Ensuring Financial Data Quality and Trust with OneStream

CONCLUSION

Integrated Financial QualityManagement at a Glance

Integrated Financial DataQuality Management

OneStream’s Data Integration Capabilities

Data Integration Requirements in CPM

INTRODUcTION

INTRODUCTION

Today’s CFOs and controllers need to manage their critical, enterprise-wide financial data and processes as effectively as possible. That data needs to be timely, accurate, and easily accessible for insightful reporting and analysis to maintain a competitive edge. Accordingly, their corporate performance management (CPM) solutions need to be robust, scalable, and provide full integration with their ERP, HCM, CRM, and other systems.

OneStream provides market-leading data-integration and data-quality capabilities built-in the platform, with seamless connections to more than 250+ unique GL/ERP systems, on-premise, or in the cloud. This includes full integration with SAP, PLeX, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle E-Business Suite, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, NetSuite, Infor, and others, using a direct connect framework and no-code connectors, where direct integrations are completed in days & weeks vs. months. The OneStream platform incorporates all industry standard integration capabilities, including ODBC, RESTful and SOAP web service APIs, and custom third-party communication tools. With 100% visibility from source to report, all financial data is clearly visible and easily accessible. Financial processes can be automated, reports are more accurate, and the enterprise can utilize its core financial and operational data using a single interface. With full integration to ERPs and other systems, the enterprise can simplify business processes, reduce errors and inefficiencies, and allow its teams to focus on their work vs. managing data integration challenges.

Data Integration Requirements in CPM

Data integration is one of the most critical aspects of implementing CPM solutions. Why? Because the effectiveness of your budgeting, planning, consolidation, and reporting processes is fully dependent on getting timely and accurate data from GL/ERP, HCM, CRM, and other systems. Below are some common use cases of data integration in CPM:

Loading GL trial balances for financial consolidation and reporting

Drilling back to transaction details for budget vs. actuals variance analysis

Loading supplemental data for financial reporting, budgeting or tax provision

Loading detailed employee data from HCM systems for workforce planning

Loading detailed capital asset data from ERP systems for capital planning

Loading project data from ERP and Project Management systems

Loading customer and prospect data from CRM systems for sales forecasting

Loading prior period actuals to seed the budget process or loading year-to-date actuals to support rolling forecasts

Most CPM applications rely on separate tools to provide integration and file-based integration with source systems, but key advantages come with built-in, full, direct integration between CPM and GL/ERP and other systems. Why are those advantages important? A lack of robust data integration capabilities creates a multitude of problems, including manual steps, wasted resources and time, risk of errors, poor financial data quality, lack of traceability, and lack of auditability. If your CPM solution doesn’t fully integrate with your source systems, then it’s not a complete solution. Full integration goes beyond “compatibility.” How? It includes a seamless connection to key data sources and the ability to drill-down and drill-back, from the CPM platform all the way down to transactional detail in the source system. The process should be fully automated and provide 100% traceability with audit trails for data, metadata, and process changes.

OneStream’s Data Integration Capabilities

OneStream’s unified platform enables organizations to modernize Finance, replace multiple legacy applications and cloud-based point solutions, and reduce the total cost of ownership of financial systems. What does all of that mean for Finance teams? It means OneStream unleashes them to spend less time on data integration and system maintenance — and more time focused on driving business performance.

The OneStream platform is a market-leading CPM solution. OneStream (Figure 1) unifies and simplifies financial consolidation, close, financial and operational planning, reporting, analytics, and financial data quality for sophisticated organizations.

OneStream includes advanced, built-in data integration capabilities and is the only CPM platform in the industry with integrated financial data quality. Financial data quality isn’t an option — it’s a requirement in today’s corporate reporting environment where errors or omissions in financial statements can result in compliance penalties, loss of confidence by stakeholders, and often a reduction in market value. OneStream’s financial data quality provides strict controls to deliver confidence and reliability in the quality of your data.

OneStream Platform

Core Services

Analytic Services

AI Services

UNIFIED DATA

FIGURE 1: ONESTREAM DATA SOURCES PLATFORM GRAPHIC

OneStream's Data Integration capabilities span many different types of data, including the following:

Data can be integrated into OneStream via several methods. The most popular — and most powerful — is the “Direct Connect” approach and no-code connectors like the SAP Connector, which enables OneStream to directly connect to source systems, load the data into OneStream, and drill-back to transaction system details. In addition to Direct Connect, file-based sources can be loaded from spreadsheets compiled by contributors, delimited files from sources without an open interface, or third-party data to enrich the analysis or driver calculation. These data files can be loaded through the interface as part of a workflow and included in the data validation sequence.

Trial Balance Summaries

Transaction Detail

STATISTICAL/NON-financial data

operational data

leads and opportunities

employees, jobs, and positions

chart of accounts

users and user security

dimensional hierarchies

operational metrics

currency rates and more

Integrated Financial Data Quality Management

The loading, mapping, and transforming of data from source systems to CPM solutions can be cumbersome and fragmented without highly connected and business user-managed capabilities. Data movement may be reliant on IT resources that are not knowledgeable on the CPM model and the transformation and validations that must occur. This is even more problematic without the transparency and controls needed by the business to support compliance. OneStream lets you avoid these issues.

In fact, OneStream has strong foundations in data quality that allows for unparalleled flexibility and visibility into the data loading and integration process. OneStream’s financial data quality is not a module or separate product, but part of the core OneStream platform — providing strict controls to deliver confidence and reliability in the quality of your data. How? Data quality risk is managed using a fully auditable system, integration maps, and validations are used to control submissions from remote sites. Data may be loaded via direct connections to source databases or via any file format. Audit reports can be filtered based on materiality thresholds — ensuring one-time review at appropriate points in the process.

Below are some key features of OneStream’s integrated financial data quality:

Ability to read any GL trial balance file or report in any format with NO manipulation

Direct integration for any open ERP or data source

Pre-consolidation mapping and intersection validation

Post-consolidation validation and confirmation

Ability to manage the close by requiring completeness and accuracy

Bi-directional status updates of data collection and model changes

Email or text error alerts

Complete audit trails from 10-K/10-Q

Drill-back to source GL or ERP data

Drill-down from calculated and aggregated accounts

Phased submissions

ONESTREAM DIRECT CONNECT

OneStream can connect and import data from any external system through the use of a direct database connection to the external system. This means data can be imported and processed all the way through the workflow certification process — without ever having to use a source system extract file. OneStream Integration Connectors offer direct integration with any open GL/ERP or other source system. Below are a few of the main advantages of the Direct Connect approach:

Deliver fast and efficient direct-to-source system integration processes

Drill-down and drill-back to transactional details, including journal entries

Deliver direct integration with available drill-back built for any open ERP, including Oracle, PeopleSoft, JDE, SAP, Infor, Microsoft® AX/Dynamics, and more

OneStream’s Direct Connect feature uses Connector Business Rules to generate and execute queries against source tables or views to pull data into the OneStream Stage engine for mapping and transformation. Connectors can also be configured to call exposed Web Services from source systems using SOAP or REST APIs. Additionally, a no-code connector is available for SAP. Once data has been loaded into the OneStream Stage, data can be mapped, transformed, and summarized for loading to the financial model. The data in Stage remains, providing drill-down capabilities from any number on a report, dashboard, or screen to review the mapping and transformation that was applied to the sourced data. Drill-back to source paths combine the user’s current point of view — such as account, entity, product, or other potential attributes known about the data point — to request detailed data from the data source. This data could be transactional events that made the period end balance, an invoice image, or other data in the source that was not loaded into the CPM solution.

Integrated Financial Quality Management at a Glance

Simplify Data Integration

Direct integration to any open GL/ERP system, including Oracle, SAP, and Microsoft Dynamics, with powerful pre-built integration Connectors with drill-back capabilities.

Increase Transparency

100% transparency and audit trails for data, metadata, and process change visibility from report to source.

Enhance Productivity

Guided Workflows intuitively move business users through the entire data collection, integration, and reporting process.

Improve Integrity

Powerful pre- and post-data loading validations and confirmations provide complete confidence in the certification process.

Drill-Down, and Drill-Back to Source

The drill-down and drill-back end user process is not delivered in a clunky third-party tool, portal, or interface. Instead, the OneStream drill-down and drill-back (Figure 2) happens in the comfort of the OneStream standard user interface, so the end user never has to exit OneStream to see the transactional details of the ERP.

FIGURE 2: ONESTREAM DRILL-DOWN AND DRILL-BACK

Why does this matter? Ease of use is paramount to ease of adoption and acceptance by end users who demand simplicity. The OneStream Integration Connector can move from any table to any other table. Thus, the series of clicks that would normally be necessary for drilling back to a specific transaction in an ERP system can be augmented with a one-click process in OneStream to immediately get the most relevant details. One customer needed to go from OneStream data directly to cancelled checks, which would have been 20-plus clicks in the ERP. OneStream simplified that process and gave the client a menu of choices on the drill-back that quickly took the end user directly to the cancelled checks. OneStream drill-options don’t stop at just displaying data in data grids, either. Other options include displaying a web page via a passed URL, displaying files, text messages, and more.

Complete Transparency and Auditability

OneStream reduces internal control risk with better audit trails, drill-down and drill-back to data sources, along with complete process and change visibility. Notably, OneStream provides 100-plus standard audit reports on changes to data, metadata, rules, maps, etc. It also always knows who does what, when, and how. In addition, as part of the workflow, OneStream offers the opportunity to capture process control questionnaires to confirm the process and certify the results at every level of collection and consolidation. The OneStream Stage Database (Figure 3) is the first stop for GL trial balances, supplemental data, and other detail, such as Sales data. Mapping and pre- and post-load data validation checks are performed to ensure accuracy and completeness before the data is loaded into the appropriate financial model.

Guided Workflows ensure end-to-end process visibility. When source data is updated, or when users make a change in the consolidation model, Workflow status detects the change and alerts users to the proper state of data quality. The OneStream solution supports Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) requirements with strict process controls, complete transparency, and certification questionnaires. Below are some examples of the built-in process controls:

GUIDED WORKFLOWS

Data and process certification and sign off

Audit trails from 10K/10Q to GL source account and GL trial balance report or file

Automatic archival of all supporting files and documents

Document attachments and textual notations by cell, data unit, or multiple data units are archived for material disclosures

Supports SOX 302 and 404 certification questionnaires to identify financial process weaknesses prior to the OneStream consolidation process

Overarching Guided Workflows (Figure 4) protect business users from complexity by guiding them uniquely through all data management, verification, analysis, certification, and locking processes.

Delivery of intelligent analytics within each workflow step

Separate input channels for data protection and transparency

Phased workflow process for all data collections, if desired

User and process aware

Unified workflow engine that delivers a 100% reliable process status

SAP INTEGRATION

OneStream provides direct integration with multiple SAP data sources through a no-code SAP Connector — including SAP ECC, BW, and S/4 HANA — with drill-back capabilities to transactional details. With OneStream’s SAP Connector you ensure robust, compliant and secure connectivity with all SAP systems. The SAP Connector is finance focused, so it’s easy to configure, eliminates latency by maintaining a live lens to configure SAP (ECC, S/4 HANA), reduces data risks equally as well as SAP, and delivers the speed and simplicity of connecting SAP to one OneStream to amplify the value of your SAP investments, without all the complexity. Most of OneStream’s SAP clients say OneStream integrates with SAP ERP better and easier than SAP’s CPM solutions integrate with SAP.

FIGURE 4: OVERARCHING GUIDED WORKFLOWS

FIGURE 3: ONESTREAM STAGE DATABASE

Over 500 SAP ERP customers use OneStream’s platform, and it can provide a powerful bridge platform for customers considering a conversion from R/3 or ECC to S/4 HANA. Because OneStream can integrate with and map disparate data sources and charts of accounts, it provides a consistent platform for financial consolidation, reporting, planning and analysis — before, during, and after a multi-year migration to S/4 HANA. It also addresses the ongoing challenge that many organizations face in integrating data from non-SAP systems that will inevitably exist at subsidiaries or acquired companies. Some of the key capabilities of OneStream’s SAP Connector integration include the following:

Seamless, secure, no-code connection

Live Lense into SAP to browse and configure for data and meta data without writing code

Reduce latency and risk in reporting errors

Maintain data integrity and ensure secure, compliant SAP access to financial & operational data throughout all OneStream processes. Supports: Queries across multiple SAP instances Choose or search SAP objects with applications Browse or drill-back to transactions, invoices and any ERP data Import on the fly

Supports RFC to browse data directlyfrom OneStream: SAP Tables SAP Queries BW Cubes & Queries BAPIs & function modules

Supports oData V2 API Connectivity for SAP Cloud, BTP, Datasphere (ODBC) SAP Business Accelerator Hub Authentication using API Key, Basic, OAuth 2.0

CONCLUSIOn

Effective data integration is a critical component of any successful CPM implementation — ensuring the timeliness and accuracy of financial and operational data being used for financial reporting, planning, and forecasting. OneStream provides a market-leading CPM platform with powerful, integrated financial data quality, and integration capabilities. Ultimately, through advanced data integration, drill-down and drill-back, mapping, and process controls functionality, OneStream delivers the most complete financial data quality capabilities in the CPM market. As a result, financial data quality, consolidations, and budgeting work as a team to ensure that all the data is timely and accurate. OneStream takes data integration to a new level thanks to the benefits below:

Simplifies data collection, consolidation, and certification

Reduces costs of compliance, internal controls, and audit requirements

Improves confidence in the quality of financial results

Provides consistency and accuracy with complete transparency

onestream.com

191 N. Chester Street Birmingham, MI 48009

Phone: +1.248.650.1490 sales@onestreamsoftware.com

Schedule your demonstration now to learn how OneStream can help you unleash the value of finance, empower the enterprise with insights and prepare your organization for the future.

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