The Carlyle team evaluated Oracle’s EPM Cloud and other alternatives and agreed that an investment in OneStream made the most sense, if the platform was used to replace the existing financial and HR planning systems, as well as HFM for financial consolidation and reporting, and other point solutions such as account reconciliations in the future.
The Carlyle team projected that an investment in OneStream would yield the strongest ROI (36% over 5yrs) when compared to an all-Oracle investment. Key drivers of savings/cost avoidance in the business case included avoidance of costly upgrades, reduced IT/admin staffing, and reduced software maintenance costs.
Streamlining Financial Consolidation and Reporting
With OneStream, Carlyle implemented a direct connect to their
PeopleSoft GL and automated the loading Excel-based templates that were done manually before. They now perform matching of intercompany GL balances in transactional currencies to isolate true FX impact. They also use Guided Workflow for loading non-GAAP data, and have segment reporting aligned with FP&A.
Improving Visibility in Budgeting and Forecasting
With OneStream, Carlyle leverages the direct connect with PeopleSoft to load project-level actuals, and is now able to budget and reforecast at both the legal entity and project level. In addition to automating reporting and segment allocations, the company has improved visibility and traceability into allocations and budget version changes, with realtime budget impact viewing capabilities. And they have implemented
decentralized, self-service reporting and analysis for business users that enables them to see the immediate impact of changes on plans and reports, driving a new level of efficiency and control at the business user level.
Extending the Investment with People Planning
Leveraging the People Planning solution from the OneStream XF MarketPlace, Carlyle now has detailed modeling capabilities for new positions, promotions, transfers, and other adjustments. The solution includes compensation and benefit drivers by geography supporting their global employee base. And, changes to the workforce plan can be pushed into their Financial cube in a matter of minutes to so that budget owners can see the impact in real-time.
Simplification of Technical Landscape
Carlyle was able to simplify their IT landscape and reduce costs
compared to their previous Hyperion system. OneStream was easier to install, taking 90 minutes via WebEx, and VMs used for OneStream were less than half that of Hyperion. System monitoring is much easier and Carlyle has received immediate responses to support tickets with rapid issue resolution
System and Process Efficiency Gains with OneStream
The implementation of OneStream has resulted in significant process improvements for Carlyle. Consolidating a full year of GAAP actuals was reduced from 6-8 hours to 3-4 hours while including significantly more detail than was previously loaded in Hyperion (e.g., project-level details). Submitting revenue and expense budget updates and reviewing the impact was reduced from 1 week to 5-10 minutes. Updating allocation metrics and reviewing the impact was reduced from 1 week to 30-60 minutes and is now run four times daily. And updating headcount assumptions and reviewing the impact was reduced from 1 week to 20 minutes
Future Plans
Carlyle plans to extend their use of OneStream with XF MarketPlace solutions for Account Reconciliations and Close Management. Other areas under consideration include decentralizing their use of People Planning, implementing Cash Forecasting for Treasury, financial reporting for fund accounting, and advanced scenario modeling for FP&A and key budget/forecast stakeholders.