Future-Forward Insights: Key Takeaways From the 2024 OneStream Splash Conference – Transcript

June 27, 2024
Season 5, Episode 32

Peter Fugere:

It seems like the market’s really being smart about who’s real and who’s pretending out there with AI. And to know that, “Hey, we’ve got customers that are doing it” – that are using machine learning inside of OneStream was really exciting.

Announcer:

Welcome to The Hackett Group’s “Business Excelleration Podcast.” Week after week, you’ll hear from top experts on how to achieve Digital World Class performance.

Andy Moore:

Hi, everyone, welcome to the “Business Excelleration Podcast.” I am joined by our guest Peter Fugere from OneStream Software to talk about the OneStream Splash 2024 conference.

Peter Fugere:

Yeah, thanks for having me, Andy.

Andy Moore:

So Peter, why don’t you give our listeners a brief introduction here on who you are — who OneStream is.

Peter Fugere:

Yeah, Peter Fugere, chief solutions officer at OneStream Software. I think is the premier leader in CPM solutions. That mostly is helping companies do their financial reporting, consolidation, budget forecasts, reporting. I’ve been with the company just over 11 years. Happy to be part of the podcast.

Andy Moore:

Yeah, thank you very much Peter. For those of you who don’t know, my name is Andy Moore. I’ve been with The Hackett Group since February of 2024, previously at OneStream, and I’m an associate principal over at The Hackett Group. We’re going to be talking here today a bit more about Splash and what were really the key highlights of last week. So Peter, kicking things off … just Vegas, I mean, what a spot. What was your favorite part just about the conference being in Vegas to start first?

Peter Fugere:  

I think this was the second time we were in Vegas, and both times the one thing I’m really impressed with – I’m an old-timer I guess – so I get really impressed with seeing our logo everywhere and the signage. They do just a really fantastic job advertising. Then the venues are really great – I think they do it better than anybody else, so it’s really fun. That we had 3,000 people come too was kind of overwhelming. I remember our very first conference in New Orleans. We had everybody in the OneStream community show up, and there were 40 of us at a hotel, at a Sheraton in New Orleans. To go to an event like that with 3,000 people, and I think we had 12 new advances and innovations this year – CPM Express, the one that I’m working on that I’m really excited about – that was a lot of fun to see as well too.

Andy Moore:

You mentioned CPM Express, which you’re working on. There were a number of key items that were released last week at Splash. What were a couple of your favorites? And then at the end, why don’t we go through it since you work on CPM Express – why don’t we go through an explanation just so everyone out there is aware of what CPM Express is? But first, let’s start with what are your favorites that got released?

Peter Fugere:  

I think the new BUX – B-U-X – it’s basically a new way for people to access and get to OneStream through the web. It’s impressive. That’s going to be really revolutionary. The advances with AI and machine learning, and the large language model – LLM – work that we’re doing. Not just the advances – it’s not a what’s coming – it’s what’s here. That we have customers who are using it now was really exciting. I thought that was really, really interesting.

You follow the markets – there’s a lot of buzz around AI. Other times the market was excited about stuff – all the way back to like Y2K or whatever. It seems like the market’s really being smart about who’s real and who’s pretending out there with AI. And to know that, “Hey, we’ve got customers that are doing it,” – that are using machine learning inside of OneStream was really exciting.

But yeah, CPM Express… I’m really excited about. It’s been my focus for a little while here, and I’m excited to have announced that we had kicked off our first project right before Splash and how well that’s going – the team I’m working with – it’s pretty interesting.

Andy Moore:

Yeah, it’s awesome. You want to elaborate a little bit on CPM Express – the value, the goals – what should we expect?

Peter Fugere:

CPM Express is … we don’t charge for it. There’s no fee or anything like that. It’s nothing new in the sense of we didn’t write new code or do anything. What we did was packaged what we considered the best of breed of our solutions and prebuilt a good part of an application to accelerate the implementation for customers who are really concerned about time to value. They need to get an application up quickly – they want to get an application up quickly – but also have evolving complexity.

There are customers who are wondering how they’re going to get started on their CPM journey and what that first step is. So what we did was a lot of the heavy lifting around design, leveraging our experience and knowledge. I mean some of the people that worked on the team have been doing this for 20, 30 years, so they really know the best way to go forward and created an application that really accelerates the whole timeline – a bespoke application just for consolidations. This is not OneStream specific by the way.

Andy, you and I worked with HFM and other products – that can take six, eight, nine months to build out a solution, and we’ve really cut it down to weeks. So our implementation times we’re targeting are six to eight weeks. That includes consolidation, budget and forecast, and a basic account rec solution. And nothing’s thrown away – you can modify it, you can add to it, you can go to marketplace and add new solutions. It’s meant to be fully extensible and extendable. There really are no limitations. But we’ve changed the package of the products and how we implement it to really accelerate the timeline for people. I think it’s going to be game-changing for customers in that commercial market.

Andy Moore:

Yeah. And you know what? I think it’s awesome. I think with the CPM Blueprint, and I think going further with the CPM Express, I think getting the time to value, Peter, I know a lot of people are excited about that. I know a lot of customers are constantly asking, “How soon can I see the value?” They’re so excited to get over to OneStream and get into the features that are going to help their business grow, and return value on that, and help the business speak with continuity across their different functions and departments. So it’s really exciting to see all the advances coming with things like CPM Blueprint and CPM Express, as you’re saying, into OneStream from their investment.

What else of the other features were some of the ones that you really liked? Were there any others around … for me it seemed like a huge theme around user experience. We talked about the modern browser UX experience. I thought Genesis was so cool. I thought it’s just been such a long time coming, and I think it’s going to answer a lot of calls for a lot of customers in terms of value creation and ease of deployment.

Peter Fugere:

Yeah, I think so. I think there’s a lot of things that are going to be changing in the way the users interact with the system. I think there’s a lot of investment there to change that, and I think that’s really exciting. The other thing I think is a little more technical – but it’s worth talking about – is some of the things that we’re changing with the dynamic scenario type of functionality where that’s going to be really interesting. Because I think it’s going to take, when you look at analytic blend and some of the BI stuff we’ve done, and then you take that step further, and now we’re integrated with Power BI, and now we have this ability to create cubes in memory off of relational tables outside of OneStream, that’s… jeez. It’s going to even further extend that transactional reporting that we’re able to do and really increase the value. I think that’s going to be game-changing.

Andy Moore:

I think so too. That’s actually the second one on my list I’m most excited to see and get my hands on. I think the dynamic cubes – it’s going to be so important to extend the value of just where OneStream really succeeds, right? It succeeds at being able to bring in data from different parts of the organization and keep it in the right place of OneStream. Relational tables … a lot of the marketplace solutions are people planning or cash planning, right? Being able to have all my data in OneStream and be able to load it to the cube but still be able to write back to those areas with dynamic cubes. And be able to link those together dynamically on the fly for reporting use cases, oh man, it’s going to add so much value, and stand up and really mete a lot of value to the users and the companies that are searching for faster reporting and that continuity with the data they already have in OneStream. Yeah, that’s super exciting. So what was your favorite part of the week?

Peter Fugere:

My favorite time of the week? I mean, I loved seeing the keynote. I thought that was fantastic. Hearing Tom speak is always great. What did you like?

Andy Moore:

Everything Tom showed was just so… And then getting Microsoft up there too, right, and hearing from Microsoft about the Power BI Connector, with Tom, I thought it was just tremendous. I was torn between those two keynotes.

Peter Fugere:

Yeah, no, the keynotes, I agree – I really loved that.

Andy Moore:

Going around some of the week, any presentations that stuck out to you?

Peter Fugere:  

I think this was one of the first ones where, because of CPM Express, I actually didn’t get to see a lot of presentations, Andy. I was talking to so many partners and meetings. I did my own presentation on CPM Express, and so this year was tough. It’s too bad because there’s so many great presentations you can get to see, so that wasn’t fun. How about you? What did you like?

Andy Moore:

Same. This was actually the first year I got to a few but not as many as I hoped. But the ones that I circled, and the ones that a lot of our customers circled, seemed to be around everything that’s coming, right – that common theme. What’s new and what’s coming, specifically in the planning space. Things like dynamic cubes – Genesis. I know a lot of people are looking into the people planning demo pod area. So the new people planning solution that’s going to be coming out from OneStream here soon – that was super exciting.

I’d say one of the ones that I felt like resonated with maybe a CPM Express theme was actually the Masonite presentation that Matt Brown and Trevor did from there. That was really cool. They did a lot, and they went through a lot in that first phase. They didn’t use CPM Express, obviously it’s not out yet, but a lot of similar aspects of trying to get value return very quickly. A lot of people who are wondering out there what can be done in OneStream in terms of the amount of time attacking not just consult, but account recs, FP&A and budgeting, and forecasting for the corporate office of the CFO, can all be done in that timely manner and with a ton of value extraction out of it.

I thought it was pretty cool to hear some success stories around that, as well as just all the success stories that are about to occur with everything coming out in the what’s new themed presentations from the product team. Thought they did a great job doing those, and I thought it was a great job for a number reasons. One, not just because they covered everything and all the different themes, but again, the GPMs, right? You had representation from Dino – folks like Brian Wilmot, Justin McAlpine, Jeremy Guttman – right? So you had a lot of breadth in sessions, but you also had this year, too, multiple iterations of those sessions I felt like. So if people had to choose maybe in the prior years, I thought it was great that we offered multiple time slots.

Peter Fugere:  

Yeah, I thought so too.

Andy Moore:

Yeah. So in terms of the happy hours and going out, the Wednesday night, the big Splash night out, take us through that. What was your favorite experience from Wednesday night?

Peter Fugere:  

Yeah, I mean, same. It was great to see everybody dressed up. I think everyone was having a really fun time. Again, the venue was stunning. It was really fun to see. I love the costume party theme that we get to do, and that’s like OneStream folklore. I think, at this point, for me, why we have a costume party, but it’s just such a fun event. For me, being at a user conference like that, you’re seeing so many people you’ve worked with over the years – friends and colleagues of 20 plus years, all at an event like that. It’s gratifying. It’s fun. I love having new people there. I love meeting new folks that are thinking about coming and getting invested with OneStream, and seeing what we’re doing and talking to them about the product. It’s just a great time all around.

Andy Moore:

No, I thought it was very well done. Again, it was very well located, being right across from the Caesars Forum, in Paradise, I thought it was tremendous.

Peter Fugere:

Caesars was great, I thought. Caesars was a really fun place to see it, yeah.

Andy Moore:

Let’s go back to a few of the what’s new and what’s coming. We’ve talked a little bit about AI – sensible machine learning. Obviously, there’s a lot of people who are getting excited about the value that they can extract from SML and OneStream. I want to take an opportunity to talk a little bit just about where OneStream is going, and what should people continue to see in the planning and the IBP world, potentially, in the road map?

Peter Fugere:

I don’t want to talk out of school on anything specific in the road map, but I will talk a little bit about how OneStream, and it has grown out of what we think of as traditional core CPM.

When I think of CPM, and that’s going back through 20 years – all the way back to Hyperion – what was that core CPM was really planning, management, reporting and consolidations. So Pillar, Enterprise, how Hyperion defined it. But then as Hyperion grew, you saw them get into other types of analytic and dashboards, and other products, and redefine, expand what that meant.

It’s still, to its core, was consolidation, management, and planning reporting, and that’s still true. But OneStream, if I look at the company now, I actually see three pillars. That core CPM, which we’ve established a strong beachhead in that group. That’s really who we are the most of that time and do some of the most complex, sophisticated consolidation, management analysis, reporting, and you think about account reconciliations, all that in there, that piece of it. But now you’re starting to see OneStream expand out in two other groups. The first is management reporting, operational reporting, things like OKRs, and how people are running their business and view their business. But then the third, and this is probably the most exciting, is the machine learning and AI components of the space really. We have customers now that are, and they actually spoke at Splash if anyone wanted to hear about it, but have made progress with OneStream and using machine learning to do better forecasts and better reporting.

So if I look at the company, I look at those three things, and the best way to explain it is think about how you’re driving a car. With the core CPM, even your budget and forecast, because of the timing of it, by the time you’re done with the budget and forecast, it might be three or four weeks old, realistically. So with the core CPM, you’re always looking in the past. What were our revenue numbers? What did we think we were going to do for a budget? Or what were we planning for a forecast for the year? You’re looking back.

With the OKRs, what you’re seeing is the business insight. What you’re seeing is how am I performing now? What are the measures I look at to see how my business is moving, and directionally, where it’s going? With machine learning, you’re looking down the road. You’re looking through the windshield and looking down the road at what’s coming, and really anticipating. Not just with OneStream, but across the industry with machine learning, what you’re seeing is people getting significant gains in forecast and budget accuracy, using machine learning to put that data together. It’s really impressive.

If you think about if your budget’s just 5%, or 10%, or 15% more accurate, how better are you allocating resources? How better are you applying cash? How better are you planning head count? All those things, I think, really set a business up for success. And the combination of those, across those three pillars, what we’re doing as a company, I think we’re going to give people tools to just significantly transform how they do their business. That’s really interesting to me, and I’m excited to see how it goes.

Andy Moore:

Yeah, no, I mean, you bring up an interesting point, and it really lends itself nicely to the OneStream journey and the value that’s being created for customers. You think about having solutions like account rec, cash planning, people planning alone representing a lot of people’s budgets and forecasts in that section of the P&L. So being able to take all that data, bring it into OneStream, and then being able to infuse it with something like SML and AI, and be able to get that return and be able to forecast better, I think it’s everywhere where people are moving, and you have to be moving and thinking about how you can get onto something like that.

Before AI, we were all thinking like, “Oh boy, is budgeting at a world where it’s over?” For lack of a way of saying it, is the budget just going to be a snapshot of the forecast today versus actually traditionally going through a zero-based budget? I think that companies that are looking forward to transform digitally how they work with their data and the technologies they’re working with. I think it’s going to be paramount for its success and value going forward.

I think you nailed it in terms of SML right there and AI. I think it’s super exciting, and I think it lends itself nicely, just because having all the data right there in OneStream, right? I talked a little bit about some of those ancillary solutions – edge solutions like cash planning, people planning – being able to round those out and do those inside of OneStream. And bring them into the cube, and be able to take all that cube-level data, being able to share it with SML, and then be able to return back efficiencies and value from AI. I think is going to be tremendous, and every company needs to be thinking about how they can infuse their forecasting process with that. So it’ll be exciting to see how that transpires.

All right, Peter, last thing here. Anything you want to leave the users in terms of what you’re working on and what we can expect next?

Peter Fugere:  

Yeah, I mean, Andy, I’ve been working a lot on CPM Express, and I’m really excited about that. I think it’s going to give our customers – with a high scrutiny of time to value they need to get an application up quickly – the opportunity to implement and start their CPM journey at a good place, and without struggling and trying to figure out, “There’s so many options. OneStream gives us so much stuff. How do I get started?” CPM Express is a great place to get started. We use prebuilt templates and solutions to accelerate the implementation for people, so it’s an exciting thing.

Announcer:     

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