For a long time, the finance teams at Fairstone Financial worked in a situation familiar to many companies: multiple systems, numerous Excel files and many hours spent checking that the figures were correct.
For this Canadian bank, which offers loans, mortgages and automotive financing, among other services, growth and acquisitions had gradually increased the complexity of the finance environment. Two ERPs had to be fed and reconciled, while different planning solutions were also in use. An organisation that met the needs of each stage, but ultimately created an environment that was difficult to manage.
Kamil Wolski, Senior Manager of Financial Systems at Fairstone Financial, describes this period as a genuine tangle of systems. At the time, teams spent a large part of their time retrieving data, building spreadsheets, preparing reports and carrying out reconciliations in Excel.
The problem was not only technological. Behind these repetitive tasks lay a more important question: how much time did finance teams really have left to analyse results and help the business make decisions?
Moving Away from Dependence on Excel Files
As Fairstone Financial integrated new activities and systems, complexity increased. A former acquisition used Anaplan, while Fairstone also relied on Adaptive Insights for certain planning needs.
Financial data was therefore spread across several environments. Teams regularly had to reconcile information, check figures and rebuild certain reports.
In this context, Excel remained a central tool. It made it possible to perform many operations, but at the cost of significant manual effort.
Fairstone then sought a different approach: bringing more financial processes together within a single platform.
OneStream as a Single Source of Truth
It was as part of this effort that the company selected OneStream.
The objective was to have a platform capable of bringing several financial functions together in one environment: consolidation, planning, reporting, transaction matching, reconciliations and journal entry management.
This approach was intended to reduce the handling required between different systems and, above all, create a common source for financial data.
Implementation began with several key functionalities. Fairstone Financial notably deployed consolidation, transaction matching, reconciliations and the Journal Entry Manager.
But the transformation did not stop with the implementation of these functionalities.
Reporting That Changes Teams’ Day-to-Day Work
One of the most tangible changes concerns reporting.
Teams were able to build reports in OneStream to replace some of the Excel files previously used. Information that previously required several preparation steps can now be generated directly from the platform.
For finance teams, the change is primarily about time and confidence.
Instead of spending part of their day checking spreadsheets, reconciling data and looking for potential differences between several sources, they can focus more on variances and their interpretation.
In other words, the work is gradually shifting from validating figures to analysing figures.
This is precisely the type of evolution sought by finance leaders: having sufficiently reliable data to devote more time to understanding what is happening in the business and explaining the results to executives.
A Transformation That Continues with AI
For Fairstone Financial, however, the story does not end with consolidation and reporting.
The company is now looking at the artificial intelligence capabilities offered by OneStream, particularly through its agents dedicated to financial processes.
Forecasting is one of the areas identified as particularly interesting. The idea is not only to accelerate certain forecasting steps, but also to help teams analyse and explain the variations observed in the results.
This evolution follows a relatively straightforward logic: after seeking to bring data together and automate repetitive tasks, finance teams can now look to use AI to accelerate analysis and decision preparation.
From Complexity to More Analytical Finance
Ultimately, Fairstone Financial’s experience illustrates a transformation that goes beyond simply replacing Excel.
The starting point was an environment comprising multiple ERPs, different planning solutions and numerous manual processes. The arrival of OneStream enabled the company to bring several financial functions together within a single platform and reduce some of the work devoted to reconciliations and reporting.
The next step now focuses on automation and artificial intelligence.
Fairstone’s journey thus shows how an EPM project can gradually change the day-to-day work of a finance team: less time spent searching for, checking and reconciling data, and more time available to analyse results, explain variances and support business decisions.
This evolution is a reminder that, behind the technology, the challenge of financial transformation remains above all a human one: enabling teams to devote more time to the tasks that genuinely add value to business management.
Source: Onestream
