WESCO’s Finance team understood that finance’s role was evolving, and they needed to leverage technology to operate more efficiently and cost-effectively. With over 9,300 employees, serving over 70,000 customers, and their on-premise servers at their end-of-life, the team started to explore their options. Mainly, WESCO needed:

• A unified platform, flexible enough to handle WESCO’s unique set of requirements

• A solution that is configurable and can be continuously improved on utilizing pre-built solutions that minimize development time

• A solution that is easy to manage and provides readily available data that tracks user and administrator actions

WESCO was seeking a solution that could segment dimensions and create views of data which supported various functional and operating structures.  In addition, three separate solutions (each with varying dimensions and users) were required to be designed in a way which minimized the maintenance while keeping consistency between the shared dimensions. For example: 300+ users needed access to the P&L, Balance Sheet & Metrics Solution, whereas 30+ users needed access to the Daily Sales Solution and a different set of users needed access to the Profitability by Market and Products Solution. Having the capability to separate the dimensions was crucial for WESCO to ensure classified information was safeguarded.

Moreover, WESCO defines their sales based on shipment type (direct ship, stock, and special-order sales), and uses complex calculations when analyzing their business results for internal and external reporting.  All these requirements meant their solution had to allow them to segment their analysis, analyze the business mix, and determine if the shipment type mix impacted the margin results.

WESCO has been an Archetype client since 2014 and turned to Archetype for guidance in analyzing potential solutions.  After due diligence, WESCO ultimately chose OneStream.

After completing requirements gathering sessions, Archetype and WESCO designed three different solutions within one OneStream application. WESCO started with the daily revenue reporting that is used to create daily revenue reporting by entity, workday, version, datatype, shipment type for sales, and margin for various periods. WESCO has acquired 40+ acquisitions throughout the years and did not have full daily access to each business’s data, making it time-consuming to generate consolidated daily revenue results. OneStream provided WESCO the ability to upload all data sources into one centralized location whose entity structure is shared by other solutions. The daily revenue reporting is now provided to the executive team and business leaders on a daily basis, bringing together global data into one location! Now WESCO has more transparency and a much easier task analyzing and reporting daily results.

Next, Archetype streamlined WESCO’s monthly forecasting process by utilizing a combination of OneStream’s downloadable Market Place solutions. Archetype created a centralized forecasting dashboard, that included these features:

• Users now have the ability to view their tasks, due dates, status, reviewers in one area

• Comments can be entered to explain variances

• End-user instructions are included on the dashboard

• Various levels of input schedules were created to meet the diverse business needs

  • Archetype utilized row sharing in cube views which gives the ability of multiple views of rows and accounts on one form

  • Various levels of input schedules were created to meet the diverse business needs

  • Planners have the ability to choose what accounts they forecast (Sales schedule for sales accounts, Cost schedule for cost accounts, Full schedule for all accounts, Etc.)

• Row Overrides were used to give planners the ability of entering into base level members although parent level account names are displayed in rows

• Data calculations are run from the dashboard

• Various reporting including variance reporting was created

  • Users have the ability to export data into excel or print to PDF

Finally, administrations can now track various interactions within the OneStream solution. This includes log in and log out, cube views or dashboards that were launched, what data has been modified, when it was modified and who modified it. Finance is now enabled to see all metadata modifications, allowing them to easily find and correct errors.

By creating a single source of truth in OneStream, Archetype helped WESCO modernize their processes. WESCO transitioned three existing Hyperion applications into OneStream’s solution and enhanced several processes, such as:

• Centralized Dashboards – results in efficiency and ability to view different data sets quickly

• Standardized Reporting – application reports lead to increased consistent reporting accuracy (versus time-consuming siloed Excel-based reports or scrambling to produce ad-hoc requests)

• Upgraded Forecast Process – resulted in users having the ability to complete the forecast process from start (review responsibilities, submit forecast) to finish (review forecast, analyze variances, utilize reporting to conduct business reviews) in one central location

• Improved Traceability – history of data modifications and application modifications can be viewed

• Drill-down Functionality – leads to a granular ad-hoc detail view of data

• Streamlining Upgrades – Software upgrades in hours resulting in decreased cost and system downtime