Performance management · OneStream
OneStream, built on the ledger underneath it.
When the numbers in the performance management system are wrong, the cause is usually upstream. We find it.
A consolidation platform inherits every weakness in the systems feeding it. Buy one on top of an unreconciled source landscape and you get the same wrong numbers, faster and with more authority behind them.
This page explains what OneStream does, what an implementation actually takes, what it costs and when we would tell you not to buy it. It is written for a group choosing a platform for the first time, not for people who already run one.
Where this sits
Accounting & ERP
The numbers begin in systems finance may not fully control.
Integration & reconciliation
The data arrives but cannot be trusted or tied back.
Application engineering
The application needs logic beyond configuration.
OneStream & Anaplan
Finance needs a governed performance management model.
Support & optimisation
It works, but ownership and change are becoming fragile.
OneStream is stage four. Most of the problems blamed on it originate at stages one and two, which is why we look at those before recommending anything at all.
Start here
Does the problem sound like yours?
Most finance teams do not start by shopping for a platform. They start by noticing that the same week hurts every month.
The close takes longer than it should
Ten working days or more to a reported group number, and most of it spent chasing, reconciling and re-keying rather than reviewing.
The consolidation lives in a spreadsheet
Currency translation, intercompany elimination and minority interest sit in a workbook that one person maintains and nobody else can audit.
Every entity reports differently
Different ledgers, different charts of accounts, different definitions of the same line, mapped by hand each period.
The reported figure will not tie back
A number in the group pack cannot be traced to a source balance without someone rebuilding the working, and the difference is explained rather than found.
Actuals and forecast disagree
The budget model and the reported result are built in separate places, so variance analysis starts with an argument about which number is right.
Growth has outrun the process
An acquisition, a new region or a restructure is coming, and the honest answer is that the current process will not absorb it.
Three or four of those describe a process problem worth fixing. They do not automatically describe a platform purchase, and the fourth one in particular often turns out to be a source system problem wearing a reporting costume. Working out which you have is the first thing we do together.
In plain English
What OneStream actually is.
OneStream is a single application that collects financial data from your accounting systems, converts it into one common structure, performs the group consolidation, and then holds your planning, forecasting and reporting on top of the same numbers.
The important word is single. In most finance functions those jobs are spread across a consolidation tool, a planning tool, a reporting layer and a large amount of Excel, each with its own copy of the data. OneStream keeps one set of records and one set of rules, so a figure in the board pack, a figure in the forecast and a figure in the statutory accounts come from the same place.
It does not replace your ledger. Your entities carry on posting transactions in Sage, SAP, Dynamics, NetSuite or whatever they run today. OneStream takes a feed from those systems and works with the balances, not the journals.
What you are buying, put plainly, is the removal of the manual layer between the ledger and the reported number, and a record of how the reported number was produced. What you are not buying is a fix for what the ledger sends it.
- Sits
- Above your transactional systems, taking a scheduled feed from each of them.
- Replaces
- The spreadsheet consolidation, the mapping workbooks and usually a separate planning tool.
- Does not replace
- Your ERP, your general ledger, your payroll or your billing system.
- Handles
- Currency translation, intercompany elimination, ownership and consolidation journals as configured rules rather than manual steps.
- Suits
- Groups of roughly five to twenty-five legal entities, with more than one currency or ledger.
- Owned by
- Finance, not IT. That is the point of it and also the main condition for it working.
Worth saying out loud
When we would tell you not to buy it.
A platform of this kind is a serious commitment of money and of finance team attention. There are situations where we would say so and walk away, and we would rather say it now than in month three of an implementation.
- You have a small number of entities in one currency on one ledger. A tidier chart of accounts and a better reporting pack will get you most of the benefit for a fraction of the cost.
- The underlying data is the problem. If entities post inconsistently and nobody owns the chart of accounts, a consolidation platform will consolidate the inconsistency faster. That is the most common version of this conversation and it is usually cheaper to fix.
- Nobody in finance has capacity to own it. These platforms belong to finance. If no one can give the project real time during the build, it will land half configured and be blamed on the software.
- You are buying it to replace people rather than to replace manual work. The headcount case rarely survives contact with the first close, and the project needs those people to succeed.
- A restructure, disposal or system replacement is already scheduled. Build after the structure settles, not across it.
We are not a OneStream reseller and we do not take a margin on licences, so nothing about our income changes if the answer is no. That is the whole reason this section can exist.
Who delivers it
You are buying a named practitioner, not a brochure.
Most people advising you on a finance platform are selling you one. Harp & Crown is practitioner-led: the work is delivered by a practitioner who has owned these systems from inside a finance function rather than only across a delivery contract. Run the close. Delivered the upgrades. Rebuilt the integrations. Lived with the decisions afterwards.
That matters for a specific reason. Corporate performance management projects rarely fail on the technology. They fail when nobody in the room has defended a forecast, answered an audit query or been the person who cannot go home until the group ties.
The practice is small and says so. Where an engagement needs more hands than one person has, it draws on a network of specialists rather than a standing bench. If you ask how many consultants we have, you will get the true number.
The record behind that claim
- Six years and more of OneStream delivery, across FTSE100, private equity portfolio and multinational group environments
- Close time reduced by 30 percent for a FTSE100 client
- Platform upgrade from version 7.4.2 to version 9, with sandbox validation and regression testing, completed without disrupting a close cycle
- Cloud-to-cloud migration including database transfer, security reconfiguration and re-pointing of ERP integrations
- Consolidation and budgeting cube design across 50 and more legal entities
- A SOX-compliant change management module, built and in production
- Full-cycle implementation for a group with 3,500 and more cost centres and 7,000 and more accounts, integrated with SAP, Kerridge and a group data lake
- Integration experience across SAP, Kerridge, Microsoft Dynamics 365, NetSuite and Redshift, with SQL and VB.Net engineering behind it
Client names withheld pending consent. Named references are available on request at proposal stage.
What it takes
A realistic shape for a first implementation.
Durations below assume a group of roughly five to twenty-five legal entities, with finance able to commit review time each week. Larger structures and heavier integration work extend the build, and we will say so before you sign anything.
Finance Systems Diagnostic
We review your close, your accounting structure, your source systems, your integration and reconciliation risk, and who owns what. You receive a current state assessment, a risk register, a platform suitability view and an indicative scope with a commercial range. If the conclusion is that you should not proceed, you get that in writing, and the assessment is still yours to keep.
Design
Requirements, finance design, target reporting model, application architecture, control requirements and the delivery plan. Nothing is built until this is signed off, because a design decision reversed in build costs several times what it costs on paper.
Core build and integration
Dimensions, cubes, consolidation logic, security and workflow, alongside the interfaces, mappings, transformation rules and validations that carry your source data in. Reconciliation back to source is built as part of this phase rather than bolted on at testing.
Testing and parallel run
One or two close cycles run in both places, with differences investigated and explained rather than smoothed over. You do not switch off the old process until the new one has produced a number you are prepared to sign.
Planning and forecasting
Budget models, driver based forecasting and scenario analysis built on the same data and hierarchies as the actuals, so variance reporting stops being a reconciliation exercise. Often a separate phase, and sometimes a separate year.
Handover and enablement
Administrator training, documented configuration and a supported transition period in which your team runs the close and we sit behind them. Ongoing support is available. It is never a condition of the work.
Anyone promising a group consolidation live in six weeks is either describing a very simple structure or is not describing the whole job. The number that matters is not the go-live date. It is the date your team stops needing us.
Who does what
The work is shared, and it is better to know that now.
Implementations fail more often on unclear ownership than on technical difficulty. This is the split we work to, and we put it in the scope document.
Design, build and prove
- Application, dimension and cube design built to survive an acquisition or a restructure
- Integration from your source systems, with transformation, validation and reconciliation back to source
- Consolidation logic: translation, elimination, ownership and journals
- Business rules and extensions in VB.Net where standard configuration runs out
- Workflow, security and change control appropriate to your audit requirements
- Documentation, administrator training and knowledge transfer
Decide, review and own
- Name a project owner in finance with real time available, not a nominal sponsor
- Confirm the group chart of accounts and the definitions behind each reported line
- Provide access to source systems and to the people who understand them
- Review and sign off each design decision as it is made, not at the end
- Test with your own numbers, because you are the only ones who know when a result looks wrong
- Own the application afterwards, with our support if you want it
What it costs
Three separate costs, often quoted as one.
Implementation price depends on entity count, source system landscape, data quality, control requirements and timeline, so a number published without a scope behind it would be misleading. What we can do is set out what you are paying for, so you can read any quotation, ours included, and see what is in it.
The licence
An annual subscription paid to OneStream, not to us. It scales with the size of your group and the modules you use. We do not resell it and we take no margin on it.
The implementation
The one-off build, quoted as fixed fee phases against agreed acceptance criteria. Driven by the number of entities, the number and condition of your source systems, and how much of the logic is genuinely bespoke.
Running it afterwards
Internal ownership time, periodic upgrades and whatever support you choose to retain. Budget for this from the start. It is the cost most often left out of a business case and the one that decides whether the platform stays useful.
Finance Systems Diagnostic, from £5,000
The one price we do publish, because it is the one engagement whose scope does not depend on what we find. It is paid work with standalone value, and it is yours whether or not you take it further. Where it leads to a delivery engagement, part or all of the fee is credited against that work, on terms set out in the proposal.
Still worrying about
Questions finance directors ask us.
Does OneStream replace our ERP?
No. It sits above your transactional systems and takes a feed from them. Your entities carry on posting in their existing ledgers. OneStream works with the resulting balances, applies the group logic and produces the consolidated and reported view.
How long before we can actually close in it?
For a first implementation of the shape described above, expect a working group close roughly three to four months into the build, following design. You then run in parallel for a cycle or two before relying on it.
That range assumes finance is available for design review each week. Where source data needs remediation first, the honest answer is longer, and we will tell you that during the diagnostic rather than after the contract.
How big is your firm?
Small, and deliberately so. Harp & Crown is a practitioner-led practice: the work is delivered by a practitioner, drawing on a network of specialists where an engagement needs more capacity than one person has. There is no standing bench and we do not imply one.
That has a real consequence you should weigh. We limit how much of our capacity any single client can take, we will not accept a delivery date we cannot staff, and for a very large programme the right answer may be a larger firm. We will say so.
Are you a OneStream partner?
Not at present. Partner status requires firm-level references that a young practice has to earn first, and we would rather tell you that than let a badge on a website do the talking. What stands behind the work is the delivery record set out above, which is personal and verifiable.
One practical effect is worth knowing: we do not resell licences and take no margin on them, so we have no financial reason to recommend one platform over another, or to recommend buying at all.
Do we need to hire a full-time administrator?
A mid-sized group usually does not. What it does need is someone who owns the application, most often an existing finance systems or FP&A person with part of their week protected for it. The failure mode is not too little resource. It is nobody being accountable for the platform at all.
What happens to the work if we stop using you?
You own it. The configuration, the business rules, the documentation and the training material are yours, built inside your own tenant. Ongoing support is offered and never assumed, and we would rather your team reached the point of not needing us.
Our data is a mess. Should we clean it up first?
Partly. The implementation itself forces a level of definition and discipline that is difficult to achieve on its own, so waiting for perfect data means waiting forever. But if entities post inconsistently and no one owns the chart of accounts, that has to be addressed alongside the build rather than deferred to it.
This is exactly what the diagnostic is for, and it is why we sell it as a separate piece of work rather than giving it away as presales.
Why not Anaplan, or one of the other platforms?
Sometimes that is the better answer, particularly where the pressing need is planning and modelling rather than statutory consolidation. We deliver on both platforms and hold Anaplan Model Builder certification, so the comparison we give you is not a sales position. Ask for it directly and we will set out where each one is genuinely stronger.
Start with the diagnosis, not the platform.
A structured review of your close, your sources and your reconciliation risk, and an honest view of whether OneStream is the right answer at all. From £5,000, and the output is yours whether or not you go further.