Damen Shipyards

Damen Shipyards is a family-owned company amongst the shipbuilding community on the River Merwede in the Netherlands. With 54 companies, Damen has shipyards and service hubs all over the world. The commonality and reliability of the Damen Shipyards portfolio equals reduced maintenance requirements, leading to maximum vessel uptime, and resulting in the lowest possible total cost of ownership over the vessel's lifecycle. Since 1927, Damen has delivered more than 6,500 vessels and today generates over €2B annually. For more information, damen.com.

"OneStream helps us to not only make projections towards the future, but also oversee the field of investments, acquisitions and working capital spending. A great benefit is the all-in-one concept, where various solutions are integrated into a single model. Traditional consolidation and planning systems are far less integrated — with different modules that had to be purchased and linked separately."
— Jurriaan Koekebacker, Group Controller, Damen Shipyards

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The Challenge

Damen Shipyards is a multinational shipbuilding group, with more than 12,000 employees and a presence in over 100 countries. With a global focus, Damen delivers more than 175 vessels annually to customers worldwide. A unique differentiator about Damen is that the company produces and keeps ships in stock. But as a result, they have strict agreements regarding the quantity of ships they can build and keep at any given time. Therefore, it is essential that Damen has insights into each location to stay compliant with these standards.

Damen was in the process of rolling-out a global IFS ERP system when the finance team realized they needed a better way to oversee the organization. "We recognized that we needed another system on top of our global ERP system to bring all data together and gives the flexibility to oversee data from recently acquired companies," said Jurriaan Koekebacker, Group Controller at Damen. "We were using SAP BPC for financial consolidation, but the system was ultimately being held together by Excel spreadsheets." This left the finance team with a disjointed mess of data to manage.

The Selection Process

As an all-round maritime service provider, Damen has a wide variety of operating companies with their own specific reporting needs, which include actuals reporting, loan reporting, yard inventory and more. It is critical for Damen to make fast and reliable business decisions to help each company operate in the most cost-effective manner. In order to achieve this, Damen's finance organization was ready to improve its responsiveness with a modern corporate performance management platform.

Damen began by evaluating CCH Tagetik and OneStream Software as potential replacements to their SAP BPC system. Their goals were to increase financial and fiscal compliance, improve data governance, streamline forecasting and reduce business risk — which ultimately led them to select OneStream's unified platform. "We felt that OneStream was the best solution for our needs," said Koekebacker. "OneStream allows us to accelerate change, while gaining more transparency, flexibility and agility." With OneStream, Damen's finance team could develop dynamic, group-wide reporting and rolling forecasts in one solution.

Implementing a Modern CPM Platform

With help from OneStream™ partner AMCO, Damen completed the first phase on schedule and within budget. Damen's first focus was streamlining the consolidation process by automating processes between operating companies and the holding company. In the second phase, Damen went live with project management and a 24-month rolling forecast scenario. OneStream is set up to manage actuals reporting with equity pickup, as well as comparisons of weekly vs. monthly cashflow. Plus, project performance management reporting and forecasting keeps Damen aligned regarding which entities are working on a ship at any given time, and all related intercompany activity.

"We prepared many things to ensure a hassle-free transition," said Koekebacker. "A large part of the implementation included change management, but the implementation of the actual OneStream platform was the most fun part of the journey. The project was a success and we essentially went live with both consolidation and forecasting implemented simultaneously."

OneStream fully replaced SAP BPC and is now set up with validation rules that verify user actions with full audit trail functionality. Damen's updated forecast process includes registers that drive balance sheet and profit and loss data. This unified OneStream model enables Damen to extend the platform further for layered scenario planning for M&A and investments and a group-wide KPI framework.

One Version of the Truth

With OneStream, Damen Shipyards has increased the level of maturity of their finance function by unifying consolidation and forecasting. In addition, Damen increased its finance agility and transparency via integrated statutory and project-based reporting using OneStream's unique data blending function. OneStream blends validated financial data, highly dimensional operational data and detailed transactional data together for comprehensive and controlled visualization. OneStream's Extensible Dimensionality® also enables Damen to integrate actual, forecasting and tax reporting processes within one platform.

"OneStream helps us to not only make projections towards the future, but also oversee the field of investments, acquisitions and working capital spending," said Koekebacker. "OneStream unites 170+ process workflows which guide users through the steps of the actual data process and intercompany matching. A great benefit is the all-in-one concept, where various apps are integrated into a single model. Traditional consolidation and planning systems are far less integrated - with different modules that had to be purchased and linked separately."

Damen has eliminated costs by reducing manual processing and simplifying the Finance-IT landscape. OneStream has helped Damen link strategy to plans and execution, making the company's goals more attainable than ever.

Future Plans

OneStream offers Damen a reporting requirement at group level with the possibility to expand. "After implementing the current scope, we will roll out reporting at divisional and entity level and start linking the source systems step by step," said Koekebacker. "We are also interested in machine learning applications and further finance automation. OneStream helps us take an essential step in that direction."

Soon Damen wants to be able to forecast the overall cost of building a ship by following an S-Curve model in OneStream. This will allow the business to understand how to increase their performance in the most rapid and efficient way, based on data stored in OneStream. In addition, Damen looks to extend their investment with add-on solutions from the MarketPlace.

About the Implementation Partner

AMCO is a global business partner providing end-to-end business services for EPM & ERP. We are a OneStream Diamond Partner, one of the few diamond partners globally, and the only diamond partner in APAC and the Middle East. AMCO operates in 11 locations worldwide, supported by 110+ employees. Our 15 years in business allows us to fulfill implementations and support services in over 40 countries. Our experience is backed up by 175+ projects for over 120 customers in different industries. For more information, please visit AMCO amco.one.com

About OneStream Software

OneStream Software provides a market-leading intelligent finance platform that reduces the complexity of financial operations. OneStream unleashes the power of finance by unifying corporate performance management (CPM) processes such as planning, financial close & consolidation, reporting and analytics through a single, extensible solution. We empower the enterprise with financial and operational insights to support faster and more informed decision-making. All in cloud platform designed to continually evolve and scale with your organization.

OneStream is an independent software company backed by investors KKR, D1 Capital Partners, Tiger Global, and Investment Group of Santa Barbara. With over 650 customers, 200 partners and over 700 employees, our primary mission is to deliver 100% customer success.

For more information, please visit OneStream Software https://onestream.com or on Twitter @OneStream_Soft.

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