Frank’s International Drills Deeper into Their Business with OneStream

Frank’s International, a leading provider of products and services to the oil and gas industry, was using legacy systems for financial reporting and budgeting.  The solution was not designed to handle financial consolidations, currency translation, or complex ownership structures.  So, there were a lot of manual steps involved in the process leading to inefficiencies.

Planning was being done directly in the general ledger, and ad hoc reporting was very limited.  Having recently completed an IPO, the company realized it needed to reduce risk and implement new processes and systems, so in 2016 they began evaluating corporate performance management (CPM) solutions.

OneStream to the Rescue

Most of the Finance leadership team had used Hyperion products in the past, and there was a bias towards going in this direction.  After considering a long list of alternative solutions, and their ability to meet the complex global reporting requirements of Frank’s International, the team narrowed the evaluation down to OneStream and Oracle Hyperion.  In the end, OneStream consistently scored higher in a rigorous evaluation process and won the selection.

Frank’s International initially focused their OneStream implementation on financial consolidation and reporting.  Their design was complex with lots of intercompany activity (and accounts), complex holding structures, related party transactions and non-controlling interests, and significant international revenue and FX exposure.

The solution was implemented on-time and under-budget.  It provided enhanced validation and error-checking, better reporting and visibility and was rolled out globally.  The stakeholders were happy and immediately began requesting more data be loaded into the system.

Extending into Planning and Forecasting

Immediately upon going live with OneStream in January 2017, the Frank’s team began working on planning and forecasting.  Leveraging the financial model by inheriting and extending dimensions already in use for consolidation and reporting, they were able to deliver a barebones forecasting solution in 30 days.  Then three months later they delivered the full planning solution, that included an 18-month rolling forecast.

The planning solution had to accommodate the complexities of the company’s business model.  This included a large volume of intercompany activity, oil rig-level gross margin detail, and a rolling-forecast horizon of 18 months, which crossed over year-end in every scenario.

“To accommodate our complex requirements, Frank’s International leveraged the Extensible Dimensionality® of OneStream to capture rig name, product type, location, product vs. equipment rental and service and cost of revenue detail needed for planning purposes,” said Ed Goodwin, VP Finance & Treasurer, Frank’s International.

Benefits Accrue Quickly

The benefits of OneStream began accruing quickly at Frank’s International.  Said Ed Goodwin, “I think the biggest benefit has been the speed of analytics that we’ve been able to do and the level of detail I can get down to very quickly with the drill downs with the Excel Quick Views.”

Mr. Goodwin continued, “I would say across the board, our organization now has a better understanding of what their costs are than they’ve ever had before. The speed relative to our prior solution set is exponentially faster.”

“With OneStream the company has seen drastic improvements in the intercompany matching and elimination process, and faster consolidation and planning cycles, said Mr. Goodwin.  “What that means for us is that we can spend more of our time actually analyzing the business and less of our time trying to just roll up reports to read out the business. We’re catching things faster. We’re digging in deeper. It’s been really, really good.”

Learn More

To learn more, check out the complete Frank’s International success story on our web site.  And contact OneStream if your organization needs help getting “unleashed” from your legacy CPM products.