OneStream Splash Virtual Keynote: Growth, Customer Success & General Petraeus

One of the highlights of the year for OneStream has been our annual Splash user conferences. The team at OneStream had been working for months to plan our Splash 2020 user conference in Toronto.  And we were looking forward to welcoming over 1300 customers, partners, OneStreamers and other guests at the conference. But the global pandemic, and related travel restrictions, forced us to cancel the live event this year.  However, the content was too valuable to squander – so we decided to make selected sessions from Splash 2020 available virtually.

The OneStream Splash Virtual Mini-Series kicked off on Thursday May 28^th with the keynote session featuring a presentation from our CEO Tom Shea on the future of digital finance and how that is driving OneStream’s product roadmap.  This was followed by a customer panel moderated by OneStream president Craig Colby, with senior finance and IT executives from Salesforce, McCain Foods and SPX. And finally, a Q&A session with OneStream board member General (Ret) David Petraeus.

In case you missed it, here’s a link to the replay of the event and below is a recap of the highlights from the Splash Virtual Keynote session.

Navigating Disruption and the Future of Digital Finance

After a brief welcome by OneStream President Craig Colby, our CEO Tom Shea led off the Splash Virtual Keynote session with a review of OneStream’s accomplishments over the past 12 months.  With the backing of KKR, OneStream achieved 50% growth in revenue and customers with more than 500 as of May 2020. The company also grew its partner network to over 140 and has been profitable 8 years running.  But our mission is still all about delivering 100% customer success – and the industry accolades the company has received are a testament to this:

• Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud Financial Close Solutions
• Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice in both Cloud Financial Close and Cloud FP&A
• One of the top 700 companies in the Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Companies
• One of the 2020 Inc. Best Workplaces

Mr. Shea then went on to highlight some of the new solutions OneStream has delivered for the XF MarketPlace, including Predictive Analytics 123, Transaction Matching, and more recently Scenario Analysis 123.  He also highlighted a major area of focus for the OneStream XF platform – extending its analytical capabilities.   To meet new world demands, organizations can no longer rely on the month-end close to provide information needed for decision-making.  They need more frequent access to financial and operational data that can support mid-term decision-making.

OneStream is addressing this need with the Analytic Blend capabilities that have been added to OneStream XF.  This new capability extends the capabilities of the platform to support book of record financial reporting, planning and forecasting – with “financial signaling” capabilities enabled by blending governed financial data with detailed operational data that can help finance and LOB executives to identify new opportunities and risks at speed, to support agile decision-making.

Mr. Shea then highlighted how several OneStream customers have leveraged these new capabilities to support more agile decision-making during the COVID-19 crisis.  This includes McCain Foods, which extended their OneStream solution with daily working capital analysis, and IDEX which was able to develop and deploy 13-week, rolling cash flow forecast – both in just a few days.

Mr. Shea wrapped up his keynote session with a view into the company’s plans to extend its advanced analytics capabilities with several new machine learning solutions and then revealed the location for OneStream Splash 2021 – which will be May 17 – 20^th in Orlando, Florida!

Conquering Complexity on a Global Scale

Managing processes such as financial reporting, planning and analytics in a volatile and disruptive economic environment are challenging for any organization.  But effectively managing these processes in a large, complex organization with multiple lines of business, global operations, and demanding stakeholders requires an agile and unified enterprise finance platform.  That’s why companies such as Salesforce, McCain Foods and SPX selected OneStream.

The journeys each of these companies have taken with OneStream was the focus of the Splash Virtual Customer Panel featuring Richard Burton – VP and Corporate Controller at McCain Foods, Kuntal Gandhi – Senior Director of Finance and Strategy at Salesforce, and Keith Chapman – Director, IT Corporate Applications at SPX.  Each company had been using legacy corporate performance management (CPM) applications for many years.

– SPX had been using multiple Hyperion applications for over 18 years, as well as Trintech for account reconciliations.  This created challenges for the Finance and IT teams in keeping meta data synchronized across applications, integrating and reconciling data, maintaining and upgrading multiple systems, and managing reporting in a fragmented environment.  Expiring support for their legacy applications, combined with the prospect of an expensive upgrade, drove the team at SPX to consider their options and they selected OneStream.  SPX undertook a “big bang” implementation of OneStream, going live in January 2020 with the unified platform for financial close and consolidation, reporting, planning, and tax provision.  During this project, they also decided to implement account reconciliations in OneStream and retired Trintech.

– Salesforce had been using several Hyperion applications to support their FP&A processes.  Rapid growth and in the business, both organically and via acquisition, drove the need for a more agile and scalable platform that could align the front-office and back-office.  The Salesforce team evaluated several cloud-based solutions, including Oracle EPM Cloud and Anaplan, and selected OneStream for FP&A.

– McCain Foods had used Hyperion Enterprise for several years, then moved to OutlookSoft – which was acquired by SAP and become SAP BPC.  The impending end of life of SAP BPC on Windows, combined with an SAP’s unclear product roadmap, drove the McCain’s team to consider their options.  After a short evaluation they selected OneStream to support their financial close and consolidation, reporting and lease accounting requirements, implementing the solution in a 7-month project.

Each of the customers on the panel are seeing great benefits from having a single, unified platform to manage multiple financial processes.  They have streamlined their planning and reporting processes, created a single version of the truth, and eliminated the need to reconcile data across multiple systems.  But the common thread that has enabled each of them to be successful is OneStream’s Extensible Dimensionality®.

This powerful, secret sauce within the OneStream platform is what enables customers to replace not only multiple legacy applications, but in some cases, multiple instances of legacy applications that were set up to accommodate corporate vs. line of business planning and reporting requirements.   Salesforce uses it to support reporting and analysis at different levels of detail across scenarios. SPX uses it to create a single source of truth for actuals, plans, forecasts and tax information, with the ability to drill from summary data into detailed operational data.  And McCain’s uses it to map data from multiple ERP’s and charts of accounts into OneStream, while enabling users at subsidiary levels to report and analyze their financial results at the same level of detail as in their local GL/ERP.

When asked what their favorite thing is about OneStream, the panelists echoed similar themes:  unified platform, all their data in one place, great design, great services and support, adaptable to change, flexible, limited IT support needed and – it just works!

Insights from the Battlefield

One of the benefits of the KKR relationship with OneStream is the advice and guidance OneStream is getting from its board members – including General (ret) David Petraeus.  To close out the Splash Virtual Keynote session, Craig Colby held a fireside chat session with the general that included audience questions. Their conversation spanned a wide variety of topics ranging from why the general chose to join the OneStream board (considering KKR has investments in over 100 companies), strategic leadership in war and business, life as a competitive endeavor, the long-term impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the global economy and our relationship with China.  On a personal level the general also spoke about his favorite book, and early influences on his life.

Learn More

While the COVID-19 disruption eliminated the great personal interactions and networking that normally occur at a user conference, the Splash Virtual Keynote packed a lot of valuable information into a short timeframe.  Attendees were able to hear what’s new and what’s coming from OneStream in 2020.  They learned how several key customers replaced multiple legacy applications with OneStream and the value they received.  They heard views on leadership and geopolitics from a former five-star general.  And they had an opportunity to join interactive Q&A sessions with several of the speakers.

Not bad for a virtual conference!  To learn more, and personally experience the energy of the Splash Virtual Keynote, here’s a link to a recording of the event.  And for existing OneStream customers, the event is just getting started.  The Splash Virtual Mini-Series will continue over the coming weeks with selected sessions highlighting customer success stories, tips and tricks, and what’s new and coming in the OneStream XF Platform and XF MarketPlace.  For more information and registration please watch for the email invitation or contact your OneStream account representative.

See you next year in Orlando!