Reporting and Analytics for Intelligent FP&A

Unifying Financial & Operational Insights to Drive Performance and Deliver Value

The Finance function must embrace a new set of powerful intelligent technologies to maintain its status as a critical resource amid the current wave of analytics-fueled disruption. During crisis management scenarios, CFOs often turn to macroeconomic indicators (e.g., GDP, oil prices and consumer health) to guide the path forward. But what happens when macroeconomic cycles break down, and external factors themselves are a source of uncertainty? Where do Finance teams turn then? The answer often lies with what Finance knows best—our data.

Despite the explosion of data across sophisticated organizations, many still struggle to meet the information requirements of executives and managers.

Introduction

In an era where analytics-driven disruption is rampant, the Finance function must adopt new intelligent technologies to preserve its critical role.

During crisis management scenarios, CFOs often turn to macroeconomic indicators (e.g., GDP, oil prices, and consumer health) to guide the path forward.

22%

Only 22% of organizations identify performance issues before they hit financials.

Unfortunately, despite the explosion of data across sophisticated organizations, many organizations still struggle to meet the information requirements of executives and managers.

Modern Finance leaders require more than just fragmented point solutions to help support decision-making. Finance leaders require unified solutions. Solutions with the proper controls, power and speed for the world's largest and most sophisticated organizations to extract value from their data and drive performance.

Trends in Finance

But by leveraging technology, CFOs can transform financial planning and analysis (FP&A) into strategic tools that fuel a competitive advantage and growth. With a clear line of sight to the impact of disruption on both the business model and operating model, the CFO can turn FP&A reporting and analytics into opportunities for competitive advantage and growth. Finance groups preparing for the transformation ahead must therefore recognize how emerging market trends will reshape the future value of reporting and analytics.

By 2025, augmented data management is expected to reduce the time Finance analysts spend on repetitive data tasks by up to 30%, freeing analysts for more collaborative and high-value activities.

Business Challenges

Because they’re relying on fragmented silos of spreadsheets, legacy corporate performance management (CPM) software, and data lakes and BI tools for reporting needs. This approach forces Finance teams to build disjointed processes around technology that aren’t organized in a way that’s easily understood.

Just think about how much time you and your team spend manually copying and pasting information between fragmented sources and tools, as opposed to analyzing results and helping your business partners take action.

Why are so many organizations struggling to report and analyze operational insights in a timely manner?

The rapid advancement of technology continuously accelerates the pace of change, challenging Finance leaders to predict and manage disruptions.

OneStream’s Self-Service Reporting & Analytics

To increase the speed, scope and accuracy of reporting across the organization.

With a broad range of reporting and analytics capabilities, OneStream helps reduce the reliance on spreadsheets and fragmented financial reporting tools.

Does this scenario sound familiar?

Addressing the Challenges

As a result, users get a single version of the truth for financial, statutory and management reporting. The unified CPM platform simplifies complex reporting tasks and enables Finance and Operations teams to concentrate on generating insights, identifying opportunities and risks, and enhancing decision-making processes.

OneStream enables Finance and operational team members to lead quickly with a single lens into business results.

Why?

OneStream’s Intelligent Finance platform unifies Finance processes across the CFO's office while enabling the organization with self-service, easy-to-use reporting solutions for a variety of stakeholder groups.

Want proof?

Why?

Because they just don’t have the right tools for the job. In fact, only 14% of Finance leaders classify their reporting and analytics as insightful, as illustrated in the graphic above.

Why?

To get beyond the wall of our own organizational challenges and think bigger.

Surely, if CFOs know the external factors that truly drive the business, macroeconomic insights will help pierce through the fog of uncertainty, right? But what happens when those macroeconomic cycles break down, and external factors themselves are a source of uncertainty? What happens when the political and economic environment no longer offers the stability of the past? And what happens when Finance must guide the organization through 30-, 60-, and 90-day planning cycles? Where do Finance teams turn then?

The answer lies close to home: the organization’s own data. Insights about customers, suppliers and daily managed factors become crucial. By moving beyond traditional month-end financial reporting cycles, Finance teams can tap into operational data to uncover hidden signals, assist business partners in making impactful decisions before month-end and focus on what really drives the business every day.

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Case StudY

The BDO team, led by CFO Lynn Calhoun, selected OneStream because it met three primary requirements: scalability, information delivery and data integrity.

BDO is a U.S. professional services firm that provides assurance, tax and advisory services to multi-national clients through a global network of over 80,000 people working in 1,591 offices across 162 countries.

We now have happy users who are able to absorb information the way they want with self-service reporting and dashboards, This includes a wide range of information, not just financial – including managing people and clients.”

OneStream helps BDO align its external, legal, management and FP&A processes within a single solution while providing a framework to address different levels of detail between budget/forecast collection and actuals reporting across Accounts, Cost Centers and Departments. This capability, in turn, provides additional granularity for reporting and planning across various lines of business in a single solution that offers a unified data model. BDO leverages OneStream’s financial signaling capabilities to report on and analyze large volumes of daily transactional data, loading 10 million records nightly. Those records are transformed into 30 to 40 million rows of data through OneStream and then made available for BDO’s users via an interactive dashboard.

In sum, OneStream fit the bill as a platform that could handle larger data volumes as BDO grows and empower key decision-makers with accurate information, rich dashboarding and reporting capabilities. By combining multiple disparate data sets, OneStream creates “one source of the truth” for BDO.

Conclusion

Today, Finance leaders are well-equipped to navigate the volatile landscape with the rise of IBP and the acceleration of AI and machine learning in data processes. OneStream's platform supports this evolution by offering a range of solutions that integrate reporting, analytics and planning into a seamless experience. That experience enables Finance leaders worldwide to optimize performance and decision-making.

OneStream’s Intelligent Finance platform was designed to help the Office of the CFO drive performance with a wide range of solutions across Accounting, Finance, and Operations partners. And with built-in reporting and analytics, financial consolidation, and planning all within one unified solution, OneStream is giving Finance leaders across the globe the ability to finally harness their data with the speed, scale and control required to guide decision-making and impact performance. And do it with a seamless user experience that doesn’t force Finance teams to compromise on business processes or technology.

The Finance function is increasingly recognized for its role in managing both financial and operational data, gaining a trusted voice among business leaders.

— Lynn Calhoun

FP&A teams are evolving into strategic business partners within organizations, emphasizing the need for high-quality, frequently refreshed and enterprise-wide synchronized data. As a response to these pressures, FP&A is extending its reach to include and collaborate with Sales, Marketing, Supply Chain, Workforce, and IT.

IBP is a unifying framework that enables continuous collaboration and performance management through daily and weekly signaling, scenario planning and now AI-enabled forecasting.

To accelerate enterprise agility, leading toward Integrated Business Planning (IBP)

Why?

Rise of Integrated Business Planning (IBP)

Increased focus on data storytelling

Financial analysts and decision-makers are drowning in complex data. To adapt, organizations are increasingly enhancing traditional dashboards with dynamic data-driven storytelling tools powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in Finance (see Figure 2). Dynamic data stories generate insights as narratives, highlighting the most meaningful changes in the business for each user, with root causes, predictions and prescriptions for the user’s roles and contexts. The stories ultimately reduce the risk that financial analysis will be misinterpreted.

The way Finance teams manage the data behind dashboards and visualizations is changing. Today, Finance can use new technologies to deploy a host of new models and tools to provide sound financial and operational data that drive effective decision-making. Technologies such as ML and AI are leveraged to automate tasks during the analytics process — and to discover, visualize and narrate important findings in datasets. With AI and ML, Finance can reduce the time to perform the day-to-day input- and output-focused activities that consume analysts’ time — without the skills of a data scientist.

A deeper appreciation of high-quality data touched by AI

Modern Finance leaders require more than just fragmented point solutions to help support decision-making. Finance leaders require unified solutions. Solutions with the proper controls, power and speed for the world’s largest and most sophisticated organizations to extract value from their data and drive performance.

Because they don’t have the right tools for the job.

Why?

86% of Analytic Effort Misses the Mark

Source: FSN The Future of Analytics in the Finance Function Global Survey 2020

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22% of finance teams focus on cyclical report production. Analysis is limited to standard ERP reports and spreadsheets, with each operational area doing its own thing.

22% ROUTINE

30% of finance teams use business intelligence and data visualization tools, but operate in isolation with their own data sets, driving decisions related to that function only.

30% SILOED

34% of finance teams focus on cyclical report production, but react with ad-hoc analysis to drive insight and decision-making in exceptional circumstances.

34% REACTIVE

14% of finance teams have an analytics mindset that pervades everything they do. Core financial processes are joined up, data is shared as a corporate resource, new sources of financial and non-financial data are regularly sought out and analytical tools are used aggressively to drive operational and strategic insight, competitiveness and decision-making.

14% INSIGHTFUL

DATA-DRIVEN STORYTELLING

ENLIGHTEN

EXPLAIN

ENGAGE

Figure 2: Storytelling = Visualizations + Narrative + Data

AI/ML DATA

VISUALS

NARRATIVE

20%

More Time for Tasks

Source: Gartner

2018

2020

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

The number of data masters, who actively manage their data as a corporate asset and have the tools and resources needed to provide competitive edge and insight, have also shrunk from 19% in 2018 to just 12% today.

Data Masters

20% of companies are data overloaded with too many conflicting data sources and poor data governance.

Data Overloaded

28% feel data constrained, which means they struggle to get hold of the data need.

Data Constrained

40% are now technology constrained and do not have the analytical tools to fully exploit the data they have. This is a 6% increase vs. 2018 when 34% of companies reported that they were technology constrained.

Technology Constrained

Does Your Organization Analyze Data Effectively?

OneStream Digital Finance cloud

Source: FSN The Future of Analytics in the Finance Function Global Survey 2020

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Organizations Are Finding Themselves Increasingly Technology Constrained

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Conclusion

Case Studies

OneStream’s Self-Service Reporting & Analytics

Addressing the challenges

Business Challenges

Trends In FInance

Introduction

BDO CFO

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