Corporate Performance Management (CPM) Finance & Accounting

OneStream Named a Leader in Two Gartner Magic Quadrant Reports

Gartner recently published two magic quadrant reports, one covering financial close and consolidation and the other covering financial planning software.  Both areas represent critical financial processes that are key to effective corporate performance management (CPM).  Read on to learn why OneStream was recognized as a leader in both reports and what this means for customers.

Gartner Evaluates Two Key Software Segments

The Gartner Magic Quadrants are one of the most respected industry analyst reports and are highly influential in helping guide evaluation teams in identifying their shortlist of vendors to investigate.

 

In Q3 of 2023, Gartner published two Magic Quadrant reports that are important for evaluators in the office of Finance.  This includes:

The research across these two areas covered a broad range of functional requirements and was based on extensive RFIs, product demonstrations and customer references.  And I’m happy to report that OneStream was named as a Leader in both reports.  Why?

In the reports, the Gartner analysts recognized our broad capabilities provided through OneStream’s Intelligent Finance Platform as well as the ability for customers to extend the platform with additional solutions available from our Solutions Exchange such as Workforce Planning, Capital Planning, Account Reconciliations, Transaction Matching, ESG Reporting and more.  Key strengths that were called out include our data integration capabilities, Extensible Dimensionality®, advanced financial intelligence, scalability and innovation.

So why is this important to buyers?  It’s important, and valuable to buyers because with OneStream they can get best in class capabilities in a single solution vs. having to implement and integrate multiple software products to support these critical financial processes.  Conversely, customers don’t have to compromise on functionality to have a unified platform supporting these critical financial processes.

Unifying Corporate Performance Management Processes

While Gartner evaluates Financial Close and Consolidation vs. Financial Planning as two separate software categories, the reality is that enterprises need to align these processes and their data to have an effective corporate performance management (CPM) process.

This process includes goal setting, modeling, planning, consolidating, reporting and analyzing financial and operational results and continuously refining plans and resource allocations to optimize performance. If the data required to execute the CPM process lives in two or more systems, with different meta data structures and levels of detail, then it must be exported and imported between systems, reconciled and aligned – which takes a lot of time, effort and resources.

Because of this, most enterprises are now adopting cloud-based CPM software solutions that can support their financial close, consolidation and reporting, as well as financial budgeting, planning and forecasting processes, and more.

Taking CPM to the Next Level

While many enterprises are working to migrate from legacy CPM applications and spreadsheets to modern, cloud-based CPM solutions, most OneStream customers have already made the leap and are leveraging our unified platform to support their core financial performance management requirements around financial close and consolidation as well as planning, budgeting and forecasting.

Many OneStream customers are extending their investment and leveraging the platform to support operational planning and analytics, not just monthly, but on a weekly or daily basis.  And a growing number are taking the next step, embracing AI-driven forecasting to increase the speed and accuracy of their demand planning and revenue forecasting to support more agile decision-making.  We call this concept CPM+.

Delivering Exponential Customer Value

As depicted in the graphic above, as enterprises move through the process of extending their CPM processes and OneStream platform investment from financial to operational areas of the business, and from monthly to weekly or daily iterations, they deliver a higher degree of value to the business.  Here are a few customer examples:

BDO – in addition to using OneStream for month-end reporting and planning, BDO integrates detailed transactional data with their summarized financial data to empower over 5,000 managers with critical insights on a daily and weekly basis.  This includes critical data about their clients, projects, resources, billings, DSO and other metrics that help them guide the business.
Teledyne Technologies – after completing the implementation of OneStream for financial close, reporting and planning, Teledyne extended their implementation to encompass reporting and analysis of operational data. This includes Strategic Sourcing and Procurement across the enterprise, providing managers visibility into their spend across over 300 entities has enabled them to reduce the number of suppliers they are using, negotiate better terms with vendors, and save a substantial amount of spend.
Polaris Inc. – implemented OneStream for financial consolidations, reporting, and planning as well as analyzing weekly product sales at the VIN and customer level.  They then became an early adopter of OneStream’s Sensible Machine Learning solution for demand forecasting in their North American Off-Road Products GBU.  In addition to improving the accuracy and speed of their forecasting, (reducing the cycle from days to hours) Polaris now has more transparency into what’s behind the ML models, including insights into the key forecast drivers for more informed decision-making.

This article first appeared on OneStream Software blog page by John O’Rourke