By John O'Rourke September 22, 2021
One of the highlights of the OneStream Splash user conference is the customer success panel that is always part of the keynote session. And although it was a little more challenging this year being produced virtually, the panelists did a great job demonstrating how their organizations are "leading at speed" thanks to implementing OneStream's Intelligent Finance Platform. Read on to hear the highlights of the customer panel.
Leading at Speed in Action
This year's OneStream Splash Virtual Customer Success Panel included the following:
- Regina Gashi – Sr. Director of Management Reporting at Bunge Limited
- Kevin Kalicak – Sr. VP of Finance and Investor Relations at Darden Restaurants
- Jeffrey Liedl – Director of Financial Systems at News Corporation
- Candice Cage – Corporate Applications Manager at Teledyne Technologies
During this interactive discussion, the panelists spoke about their business challenges prior to OneStream, how OneStream is helping them address a growing number of business challenges, and the benefits they have achieved to date.
Each of the panelists' companies implemented OneStream as a replacement for multiple legacy applications or Excel spreadsheets that were being used to support critical Finance processes.
Unifying Multiple Finance Applications at Bunge
As the world's leader in oilseed processing and a leading producer and supplier of specialty plant-based oils and fats, Bunge partners with farmers to improve the productivity and environmental efficiency of agriculture. Headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, Bunge operates with more than 23,000 dedicated employees across 40 countries.
Bunge had previously been running Oracle HFM and FDMEE for financial consolidation and reporting, TM1 and other solutions for planning, Trintech for account reconciliations, and using Excel for other critical Finance processes. This approach caused the Finance team to spend most of their time collecting, moving, and reconciling data between systems and not enough time on analysis.
After evaluating several alternatives, the Bunge team selected OneStream based on its ability to unify multiple applications, the ability for the Finance team to manage the application, easy adoption and transition from their existing systems, and the cost savings they expected to derive by eliminating multiple legacy applications.
Said Regina Gashi, "Working with OneStream lit my fire and also got our Finance team energized. We all realized it was time for a change after many years of struggling with our legacy applications. It was an opportunity to wipe the slate clean and start fresh with a new system that could improve our processes and lives."
By moving to OneStream Bunge was able to eliminate a 1000-line Excel spreadsheet and replace it with confirmation rules configured in the OneStream application. According to Ms. Gashi, "The company has shaved 2 days off the monthly close process by converting detective controls, taking place after data submissions, into preventative controls prior to data submissions and has everyone excited about their jobs and has better work/life balance."
Bunge started with 700 users and has now expanded their deployment to over 2000 users. They are live on OneStream for People Planning, Financial Consolidations, Rolling Forecast, Commercial P&Ls, and Operating Expense Reporting. In short order, they will roll out Zero Based Budgeting (ZBB) in OneStream, Capital Expense Planning, Account Reconciliations, and Task Manager for managing the close process. In the future, they are considering implementing Application Control Manager and exploring the idea of using OneStream to support Lease Accounting and Tax Provision.
Replacing Multiple Oracle HFM Apps at News Corp
News Corporation (News Corp) delivers authoritative and engaging content from some of the world's most trusted brands – including The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, Barron's, and Dow Jones Newswires. The company had been running multiple Oracle HFM applications to support their quarterly, monthly, and weekly financial reporting requirements as well as additional instances for treasury, audit, and IT budgeting. Striking a familiar theme, Jeff Liedl said "The Finance team at News Corp was spending a great deal of time managing all of these applications and reconciling data between them."
Their goal was to eliminate the multiple applications and the time spent reconciling data between systems. According to Jeff Liedl, "OneStream was the only vendor who said they could accomplish this goal, and they did! Now that OneStream has been rolled out, the Finance admins are spending much less time firefighting application changes and updating user access privileges, and more time analyzing financial results. Life is much easier for us with OneStream."
Future plans for News Corp include implementing Account Reconciliations and Applications Control Manager from the OneStream MarketPlace and potentially replacing TM1 which is used for budgeting.
Reducing Reliance on Excel at Darden Restaurants
Darden's family of restaurants features some of the most recognizable and successful brands in full-service dining — including Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse, Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen, Yard House, The Capital Grille, Seasons 52, Bahama Breeze, and Eddie V's. They own and operate more than 1,800 restaurants and employ nearly 160,000 team members, making them one of the 50 largest private employers in America.
The company had been managing their planning process across nine divisions via an Excel-based process, which was growing increasingly risky. The master Excel sheet had ballooned to 192 tabs and it was clearly time to find a better platform by which to manage the business. Darden's Finance team wanted a platform that offered control as well as flexibility, was easy to manage, and wasn't overly costly. After evaluating several alternatives – they selected OneStream for planning and forecasting.
According to Kevin Kalicak, "When it comes to setting expectations with stakeholders, relying on Excel was a risky proposition. OneStream provides peace of mind in creating and communicating forecasts. It allows us to lead at speed – providing efficiency and flexibility, and more time for analysis of the business."
While the global pandemic slowed down their roadmap a bit, Darden is planning to expand their OneStream deployment to include Account Reconciliations, Cash Flow and potentially replacing their Oracle HFM application for financial consolidation and reporting.
Streamlining Financial Reporting, Planning, and Operational Analytics at Teledyne
Teledyne Technologies is a leading provider of sophisticated instrumentation, digital imaging products and software, aerospace and defense electronics, and engineered systems. Teledyne's operations are primarily located in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Western and Northern Europe.
Teledyne had been relying on Infor PM for financial consolidation and reporting and Blackline for account reconciliations. The period-end close process was highly manual, long, and they suffered from data quality issues. According to Candice Cage, "After evaluating several options, they selected OneStream based on its ease of use, functionality, and value since the unified platform could support their financial consolidation, planning, reporting and account reconciliations requirements."
After completing their initial implementation, Teledyne extended their implementation to encompass reporting and analysis of operational data, leveraging the Analytic Blend capabilities of OneStream. Ms. Cage said "The initial focus here was on Strategic Sourcing and Procurement across the enterprise. Having 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 spending."
In addition to the operational cost savings, according to Ms. Cage "Teledyne has reduced our close process from 9 days to 4-5 days per month. Additional solutions implemented include weekly cash flow, and several other operational analytic solutions including third party reps/distributor sales, 80/20 margin improvement, and transactional sales analysis."
Learn More
Hopefully, this article gives you a sense of the challenges these customers each faced with their prior systems, the reasons they selected OneStream, and the benefits their organizations have achieved to date. If you would like to learn more about the benefits other organizations have gained from implementing OneStream to replace spreadsheets, multiple legacy applications, and cloud point solution, check out the Customer Success stories on our website.
