and why OneStream was named as a Leader.
Download the ReportSources: 1 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Financial Close and Consolidation Solutions, Nisha Bhandare, Permjeet Gale, Jeffrin Francis, Renata Viana, 27 November 2023
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Gartner® and Peer Insights™ are trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner Peer Insights content consists of the opinions of individual end users based on their own experiences, and should not be construed as statements of fact, nor do they represent the views of Gartner or its affiliates. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in this content nor makes any warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this content, about its accuracy or completeness, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
This article first appeared on OneStream Software blog page by John O’Rourke
