The Carlyle Group Replaces Hyperion, Aligns CPM Processes with OneStream

Many organizations are held back from achieving world-class corporate performance management (CPM) processes due to reliance on spreadsheets or legacy CPM applications.  Often times, too much time and effort within the Finance function is spent administering systems and manipulating data vs. focusing on value-added analysis and focusing on real business issues and decisions.

This was the focus of a recent webinar hosted by OneStream, featuring The Carlyle Group and our partner Finit Solutions.  The speakers were Ryan Wild, VP of Global Technology & Solutions at Carlyle and Jay Hampton, Managing Partner at Finit.  Here’s a recap of the key points highlighted in the webinar.

Leaving a Legacy Behind at Carlyle

The Carlyle Group is a global alternative asset manager with $195 billion of assets under management across 317 investment vehicles. Founded in 1987 in Washington, DC, Carlyle has grown into one of the world’s largest and most successful investment firms, with more than 1,600 professionals operating in 31 offices in North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Australia.

The Carlyle Group, was looking to simplify their CPM landscape by combining three disparate tools into a single platform. Additionally, they were seeking a modern, extensible platform that was scalable to meet current and future business needs.

The Carlyle team evaluated several alternatives and selected OneStream based on its ability to unify and replace their existing financial and HR planning systems, as well as Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) for financial consolidation and reporting, and other point solutions such as account reconciliations in the future.

Making the Case for OneStream

The Carlyle team evaluated Oracle’s EPM Cloud and other alternatives and agreed that an investment in OneStream made the most sense, if the platform was used to replace multiple products. That meant replacing the existing financial and HR planning systems, as well as HFM for financial consolidation and reporting, and other point solutions such as account reconciliations in the future.

The Carlyle team projected that an investment in OneStream would yield the strongest ROI when compared to an all-Oracle investment. Key drivers of savings/cost avoidance in the business case included avoidance of costly upgrades, reduced IT/admin staffing, and reduced software maintenance costs.

Simplifying and Aligning CPM Processes

With the help of Jay Hampton and the team at Finit Solutions, Carlyle implemented OneStream’s unified, SmartCPM^TM platform for financial consolidation and reporting, budgeting and forecasting as well as HR budgeting using the OneStream People Planning solution from the XF MarketPlace.

With the implementation, Carlyle was able to leverage several key capabilities of OneStream including:

• Direct connect to PeopleSoft GL and Workday
• Extensible Dimensionality to support both legal entity and project-level reporting and planning
• Relational Blending for drill-back to supporting detail such as budgeted spend by vendor
• Automated loading of Excel-based data entry templates
• Guided Workflow for loading GAAP and non-GAAP data
• Automated Allocations for segment-level reporting in Accounting and
• FP&A
• Self-service reporting and analysis for business users

The implementation of OneStream has resulted in significant process improvements for Carlyle. For example, consolidating a full year of GAAP actuals was reduced by 50% while including significantly more detail than was previously loaded in Hyperion (e.g., project-level details).  They were also able to achieve significant process improvements in budgeting and planning.  For instance, submitting revenue and expense budget updates and reviewing the impact was reduced from 1 week to 5-10 minutes. And updating headcount assumptions and reviewing the impact was reduced from 1 week to 20 minutes.

In addition, the company was able to simplify their IT landscape and reduce costs compared to their previous Hyperion system. OneStream was easier to install, taking 90 minutes via WebEx, and VMs used for OneStream were less than half that of Hyperion. System monitoring is much easier and Carlyle has received immediate responses to support tickets with rapid issue resolution.

Extending the Investment

Carlyle plans to extend their use of OneStream with XF MarketPlace solutions for Account Reconciliations and Close Management. Other areas under consideration include decentralizing their use of People Planning, implementing Cash Forecasting for Treasury, financial reporting for fund accounting, and advanced scenario modeling for FP&A and key budget/forecast stakeholders.

To hear more about how The Carlyle Group was able to modernize Finance, simplify and align their CPM processes, and extend their investment with OneStream, watch the webinar replay.  And feel free to contact OneStream if you need help leaving your legacy behind.

John O’Rourke is Vice President of Product Marketing at OneStream Software. With a background in accounting and finance, John has over 30 years of experience in the software industry, including 20 years of experience in product marketing at Hyperion Solutions, Oracle and Host Analytics. He has worked with many customers and partners on financial reporting and planning initiatives and has spoken and written on many topics in corporate performance management. John has also held positions in strategic marketing and product marketing at Dun & Bradstreet Software, Kenan Systems and Decisyon.  Find me on: