Modern finance is here. And though transformative technologies such as predictive analytics and machine learning are becoming table-stakes for sophisticated organizations, many finance teams struggle with the basics. Why? Because fragmented spreadsheets and legacy corporate performance management (CPM 1.0) applications for financial consolidation and reporting, budgeting, planning and forecasting hold them back. Does this sound familiar to you? If so – it’s time to think bigger.
5 STEPS
To Unleashing Finance
The Numbers Don't Lie
77%
47%
73%
77% of finance leaders want to be more proactive and aligned in operations alongside business partners across the wider organization
47% of survey respondents suggest their current function lacks the mix of capabilities needed to meet the demands of strategic priorities
73% of finance leaders would change organizations to be more involved in innovation
TIP: Hover over the percentages to learn more.
Digital disruption is here to stay, and accelerating at a rapid pace. And while finance leaders have a desire to do more, they simply do not have tools that are designed for modern finance. Consider the following trends:
—Source: "How CFOs can fuel the growth of the digital enterprise" Accenture
—Source: "The Future of Planning, Budgeting & Forecasting" Modern Finance Forum
—Source: "DNA of the CFO: Is the future of finance new technology or new people?" EY
Modern finance leaders are addressing the need for digital transformation with a next-generation CPM 2.0 platform. CPM 2.0 technology addresses budgeting, planning & forecasting, and financial consolidation and reporting within a unified architecture. You too can take your finance organization to the next level with the 5 Steps to Unleashing Finance.
Explore the 5 Steps to Unleashing Finance
STEP 1 Know the Business
STEP 2 Drive Agility in Planning & Forecasting
STEP 3 Streamline the Financial Close
STEP 4 Automate Reporting
STEP 5 Leverage Advanced Analytics
It’s time to unleash finance.
Unleash Finance!
Step 5: Leverage Analytics
Step 4: Automate Reporting
Step 3: Streamline the Close
Step 2: Drive Agility in Planning
Step 1: Know the Business
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OneStream Named a Leader in the 2022 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Financial Planning Software.
Can you confidently answer these questions?
Are external factors the leading indicators for your organization?
Do you know what business initiatives define success?
Do your teams have the agility to adapt quickly to market changes?
To truly unleash the power of finance, it’s important to understand what drives your business. To achieve this, you must align with and gather feedback from business partners. This includes key success metrics and KPIs. As a finance leader, it’s your responsibility to enable business partners to direct the organization’s resources.
STEP 1
Know the Business
Knowing the business helps you know your audience and begin the journey of unleashing finance. Which external factors, such as oil prices or interest rates, are the leading indicators for your business?
STEP 2
Drive Agility in Planning & Forecasting
Is your finance team spending too much time on static budgets and not enough time on analysis and scenario modeling to support key decisions? To unleash the value of finance across the organization, consider the 3 steps to driving agility in budgeting, planning & forecasting.
Implement a Rolling Forecast
Align Operations and Finance Goals
Leverage Business Drivers and KPIs
Move beyond static annual budgets and continuously plan
Unify operational data with financial results for better visibility across the enterprise
Understand the key business drivers that affect financial results
TIP: Hover over the plus buttons to show more information.
Scroll down to about learn the latest forecasting trends.
The Dresner Advisory 2019 Widsom of Crowds EPM Market Study showed that 62% of organizations are using rolling forecasts, and 14% of them replaced their annual budgets with rolling forecasts.
The BPM Pulse Survey 2019 revealed that annual budgets are decreasing in popularity and a growing number of early adopters are moving to a greater re-forecasting frequency with CPM 2.0 platforms.
Rolling Forecast Use
48% of companies use rolling forecasts to provide an additional, forward-looking view to complement annual budgets, but they still manage performance against annual budgets.
Continuously 8%
Annually 7%
Other 3%
Monthly 35%
Twice a Year 9%
As Needed 9%
Varies 9%
Quarterly 21%
—Source: BPM Partners 2019 BPM Pulse Survey
—Source: Dresner Advisory 2019 Wisdom of Crowds EPM Market Study
How Often Do You Re-forecast?
TIP: Hover over the plus buttons to find out more.
23% of companies currently do not use rolling forecasts, but they will use them at some point in the future.
15% of companies currently do not use rolling forecasts and have no plans to use them in the future.
14% of companies use rolling forecasts instead of annual budgets to manage performance against plans and targets.
3 Steps to Driving Agility in Budgeting, Planning & Forecasting
100%
—Source: A 2017 Study by Ventana Research
0%
Unleashing the true value of finance requires efficient processes that minimize manual tasks and free up the finance team to focus on value-added analysis and decision support for the organization.
STEP 3
Streamline the Financial Close
Automating the financial close and reporting process ensures faster delivery of financial and operational results to management for accelerated decision-making. A fast close also provides more time for review and analysis, while allowing results to be delivered quicker to external stakeholders.
0–6
7+
11 +
50%
75%
25%
25% still take 11 business days or more to close the books.
60% of businesses take 7 business days or longer to close their books.
Only 40% of organizations can close their books within six business days.
Length of Financial Close
One way to accelerate the delivery of financial and operating results is with self-service, graphical dashboards. These tools provide direct access to the latest KPIs, while avoiding data latency. Managers can easily navigate through the data to identify key metrics and trends, and even drill-down into the underlying details back to the source systems for transactional information.
STEP 4
Automate Reporting
OneStream Parcel Service provides the following advantages:
Automates the creation and delivery of multiple reports to users
Accelerates the delivery of financial and operating results across the enterprise
Enables Finance teams to shift more time to value-added analysis
Instantly start configuring report books and distribution groups
TIP: Click the plus button to see what's on screen.
OneStream Direct Integration Connectors
TIP: Hover over the yellow plus buttons for more information.
Drill-down, drill-back and drill-through to transactional details, including journal entries.
Data housed in OneStream can be leveraged to meet a variety of reporting needs including management reporting, ad-hoc analysis, external reporting and more.
Deliver direct integration with available drill back built for any open CRM, HCM, or ERP including Oracle, PeopleSoft, JDE, SAP, Infor, Microsoft AX/Dynamics, etc.
OneStream's Intelligent Finance platform provides the underlying data sets finance leaders need to successfully manage the business. Offering direct integration with any open GL/ERP, HCM, CRM, or other source system, OneStream delivers drill-through ability straight to the transactional details.
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Drill-Down Functionality
With a single lens into financial and operating results, the OneSteam XF SmartCPM™ platform enables finance leaders to drill-down into granular data through intuitive dashboards that enable greater insight across the business.
Click the first bar in the Sales by Region chart to drill into sales in the Southeast.
Next, click the orange pie slice to drill further into sales in the Southeast Region for the Launcher brand.
Now the user can see a deeply detailed view of sales of only the Launcher brand in the Southeast Region.
TIP: Use these arrows to cycle through the screens or follow the instructions above.
Now that sales for all brands are displayed, tap the yellow plus icon to drill-down further into the Launcher Brand. This allows you to view a deeply detailed view of sales of only the Launcher brand in the Southeast Region.
Advanced Analytics Defined
Predictive analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies will forever change the office of the CFO. Yet according to Dresner Advisory, half of finance leaders surveyed do not understand the value of machine learning.
It is important to consider leveraging advanced analytics like predictive analytics or scenario analysis. Why? To drive enhanced dialogue with your business partners. But did you know that only 14% of finance leaders are using advanced analytics today?
STEP 5
Leverage Advanced Analytics
14%
29%
29% of finance leaders believe advanced analytics will have a positive impact on forecast accuracy and automating time-consuming processes.
14% of organizations are currently leveraging predictive analysis or machine learning in their finance process.
50% of finance leaders don't understand the business value of machine learning.
PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS
The practice of extracting information from existing, historical data sets to determine patterns and predict future outcomes and trends. Predictive analytics forecasts what might happen in the future with an acceptable level of reliability and includes what-if scenarios and risk assessments.
The theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence – such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making and translation between languages.
MACHINE LEARNING (ML)
A branch of AI that focuses on software that has capabilities based on recent experiences and past trends. ML leverages statistical algorithms to learn and get smarter over time (e.g., training), retraining itself the more it “experiences.”
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)
TIP: Click the arrows or use the tabs to cycle to the next definition.
MACHINE LEARNING
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Consider the Additional Data-Points Below:
Leveraging a CPM 2.0 platform with advanced analytics technologies will help your finance organization to understand critical sensitivities to business drivers, opportunities and risk.
Advanced data-driven processes can drive fast, more informed and more accurate business decisions. Here are three easy examples of how to leverage advanced analytics to improve your financial processes every day:
How Advanced Analytics Can Help
To learn more, check out our advanced analytics definitons below!
Incorporate predictive or machine learning models as an unbiased forecast into demand planning processes.
Engage business partners with questions like, "Why is the forecast from sales different from the predictive forecast?"
Build low, medium or high forecast scenarios to understand opportunities and risks to your plan.
3
2
1
Engage business partners with questions like, "Why is the forecast from sales different from the predictive model?"
Incorporate predictive or machine learning models as an unbiased forecast into demand planning.
TIP: Tap on the percentages to learn more.
Here are 3 easy examples of how to leverage advanced analytics to improve your financial processes every day:
Predictive analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning (ML) technologies will forever change the office of the CFO. Yet acording to Dresner Advisory, 50% of finance leaders do not understand the value of ML. It's important to leverage data-driven processes to make faster, more informed business decisions.
The future of finance is now. Innovative finance leaders are thinking bigger to address business demands – and they're creating a new foundation for change with modern CPM 2.0 platforms. Eliminate the risk and high costs of managing fragmented CPM applications with OneStream's unified SmartCPM™ platform. As a single, powerful platform supporting multiple CPM processes, OneStream XF alleviates the complexity of data integration, validation and reconciliation between various products or applications.
Are You Ready?
Unleash Finance Today
OneStream Software 362 South Street Rochester, MI 48307-2240 +1.248.650.1490 onestreamsoftware.com sales@onestreamsoftware.com
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OneStreamSoftware.com Sales@OneStreamSoftware.com
362 South Street Rochester, MI 48307-2240 Phone: +1.248.650.1490
Eliminate the risk and high costs of managing and upgrading fragmented CPM applications with OneStream's Intelligent Finance platform. As a single, powerful platform supporting multiple CPM processes, OneStream alleviates the complexity of data integration, validation and reconciliation between various products, applications or modules.
