Carlyle had been struggling with a fragmented approach to their financial reporting and planning needs. For financial consolidation and reporting, the company was using an outdated version of Oracle Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) that wasn’t compatible with Windows 10, and had a complicated design that made change management difficult. They were facing increased costs for extended support, and Oracle was pushing their cloud offering which offered limited functionality. For financial budgeting and planning, Carlyle was using Business Objects Planning, which was no longer supported by SAP and was running on an outdated and unsupported operating system. There was no flexibility to expand the application’s functionality, and no ability to automate actuals vs. budget reporting and analysis due to differing levels of detail between systems. In addition, Carlyle was using a legacy HR budgeting and forecast system that was single user, causing version control issues. The system relied heavily on Excel®-based data integrations, with limited and manual reporting and manual maintenance of key reference data.

Melrose PLC was using multiple Oracle Hyperion products for management and statutory reporting, as well as financial forecasting and scenario analysis. The fragmented architecture caused the finance team to spend a significant amount of time moving and maintaining metadata between multiple systems. As the organization continued to acquire additional businesses, it became increasingly difficult to roll-up and integrate disjointed data. Melrose needed a unified CPM solution that reduced the burden of maintaining multiple applications and allowed for complete visibility into data and process changes.

Johnson Outdoors was using Hyperion Enterprise for financial consolidation and reporting and had outgrown the solution. They needed to improve multiple finance processes such as consolidation, reporting, SOX, budgeting, data submission process, audit support, and cash flow reporting. Core requirements revolved around improving financial close processes for data collection, consolidation, and reporting. There was also a significant need for more extensive and detailed consolidated operational and sales reporting and a completely revamped budgeting, forecasting, and planning process. It was imperative that the solution was owned by Corporate Finance. Consolidated operational and sales reporting was extremely time-consuming and painful, and multiple systems were needed to provide consolidated reporting and the details behind the reporting. They needed to be able to provide detailed reporting capability to the business unit controllers to deliver an integrated global system that met both business and corporate needs.

Dril-Quip previously used Microsoft Excel® spreadsheets for their month-end close process, which created inconsistencies in data collection and a lengthy, inefficient close process. The visibility senior management had within geographic segments was limited, affecting strategic decision-making. Budgeting and forecasting were also done in Excel® using a top-down approach, leading to disjointed drivers and versioning. The company needed a unified and streamlined solution for financial consolidations, internal and external reporting, forecasting, and analysis that could be easily maintained and deliver accurate reporting. Strengthening internal controls over financial reporting was also a priority.

Having grown in size and complexity through organic growth and acquisitions, Fruit of the Loom was using Oracle Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) for financial consolidation and reporting. However, after three years of usage, the Finance team was having compatibility and support issues with HFM and was facing a costly upgrade. Lack of satisfaction with the product, including downtime during critical processes, and support issues caused Fruit of the Loom to evaluate their alternatives, and they selected OneStream.

Headquartered in Los Angeles, CA, Herbalife Nutrition operates in ninety countries and had multiple legacy CPM products in place including Oracle Hyperion (HFM), Planning, FDM, Essbase and EPMA. Managing data across several applications, the Company had a very manual Excel-based process for modeling and reporting. “We were integrating from many different applications, including Oracle ERP to multiple Oracle Hyperion applications, yet they were all behaving independently,” said Vanita Thornton, Sr. Director Global Operational Accounting and Financial Systems at Herbalife Nutrition. These legacy systems were limited by dimensionality which hindered the Company’s ability to report on project-level detail. It was time for the Company to make a choice—take on a major upgrade, move to the cloud, or start looking at alternative solutions. Seeking to learn more about Oracle’s product roadmap, Herbalife Nutrition was ready to explore the market. OneStream was ultimately selected because it best complimented the Company’s system requirements to have all solutions in one product.

West Bend Mutual Insurance (WBMI) previously used Microsoft Excel® spreadsheets as a data collection and reporting tool for their month-end close process. Allocations were performed in a different software tool that had size processing constraints. Inconsistencies in data collection via Excel® spreadsheets created a labor-intensive and error-prone close process. Further, the transparency by operations to financial detail was limited. A key motivation for system implementation was the lack of transparency and performance consistency of their multi-tier allocation process of expenses to profit center, product and state reporting. The company required a unified and streamlined solution for all their financial close, internal and external reporting, including allocations and analysis. One that is easily maintained, with the ability to report profit center, product, and state level results with consistency and accuracy. The company also required a strong internal control process over financial reporting and account reconciliations.

From 2008 to 2018, IFAW's treasury team operated with the same technology infrastructure despite a substantial increase in global complexity and expansion. The team used a TMS, spreadsheets, bank portals, and a locally hosted ERP. The global disparity in payment standards, settlement systems, and compliance requirements across regions made collections, disbursements, and liquidity needs complex. The shared services model required various degrees of access and control over financial data and operations. Manual workarounds for non-critical accounts were time-consuming, and some relied on mailed statements. The decision was made to overhaul the treasury technology architecture due to these constraints and the upcoming move to a cloud-based ERP.

Archroma faced significant challenges in managing its payment transactions due to the complexity of connecting various banks via their individual eBanking tools. This led to security issues and heavy time demands on the Treasury Department and back office operations, as payment rejection information did not feed back into SAP automatically. The company aimed to reduce costs by minimizing the number of bank platforms, establish straight-through processing out of SAP, and adhere to compliance regulations through the automation of bank transactions via a single platform.

BearingPoint faced several challenges with its decentralized financial operations. The company had over 120 different bank accounts across more than thirty banks, making it difficult for the central treasury to consolidate financial data and track employee payment authorizations. The manual processes were time-consuming and error-prone, and there were concerns about compliance, particularly with the four-eye principle. Additionally, the transition to SEPA standards required a revision of the Bank Account Management system. BearingPoint needed a scalable, quickly deployable solution that did not require extensive IT investments.

DACHSER faced high costs and inefficiencies due to manual interventions in payment runs between SAP and a heterogeneous bank landscape. The existing Excel-based reporting systems were prone to errors and imprecision, and there was no integration of bank communication and reporting systems. The project objectives included harmonizing payment processes with SAP usage, reducing complexity due to various bank formats, decentralizing accounting, and eliminating compliance and audit risks.

Nintendo faced the challenge of standardizing its payment processes across Europe. The company needed to harmonize communication with various banks and manage multiple bank accounts efficiently. Initially, Nintendo considered developing an in-house solution but found it would be too costly and complex to program all the necessary bank formats. The need for a more cost-effective and user-friendly solution led them to explore external options.

Imperial Logistics faced significant challenges in managing its payment processes due to a lack of transparency in bank signatory powers across different entities, no automatic forwarding of payment requests from ERP systems to banks, and a lack of transparency in cash flows. The company had grown through acquisitions, resulting in 150 legal entities, 200 bank accounts at approximately 40 banks, seven cash pools, and many different signatory powers, all managed without a Treasury Management System. This complexity made it difficult for the Treasury to stay on top of things, necessitating a change to optimize security and compliance with internal and external regulations, create a unified IT landscape, and achieve more transparency and traceability of payment processes.

Back in 2014, Hilti’s corporate payment processes were set up and managed locally. With the introduction of SAP ByDesign in some countries for the first time, end-to-end payment processing from the ERP systems to the banks became a clear need. On top of the connectivity, payment process standardization at the global level was also a priority, for compliance, efficiency, and transparency. Corporate Treasury was asked to look for a dedicated payments solution.

Dawn Foods faced several challenges, including a lack of focus on cash and working capital, shortfalls in reporting, and a complex data landscape. The company struggled with a shortfall in management communication between departments, which hindered their ability to make informed financial decisions. Additionally, the complex data landscape made it difficult to gain a clear understanding of their cash positions and working capital needs. These issues collectively created a significant barrier to achieving their financial goals and optimizing their working capital.

Forecast OpEx and workforce investments at the speed of business growth. It’s easy for early finance hires at hyper growth companies to get locked into the role of data wrangler and spreadsheet manager. They end up spending so much time trying to keep last month’s, quarter’s, and year’s actuals organized that there’s little time left to focus on more strategic, forward-looking efforts. Tony Le and the small finance team at Pipe wanted to avoid that stereotype from the very start. Pipe launched publicly in June 2020, making its rapid rise to $316 million raised and $2 billion valuation almost unheard of in the tech world. That’s great for generating excitement among customers and investors—but it puts significant pressure on traditional finance workflows. Le and his early finance team couldn’t afford to spend days or weeks building models to plan out the business only to watch them go stale a week later. They wanted to embrace a more tech-forward approach to finance that enabled real-time visibility into the data and more dynamic, agile planning processes. The team wanted to start by modernizing its expense and headcount modeling to help ensure Pipe was properly allocating capital as it quickly scaled. They needed a software solution that could bypass traditional excel modeling while also helping them continue building a culture of strategic finance.

Pitney Bowes faced challenges in gaining visibility into critical workforce trends such as hiring, movement, performance, and retention. The process of manually bringing data together from disparate systems was lengthy and resource-heavy, limiting data insights to expert users. Additionally, the data was inconsistent and difficult to reconcile with Finance’s numbers, generating a lack of trust. HR struggled to answer questions from senior leaders in a timely manner and to get buy-in for key programs due to the lack of precise data needed to quantify ROI.

Manual data collection from 31 global offices was too time-consuming and potentially error-prone. Data security was an ongoing concern due to sharing budget templates and reports over email. Maintaining existing Excel investments was crucial for Cumming, a feature that competitors couldn't offer.

The finance team faced several challenges in their month-end close processes. The data received from the bank often differed from the data in their General Ledger (GL) due to uncleared cheques. This discrepancy required manual input of information about these cheques into all month-end close spreadsheets until they cleared. Additionally, the use of uncontrolled spreadsheets allowed unauthorized changes, and the data was stored in a single workbook that could be easily lost or damaged. The lack of a formal workflow process made it difficult for management to track user-end changes and the status of each task.

The bank faced several challenges in their reporting process, primarily due to the manual creation, distribution, and consolidation of Excel templates. These templates were sent via email to multiple business groups for data collection, leading to issues with version control and the potential loss of important information. The daily exchange of dozens of emails made it difficult to track the status of each task without constant communication through emails and phone calls with contributors, approvers, and reviewers. Additionally, the lack of a formal workflow and audit trail made it challenging to determine where changes had been made to spreadsheets without manually comparing versions or waiting for user responses.