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How PwC and OneStream can help finance teams turn disparate data into integrated insights
Outcomes-obsessed: Making finance a better coach to the business
Ideally, the finance function sits at the center of some of the most important and strategic decisions in an organization, serving as a coach to the business in directing investment, measuring performance and driving sustainable outcomes. That means not only serving as a source for mission-critical information and insights, but a place where strategies take shape, actions are decided, goals are defined and opportunities discovered.
But delivering on that expectation isn’t easy. All too often, the verifiable, actionable data and analytic insights demanded by the business aren’t available, or sit in siloes or beyond the reach of decision-makers. Problem solving begins with a search for which data to trust, and what matters most.
Each decision-maker in a business has their own audience to satisfy — with metrics that should be designed specifically for that purpose. Finance should be the place where these multiple, necessary “truths” — each properly tailored to its audience — can be maintained and reconciled, including:
- GAAP (for external reporting)
- Management reporting (for tailored internal performance measurement)
- Tax reporting (non-GAAP reporting to support tax filings)
- Sustainability reporting (scope 1, 2, 3 emissions reporting for various regulatory and stakeholder communications)
- Other reporting, as needed (including secondary GAAP and statutory, regulatory reporting, etc.)
The OneStream platform is unique in the market in its ability to hold these truths (or views) in a common platform — and to keep them reconciled with one another.
Doing so takes some upfront effort and consideration, but the rewards are tremendous. Finance teams who’ve solved this puzzle serve their organizations as innovative coaching teams, the tedium of ad hoc reconciliation largely behind them.
PwC’s broad experience implementing OneStream, and our deep understanding of how to apply the power of the platform mean that we can help our clients achieve transformation in the finance function quickly, effectively and with lasting impact.
The result: PwC and OneStream can enable your team to become the business coaches you wish to be — and that your organization likely needs you to be.
Implementing OneStream to maximum benefit takes true business understanding. That’s where PwC is often different from other implementers. Rather than simply asking, “What do you want your solution to look like?” we come equipped with a substantial library of industry-specific models and templates, giving our clients the ability to quickly see how to use preferred industry practices to help drive the transformation of their finance function.
More than a single source of financial truth
Our PwC Pulse Survey shows CFOs and finance leaders are struggling to deliver the actionable insights and digital transformation their businesses need.
Finance has to master multiple major drivers — exploding data, accelerated M&A, changing regulations, new business models, unstructured data, ESG demands and expectations, radical automation and industry convergence to name just a few.
So many discussions about these issues get bogged down in debates over which data is relevant and to whom. Multiple data truths can clash, delaying necessary action and leaving the organization unable to forecast and predict. In short, everything is done in reaction mode. The finance function should deliver something that provides a reconciled vision of the business — relevant to many parts of the business and to many potential audiences. OneStream resolves this by deploying a single platform to hold your various business-specific truths, keeping them both governed and reconciled.
The platform unifies incoming data, makes it useful for analysis and predictive modeling, and sets the table for collaborative conversations.
It creates a single meeting point for the finance team’s diverse elements, including controllership and its focus on good data governance, tax reporting and analysis and its concern for regulations and reporting across borders, and financial planning and analysis (FP&A) and its appreciation for business causality and the need for effective data to drive strategic moves. Each of these functions requires truths relevant to their mission set; OneStream can serve as a single source for those multiple truths.
Collaboration among these types of team members is essential in moving from collecting and sharing data to generating analysis that shapes the strategic agenda, prepares the business with plans for achieving key targets, plays the role of data governor and translates strategy into KPIs or other business outcomes.
Consider the challenge of climate risk and decarbonization strategies. Finance is being asked to support the overall organization’s climate strategy by developing an investor-grade sustainability disclosure system, supporting the organization’s progress towards its climate commitments and developing insights for better climate-related decision-making. Finance, in other words, is no longer just focused on finance, and yet the discipline of finance is critical to the achievement of this fresh objective. OneStream and PwC are up to the challenge.
PwC and OneStream: How we work together to help create sustainable outcomes
Our collaboration with OneStream combines the leading practices of two distinct organizations.
OneStream’s platform, informed by an experienced team of engineers and designers, enables insightful analysis and functional excellence. It can also simplify the translation from GAAP and tax-focused reporting to operational and management reporting languages, integrating finance into the business as a result.
PwC’s wide-ranging experience in audit, tax and consulting gives us a superior understanding of how organizations can increase the impact of OneStream’s platform. We know what key internal and external audiences expect when implementation is complete. And we work with our clients not only to address their requirements, but also to draw attention to other ways OneStream can help them, drawing from our library of preferred practices by industry. We also bring our clients decades of experience overcoming finance process challenges, which means that when they choose OneStream with PwC, they gain the power of the platform and process excellence for financial consolidation, planning, reporting, analytics and financial data quality — all in one place.
Together, we have a demonstrated ability to help our clients assess their needs, design their approach, visualize their progress, activate and train their teams in advance, and verify the quality of the resulting work.
Substantial experience implementing performance management solutions has taught us that the most effective implementations combine three components: a start based on industry templates, several iterative design sprints to tailor the design to your needs and a highly effective “industrialization” phase to make the solution appropriately innovative. Our approach combines these three critical components.
We aim to help organizations break out of siloed and spreadsheet-based processes and move into a connected system that reflects real-world causality. We help identify constraints on connections within finance and identify opportunities to break through. That means emphasizing cross-functional planning, defining common goals and behaviors, and building capabilities that cut across functions to enable scenario planning.
Addressing key business needs
We see three primary areas where OneStream and PwC’s collaboration can help transform the finance function.
Business transformation
Bringing the business to a new level requires a coach who can set the right course, inform business strategy, decide where to invest and put the right information in front of the right people at the right time. OneStream enables such transformation and PwC can help guide our clients in putting those insights to work immediately.
ESG reporting and performance
Right now, only 16% of CFOs and finance leaders say ESG-related issues are fully integral to the financial planning and performance process, while 19% say it’s not integral and 24% say it’s integral on an “ad hoc” basis. This shows finance can and should play a bigger role. What’s more, investors expect it: Investors are 1.6 times as likely as CEOs to say that climate change will expose businesses to risks in the next 12 months and almost twice as likely to say the same for the next five years.
What’s needed — and what OneStream and PwC can deliver — is a simpler process of aligning ESG and financial reporting. By replacing spreadsheets and standalone ESG reporting software with a unified platform, we can provide insights for many stakeholders to identify, support and implement key ESG initiatives.
Process improvement for financial and nonfinancial metrics and issues
Whether it’s a matter of close and consolidations processes, aligning account reconciliations with financial reporting or consistently modeling workforce and talent plans to account for future costs, there are several dimensions to financial process improvement. These are much more achievable with a unified CPM software platform that allows organizations to assess where they stand and decide where to go next.
Case studies
- A multichannel video programming distributor
- A commercial stage biotech company
- A northeastern US utility
A multichannel video programming distributor
Following its separation from a parent company, a newly formed standalone multichannel video programming distributor needed to create a rigorous and innovative reporting process to address major reporting gaps and understand its business needs. Further, it needed to make sure its people were ready to use the new system immediately. Across four months, a diverse PwC team led the implementation process to design an effective data structure and build a configuration of 13 dimensions, three sets of allocation business rules, custom allocations for 34 P&L line items and 25 custom-built management reports. We also trained and tested the resulting system to assure its integrity and consistency.
A commercial stage biotech company
A commercial stage biotech company needed to replace manual and highly siloed spreadsheet-based processes to support the creation of an integrated and consolidated model, a common view of the business and more visibility into expense and trial balances. Over four months, PwC designed, built, trained staff to use, tested and validated, and implemented an integrated solution between S/4 HANA and OneStream that has delivered for the client aggregate financial planning data for reporting and variance analysis.
A northeastern US utility
A northeastern US utility operating a legacy reporting system was losing vendor support and needed to deploy a more modern, cloud-based technology for its financial reporting. Working closely with the company’s leaders, PwC assessed their data and process needs, built a OneStream-based platform that would meet regulator and stakeholder requirements, trained staff on its use and conducted UAT and SIT to confirm the resulting system worked for users and administrators. Not only did the client achieve its primary objectives, it also retired its on-premises servers, increased security and reduced reliance on custom rules to meet business needs.
PwC and OneStream: A powerful force for the finance function
Together, PwC and OneStream can represent a powerful force for the finance function. Our combined technologies and capabilities give finance teams the vision, experience and platform to help make them industry-leading coaches for their businesses. Because of PwC’s experience and insights, we can implement rapidly, generate support through training and testing, and help businesses use OneStream beyond their current requirements. We don’t just help you implement OneStream. We help you transform your business and create sustained outcomes through OneStream.
For more information on our solutions, please visit the OneStream Alliance page.
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