Hyperion Insurance Replaces Anaplan with OneStream for Financial Consolidation & Planning

Regardless of how often it gets done, every business task requires a defined scope, quality, and method to be followed. This is especially important in the finance function. Without standard processes in place, business leaders lose visibility over the quality of financial data and risk the potential for human error. Maintaining standardization gets even more complicated for highly acquisitive companies who experience constant change and the challenges of merging processes, systems and landscapes. When done well, creating a framework for standardization in finance can decrease ambiguity, boost data quality and increase employee morale.

This was the case for Hyperion Insurance Group, a leading international insurance group. In a recent OneStream webinar, Serge Thieriet, CFO of Howden Broking Group (Hyperion Insurance) and Andy George, Change Consultant, spoke with Ash Chapman, Head of Consulting, Inlumi UK, and Craig Colby, President and Co-Founder of OneStream Software, about their decision to replace Anaplan with OneStream XF for improved financial consolidation, reporting and planning across 38 countries. Here’s a recap of the webinar event.

Hyperion’s Back-Office Solution Needs

Founded in 1994, Hyperion Insurance Group has grown significantly over the last 26 years to over 6,000 employees across 40 territories from Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, the USA, to Australia and New Zealand.

With Howden Broking, DUAL underwriting and data analytics and digital delivery business Hyperion X, Hyperion Insurance operates with a highly acquisitive and entrepreneurial spirit, generating over £7bn in annual revenue. Yet because of the organization’s fast and constant pace of growth, they constantly need to review and optimize their back-office solutions.

Hyperion Insurance is on a continuous mission to add controls and keep pace with growth, without crushing the entrepreneurial spirit. They needed a solution that would provide corporate standardization while delivering the individual subsidiaries the power to run their businesses as needed with a certain level of autonomy and control. That’s why they made the decision to upgrade their finance software and replace Anaplan with OneStream’s modern and unified corporate performance management (CPM) platform.

Standardization not Centralization

A very diverse organization, Hyperion Insurance has different types of businesses with varying maturity levels and regulatory environments. This is a constant challenge for the finance team to meet requirements across geographies, time zones and currencies. With additional M&A activity happening every year, it is critical to have insightful reports with controls in place and a strong audit trail of how data is produced and managed – built fast.

– Inlumi UK was brought to help put standardization in place through a compelling vision for change. Inlumi made it clear to Hyperion Insurance that they needed the right technology in place to achieve their goals. They viewed technology as a critical enabler and set out to find the best CPM solution in the market. That’s when Inlumi introduced Hyperion Insurance to OneStream Software.

From Siloed Model to Unified Approach
For Hyperion Insurance, the unified architecture of OneStream enabled more change in less time. With the help of Inlumi, OneStream was implemented in a multi-phase project over an 18-month timeframe. Phase I was to go live with financial consolidation and management reporting. This was a fundamental stage because at the start of the project, two major divisions of Hyperion Insurance announced their merger to create Howden Broking Group. This merger established the need to review the hierarchy and reporting structure to make sure everything would be reconciled properly. It was important for Hyperion Insurance to devote the time and resources to ensure data integrity from the beginning in OneStream. From there, Phase II focused on implementing Task Manager, and Phase III was focused on  planning, budgeting and forecasting, all within the same unified platform.

The OneStream MarketPlace was a huge draw for Hyperion Insurance, because it gives them the ability to add additional solutions overtime as needed, at no additional cost. With that in mind, the organization is already planning future phases. This includes leveraging MarketPlace solutions for balance sheet account reconciliations, operational forecasting and predictive analytics. OneStream makes it easy to download solutions and extend the scope of the platform so corporate and business units can all get what they need without compromise.

A Single Source of Data
It was very important for Hyperion Insurance to invest in the long term, and OneStream is a strategic platform for the future. Previously, the company had a very complex, fragmented data model that was hard to reconcile. OneStream gives them a single source of data, satisfying the corporate governance and control aspect while providing the ability to support divisional requirements  through OneStream’s Extensible Dimensionality®. Business leaders are now able to drill into the details  to understand the organic growth of the organization.

As a single platform, OneStream removes risky data hand-offs and enables efficient drill down and analytics. And, there’s greater ease in managing intercompany balances across locations worldwide. Business users are getting more out of the platform with the capabilities to perform their own management reporting. Hyperion Insurance now has a purpose-built CPM platform which supports an automated consolidation process with transparency from division to group. It’s a simple, scalable model enabling an increase in value without an increase in price.

Learn More
For Hyperion Insurance, OneStream has delivered more accurate results and timely information by allowing business users to flex the system without compromise. To learn more, watch the replay of our recent webinar, How Hyperion Insurance Replaced Anaplan with OneStream for Financial Consolidation, Reporting and Planning.