Football season is right around the corner. You can smell the pizza and wings from here. And with pigskin on the horizon, it seems like everyone is building fantasy football teams in hopes of winning their league’s title.

I hear, and yes, participate in the chatter about which QB will last the full season: Rodgers, Brady, Watson, Wentz, Luck, Ryan; the list goes on. There’s the water cooler talk on how experts are overhyping that running back; I’m told he’s an RB3 at best—at least that’s what I tell others in hopes I can nab Barkley. And, of course, there’s always post-draft talk. I mean who takes a kicker in the 5thround?!?

Believe it or not, these talks remind me of the challenges that my company and my clients face. What skills do we need for the open positions? How can we make “sure thing” decisions in business? How can we get sales over the [goal] line?

Running the ball down the field is the same as advancing ideas, proposals, and products. The goal is the same: more ROI, more points, you just need the right team combination.

OneStream Software makes your company better, just like those fantasy football players make your team better. Here are a few examples of how OneStream enables your company to move faster, improve decision making, reduce costs and let your A-players thrive. 

THE QB: IMPROVED AGILITY AND EFFICIENCY

Quarterbacks are maestros on the football field. They integrate the talents of each offensive player to orchestrate and control the game. It’s their intellect that moves the ball down the field. They (with the help of the coaching staff) plan the plays and adjust accordingly by the information they see on the field. If the other team is showing a blitz, they’ll change the play immediately and adjust. This is Peyton Manning’s famous “Omaha!” from the line of scrimmage.

Most companies’ planning and budgeting teams remain separate from those in accounting working on financial consolidation and reporting. It’s as if the running backs are never on the field with the quarterbacks. The separation of the data makes it hard to integrate and have everyone work in parallel towards success.

With OneStream, everything is in one place and you can adapt, just like a quarterback, as your business changes. If you’re at month-end and need to quickly turn around a forecast based on some material changes, OneStream allows you to be agile and efficient and streamline the process.

THE RUNNING BACK: FASTER CLOSE 

Running backs are known for their incredible footwork. A superb running back is agile, quick, and powerful – truly efficient with every stride. The way they dart-and-dash in between lineman and then midstride, cut back to find the end zone is remarkable. When a running back gets a step on a defender, most defenders know there’s probably no way they can catch him.

In the same way, OneStream simplifies financial consolidation and reporting allowing companies to have a faster close. The system takes off and quickly can identify errors and increase transparency for more expedient resolutions.

THE WIDE RECEIVER: DRIVER-BASED PLANNING PROCESS

Wide receivers not only need to understand the plays and routes they need to run, but they also must catch the ball when the QB throws their way. Coaches design routes (whether it is a square-in, post, in-motion slant or one of the many others) to ensure the WR gets the ball and can make a play for the end zone.

It’s like a driver-based planning process. Companies create intricate models for compensation planning, revenue planning, department expense planning, etc., in hopes they lead to the final submission of a forecast or plan. 

OneStream helps companies flip the ratio of how time is spent. Using a driver-based approach, it allows organizations to adjust numbers more quickly when the conditions change. You can tweak a few numbers in the plan to see the impact of your changes. Leveraging a driver-based process, Finance staff can spend 80% of their time analyzing numbers and working as a business partner, 20% of their time adjusting the drivers and reviewing the results. We want the WR adding value and gaining yards, not catching the ball and getting tackled.

When a quarterback throws a completion for 20 yards, it’s a good play. But the wide receiver can gain an extra 25 yards after the completion, it’s an excellent play. You want your team spending 20% gathering data and 80% doing something more with those numbers. That’s how you advance your organization’s strategy.

The more often you run a play and practice it, the more successful it will be. OneStream gives you the capability to repeat your processes allowing you to have more consistency and cohesion in your data. 

THE TIGHT END: EXTENSIBLE DIMENSIONALITY® 

Think about a Tight End’s role on a football team. In some plays, he acts as an extra blocker. Others, he acts as an extra receiver, another target for the quarterback. Being tall and powerful, it’s up to the tight end to use his skills as necessary for each play.

But what if NFL coaches couldn’t use Tight Ends in this way? What if the 53-man roster consisted of players who could only do one thing? If tight ends couldn’t pitch in and help their teammates on the line or if a backup QB can’t hold the ball for a kicker (doing more than “one thing”), the NFL budget would balloon out of control.

That’s what other EPM and CPM vendors typically do. They claim they have an “integrated” solution or a “unified” product but often these are separate technologies requiring data movement or different applications to accommodate the level of detail differences needed for actuals vs. plan. This is time-consuming, costly, and error-prone.  Not leveraging similar data and dimensionality for actuals and plan is like keeping Gronk on the sideline during the game – you can’t access him at all.

OneStream's Extensible Dimensionality allows any business unit to produce statutory consolidations and management reporting at different levels of detail and these same business units can budget and plan at relevant levels of detail in the same application without affecting the sanctity of actual consolidations. Everything is in the same technology and that significantly cuts down on the time to generate reports. With many complexities eliminated, it’s easier to learn, use and maintain. Once a player knows the system, they are easier to coach and utilize as necessary. 

THE KICKER: ACCOUNT RECONCILIATION 

Kickers are either the heroes of the game or the blamed villain. There’s hardly an in-between. And yet, every practice they are out there, working hard and refining their craft. They repeat kick after kick after kick.

Most kickers are usually unsung heroes and rarely do they get the recognition they deserve. If they miss a kick, fans may chatter; if they are unlucky enough to miss a game-winning kick, forget it. There’s a flip side of course. Kicker Adam Vinatieri has made so many big field goals in crunch time, the rest of us has lost count.

Companies view Account Reconciliation with a similar mindset. It’s doing due diligence, working hard, and repetition. OneStream allows you, in one system, to drill down in reconciliation and gives you a direct link from reported to reconciled balances. With everything in one system, organizations have full visibility into their financial world. You have time to find information about statuses and assurance that everything is aligned and accurate.

When organization find a major variance, it can be a winning play—just like a game-winning field goal.

THE FLEX POSITION: MARKETPLACE

It’s draft day and you have a flex position in your league. Do they allow Tight Ends? Should I pick a WR or an RB? It all comes down to quality picks and the appropriate pick in the appropriate round. When you have those 3 stacked RBs or amazing 3-4 WRs, don’t you just smile when you set your lineup in a flex league. You did a good job on draft day and have the assets to utilize and ultimately add value for your team.

This type of flex position can do it all. And that precisely is what OneStream’s MarketPlace does. You’ve heard the phrase, “there’s an app for that”; well, with OneStream, there’s a solution for that. Just like a flex player can extend the value of a team, with the MarketPlace, companies can extend the value of OneStream and meet the changing needs of finance. With over 40 solutions available for download, the MarketPlace allows domain experts to deliver new solutions quickly and easily.

DEF: IMPROVEMENT OF CONTROLS 

If a quarterback leads the offensive side of the ball, it’s the middle linebacker who is often the captain of the defense. They call the defensive plays, tweak their teammates’ positions, and set the example of how to play the game. Defensive players often trust their instincts and “predict” where the ball is going to go.

In OneStream, improvement of controls for the embedded data allows companies to move intuitively throughout various processes including data collection, integration, and the reporting process. Like a fine-tuned defense, OneStream can ensure that your company has a strong defense and can track data and enjoy 100% visibility of changes, including map and rule changes, data, and metadata.

IN SUMMARY

To be successful, organizations need to have the right players in one, unified place working towards the same goal. The unification of OneStream allows all employees to access the data they need to make the business successful and beat the competition.