Saeta Yield Replaces Complicated Consolidation Process with True Finance Transformation

Embracing Change

The Saeta Yield group is a young and dynamic company with an enormous growth projection. As a spin-off from Cobra, Saeta was the first YieldCo to be listed on the Ibex35 and today operates globally across various geographies. Saeta continues to grow across southern Europe with the continued focus of contributing to the global decarbonization challenge.

Headquartered in Madrid, Saeta’s consolidation is complex. The company needed an adaptable system that would meet the local requirements in Spain, and also the reporting requirements of their parent organizations which include Terraform in the United States and Brookfield in Canada.

“We were using Infor as a consolidation tool and Excel for reporting,” said Carmen López, Financial Director at Saeta Yield. “However, when it came time to upgrade to a new version, the upgrade was complicated and took too much time. In addition, we had to implement new requirements, not only local but also all corporate requirements, to be as automated as possible and have as little human integration as possible. We also wanted an automatic integration with Navision to replace the manual data upload by our Uruguayan entities.”

Making the Move to OneStream

Saeta was faced with a decision to continue with the complicated upgrade of Infor and implement new requirements or migrate to a modern corporate performance management platform that offered scalable and flexible ad-hoc functionality. 

“When considering the idea of changing tools, our Corporate team was already using OneStream,” said López. “So we went to the OneStream Splash conference in Madrid in 2019 and really liked the platform, especially the intercompany transaction functionality. We knew OneStream would be the best path forward for Saeta.”

Saeta embarked on their finance transformation project by implementing OneStream for financial consolidation and reporting processes. The development of the solution was less than a year, with the implementation occurring during the pandemic season. 

After the initial go-live in June of 2021, Saeta expanded the functionality of their platform to include:

• the creation of additional reports and input forms,
• new foreign entities and scenarios,
• adding another FX methodology,
• and IFRS roll-forward adjustments across periods.

All of this was possible through OneStream’s scalable platform. Today, the company has users from various departments including Administration, Accounting, Consolidation, and FP&A working in the platform on a daily or monthly basis.

Streamlined Financial Consolidation

With OneStream, Saeta was no longer experiencing the challenges with financial consolidation and reporting requirements which they previously faced with Infor and Excel. 

“Our local accounting is under Spanish GAAP, Portuguese GAAP in Portugal, and IFRS in Uruguay,” López explained. “The consolidated accounts to be presented by Spain are under IFRS and some companies consolidate both by the global methodology and by the equity method. We also have to consider that some of our companies are in countries with a currency different from EUR, for example, Uruguay.” Despite these complexities, the architectural design of OneStream combined with its reporting and visibility into transactional details, provides Saeta the ability to see and resolve intercompany balances to rapidly close the books at period-end.

When it comes to corporate reporting, requirements differ from the local requirements. Saeta reports a consolidated IFRS but with some integration adjustments not only under IFRS but under USGAAP. Additionally, Brookfield does Segment reporting. Therefore, in addition to reporting at the legal structure level, Saeta reports at a segment level with specific reports and the added complexity of SOX compliance. 

“We had to move from an SEC environment under SOX regulations, so we have a segregation of complex functions as required by SOX,” said López. “OneStream enables us to adapt to these specific needs. Previously we were reporting in Excel, and we needed consolidation in different structures, not only legal and by segments, but also fiscal and per country. In addition, the reporting they needed was monthly and quarterly with specific conditions. We’ve eliminated many spreadsheets, time and manual effort by switching to OneStream.”

In addition, Saeta’s OneStream solution retrieves data from Navision and loads it into OneStream through a connector. An integration process between cubes is currently under development, whereby Saeta will share data with Terraform. Saeta is also using drill-down functionality to see data loaded in the workflow from Navision.

Benefits of OneStream

Since going live with OneStream, Saeta has upgraded the platform twice which has been a tremendous difference versus their experience with Infor. Said López, “We started with the OneStream version 5.4 and upgraded to 6.1 and then 6.4. When using Infor, the upgrade to a new version was complicated and took too much time. Now it’s a stress-free process that is saving us time.”

At the user level, Saeta has seen many improvements since the OneStream implementation. Not only is the consolidation process much faster, but they’ve eliminated spreadsheets and fully replaced Excel as a reporting tool. “We appreciate OneStream’s dynamism and simplicity. Since go-live, the platform has been able to easily adapt to ongoing company changes and requirements,” López continued. “It is a very intuitive tool. With so many companies abroad, we have to enter many adjustments, so we built a template in Excel to streamline all the data loads. The process is much faster, easier and more intuitive for the users.”

Up next, the company looks forward to extending their OneStream solution in many ways. To start, they plan to integrate the Saeta cube with their parent company, Terraform. In addition, Saeta will like to implement budgeting in OneStream as Phase 2 to truly take advantage of the unified platform approach.