Overview

To achieve a single source of truth for enterprise data and fuel the consolidation of disparate planning, budgeting, reporting, and forecasting tools, CrossCountry Consulting’s OneStream implementation experts designed, built, and deployed OneStream. By moving over core finance, FP&A, HR, and IT processes to OneStream, the team delivered an integrated technology environment to enable leaders to optimize ARR processes, execute project-based forecasting, and accelerate speed-to-decision across the firm.

Expertise delivered

  • OneStream design and deployment
  • Strategic systems integrations
  • Integrated planning architecture
  • Time, labor, and cost savings
  • Fully automated headcount planning
  • Centralized budget access

Challenge 

A global education technology company embarked on an ambitious agenda to improve the efficiency of its key enterprise functions following a major acquisition of another industry firm. Integrating the two companies and their disparate technology systems required a new systems strategy and roadmap to avoid redundancies, inefficiencies, and revenue leaks. 

Ultimately, a rationalized technology architecture and enhanced, integrated planning capabilities could deliver real cost savings and positive cross-functional outcomes throughout the firm. The journey to get there started with the implementation of Salesforce, UKG, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 in close succession. 

To further consolidate systems, the firm sought to replace Oracle PCBS with OneStream as the sole global planning and budgeting platform.  

How We Helped 

CrossCountry Consulting’s OneStream implementation team was brought in to evaluate the current-state performance management architecture and then design, build, and deploy OneStream as the single source of truth for the company’s enterprise data. As the only tool of its kind with all budgeting, planning, forecasting, and reporting functionality in one platform, OneStream was a turnkey solution to elevate key functions like Finance, FP&A, HR, and IT. 

Despite the company’s Microsoft Dynamics 365 implementation being delayed 3 months, the CrossCountry team was able to make quick progress on the OneStream deployment and integration between the 2 systems. The OneStream dimension model was specifically built to mirror the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Chart of Accounts, while UKG actuals were integrated into OneStream to create the People Planning solution. 

Other core projects included: 

  • Converting and loading historical data for both FY23 and FY24 into OneStream, which will help produce year-over-year reporting. 
  • Transitioning Position Management (PMID) to OneStream’s People Planning to support position-based planning, leveraging current position roster from UKG to create budgets and forecasts. This also involved automating calculations for position-based expenses, including merit increases, bonus, payroll taxes, commissions, and benefits. 
  • Integrating OneStream’s People Planning Marketplace solution as the single source for all Employee Position Management, which synchronizes Open Positions between UKG, Jobvite, and OneStream and replaces a highly manual excel-based workflow. 
  • Capturing core planning at the following intersections of detail: 
    • Natural Account. 
    • Cost Center.
    • Class, which is used to identify any add-backs. 
    • Vendor (for expense details). 
    • Product (for revenue data). 
    • Data Type (to capture adjustments).   
  • Creating input forms to simplify budget input for FP&A end users and workflows to separate access to planning intersections across the application.  
  • Converting and reconciling 2 years of history to provide year-over-year P&L trend reporting.   
  • Writing complex business transformation rules to convert raw data into reporting outputs required by Strategic Finance stakeholders.   
  • Developing calculations and reporting views that will be re-purposed and recycled for future use in reports.   

Results 

Early indicators of these transformations show high adoption and labor savings due to consolidation of systems and OneStream’s ease of use. Benefits achieved so far include: 

  • Significant reduction in manual hours spent cleansing and preparing data across the organization. 
  • One-click, real-time updates on all reports. 
  • Fully automated headcount planning process without needing to modify calculations for each position. The firm’s OneStream users can simply enter hire or term dates, and the calculation logic completely shifts without further intervention. 
  • Centralized budget access enabling automated consolidation of budget inputs in reports and dashboards. 
  • Streamlined revenue and expense planning by retiring manual Excel files. 

The CrossCountry team continues to support more than 60 OneStream users at the firm as they begin their FY25 budget process. And OneStream will support planning expense data by vendor for the top 300 vendors. 

CrossCountry has now also built direct connections from UKG to D365 to automate the integration of Employee and General Ledger Data. 

As the firm’s integrated planning and reporting processes continue to mature, additional projects include optimizing the annual recurring revenue process and enabling project-based forecasting for even greater insights and speed-to-decision.