INW Manufacturing
INW Manufacturing is the contract manufacturing division of INW Holdings. The company's capabilities include the research, development, formulation and manufacturing of powders, liquids, gels, tablets, capsules, creams and lotions for a variety of online, retail- and direct-selling customers, primarily servicing the dietary supplement and sports nutrition markets. INW Manufacturing's expertise in compliance and quality allows for its customers' products to be shipped in over 95 countries. Headquartered in Carrolton, Texas, INW Manufacturing's production facilities encompass approximately 900 thousand square feet and generate consolidated revenues of over $400 million. For more information, visit INW-Group.com.
The Challenge
INW Manufacturing has grown extensively due to acquisitions and organic growth, and today operates with over 1,000 employees. United1 Labs is one of INW's original facilities that started in 2006 with just 30,000 square feet of manufacturing space. The addition of three additional manufacturing facilities, a supply chain division and a packaging company dramatically complicated the reporting processes. Rosewood Private Investments, the PE group recommended implementing a consolidation tool. OneStream™ was the tool chosen to help improve consolidated reporting and quickly incorporate new acquisitions on the horizon.
"Manufacturing has a different complexity when it comes to consolidations," said Amy Funari, System Administrator, INW Manufacturing. "We have a lot of intercompany activity, and everyone's on a different ERP system, a different network and different firewalls, which makes it challenging. We ship a lot of inventory between facilities, and as we've grown, that process has gotten bigger and more complex. We needed a way to accommodate this growth and complexity."
The Selection Process
Before selecting OneStream Software, INW was an Excel®-based finance organization. With every new acquisition, INW would take the new company's trial balances, map them manually and create a journal entry into Deacom, their ERP system. Chief Financial Officer, Melissa Carter, would then export the data and organize it into consolidated reports. As INW continued to grow, this process became extremely exhaustive and inefficient.
A Modern CPM Platform
Working with Black Diamond Advisory, Funari also built a unique Capital Expense (CapEx) model for INW. "I wanted to have the projects come in with specific key factors readily available so that the users can easily calculate out all of the accounting aspects for each project." To help aid the users during implementation, Funari leveraged the Excel® Analysis End User Training solution from the OneStream MarketPlace™, which allowed her to provide training for the users within the system itself.
Next, INW began developing a new forecasting and budgeting application within OneStream that includes detailed actual data and high-level budgets for current and prior years. Now they have two years of actuals for all entities in the system — as soon as the final TB is loaded, the forecast is updated with actuals.
"We've finished the budget, and now we're doing quarterly forecasts," said Funari. "Our budgeting model is a working forecast, so users can go in at any time and make adjustments. We have three months of actual plus nine months of forecast, so they have actuals to budget and a look into the future forecast."
Benefits Achieved
With their previous Excel®-based process, INW was taking eight to 10 days to close the books. In their first month of using OneStream, they closed in seven days. And by their third close with OneStream, INW was completing the process in less than five days. On the planning side, Carter was previously preparing budgets manually via Excel®, which consolidating would take two weeks! But with OneStream it's done in two hours.
Each entity puts their budgets in one system to create consolidated budget packages. Now during budget meetings, the CEO sees the same budget packet for each company, which makes interpreting the data much easier. "We have balance sheet, cash flow, CapEx — all of that by division and all in the system, so it is very easy to create reports that are consistent, which makes a huge difference in time savings for executives," Funari added. "There were a lot of positive comments in the user feedback about that."
INW is using a staff planning module developed by Black Diamond Advisory. "We had some challenges in our budget because we were planning our people by a lower level account. With drivers making calculations, we have moved people planning into the GL account, so we can now drill-down by each person to see FICA and FUTA tax details and all the employees making up a specific amount.
"OneStream blows Hyperion out of the water with its functionality. I'm used to Hyperion and writing complex allocation models, but with OneStream, it's so easy to tweak and make changes without affecting the data or the users," Funari said. "OneStream has definitely stepped up the game."
Future Plans
INW has already gone through two version updates, most recently upgrading to OneStream 5.3. "It was amazing. We were only down for one hour! I've done some Hyperion upgrades in the past, and it takes a lot of time to test and prep, but with OneStream, you don't have to worry about losing anything. The data is there, and everything is perfect."
INW has several future initiatives planned for their OneStream implementation. The company would like to improve the tracking of backlog and vendor data with dashboards. INW is also looking at downloading and deploying Task Manager and Account Reconciliations solutions from the OneStream MarketPlace, as well as deploying Direct Connect to their source systems. "Right now, data is being loaded through a form or flat file. Our IT department is working on setting up a data warehouse with all the data from each ERP system, so all the data is synced. This will help us report future acquisitions on Day 1," said Funari.
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