Why Data Integration and Data Quality are Critical to Successful CPM Projects

Today’s CFOs and controllers need to manage their critical, enterprise-wide financial data and processes as effectively as possible. That data needs to be timely, accurate and easily accessible for insightful reporting and analysis to maintain a competitive edge. Accordingly, their corporate performance management (CPM) solutions need to be robust, scalable and provide full integration with their ERP, HCM, CRM and other systems.

Data Integration and CPM

Data integration is one of the most critical aspects of implementing CPM solutions. Why? Because the effectiveness of your budgeting, planning, consolidation and reporting processes is fully dependent on getting timely and accurate data from GL/ERP, HCM, CRM and other systems.

Below are some common use cases of data integration in CPM:

• Loading GL trial balances for financial consolidation and reporting
• Loading prior period actuals to seed the budget process or loading year-to-date actuals to support rolling forecasts
• Loading supplemental data for financial reporting, budgeting, account reconciliations or tax provision
• Loading detailed employee data from HCM systems for workforce planning
• Loading detailed capital asset data from ERP systems for capital planning
• Loading project data from ERP systems for project planning
• Loading customer and prospect data from CRM systems for sales forecasting
• Drilling through to transaction details for budget vs. actuals variance analysis

Most CPM applications provide file-based integration with source systems, but key advantages come with having full, direct integration between CPM and GL/ERP and other systems. Why are those advantages important? A lack of robust data integration capabilities creates a multitude of problems, including manual steps, wasted resources and time, risk of errors, poor financial data quality, lack of traceability and lack of auditability. If your CPM solution doesn’t fully integrate with your source systems, then it’s not a complete solution.

Full integration goes beyond “compatibility.” How? It includes a seamless connection to key data sources and the ability to drill-back and drill-through, from the CPM platform all the way down to transactional detail in the source system. The process should be fully automated and provide 100% traceability with audit trails for data, metadata and process changes.

The loading, mapping and transforming of data from source systems to CPM solutions can be cumbersome and fragmented without highly connected and business user-managed tools. Data movement may be reliant on IT resources that are not knowledgeable on the CPM model and the transformation and validations that must occur. This is even more problematic without the transparency and controls needed by the business to support compliance. OneStream lets you avoid these issues.

OneStream’s Approach to Data Integration and Data Quality

OneStream Software provides a market-leading CPM solution, the OneStream XF SmartCPM™ platform. OneStream XF unifies and simplifies financial consolidation, planning, reporting, analytics and financial data quality for sophisticated organizations.

Deployed via the cloud or on-premise, OneStream’s unified platform enables organizations to modernize Finance, replace multiple legacy applications and cloud-based point solutions, and reduce the total cost of ownership of financial systems. What does all of that mean for Finance teams? It means OneStream unleashes them to spend less time on data integration and system maintenance – and more time focused on driving business performance.

OneStream provides market-leading data-integration and data-quality capabilities with seamless connections to more than 150 unique GL/ERP systems, on-premise or in the cloud. This includes full integration with SAP, Plex, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle E-Business Suite, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, NetSuite, Infor and others.

The OneStream XF platform can incorporate all industry standard integration capabilities, including ODBC, RESTful and SOAP web service APIs, and custom third-party communication tools. With 100% visibility from reports to source, all-financial data is clearly visible and easily accessible. Financial processes can be automated, reports are more accurate, and the enterprise can utilize its core financial and operational data using a single interface. With full integration to ERPs and other systems, the enterprise can simplify business processes, reduce errors and inefficiencies, and allow its teams to “get back to business.”

OneStream has strong foundations in the data quality area that allow for unparalleled flexibility and visibility into the data loading and integration process. OneStream’s Financial Data Quality is not a module or separate product, but part of the core OneStream XF platform – providing strict controls to deliver confidence and reliability in the quality of your data. How? Data quality risk is managed using fully auditable system integration maps, and validations are used to control submissions from remote sites. Data may be loaded via direct connections to source databases or via any file format. Audit reports can be filtered based on materiality thresholds – ensuring one-time review at appropriate points in the process.

Learn More

Hundreds of OneStream customers are already reaping the benefits of full data integration, enabling their CPM processes to work seamlessly with their GL/ERP systems and processes. Our customers are able to streamline reporting and planning processes, ensure the accuracy of data being integrated from source systems, and quickly answer critical business questions with the ability to drill back into source systems and transaction details.

To learn more, download our white paper titled “Bringing Data Integration to the Next Level with OneStream.”