Kepion Planning vs. OneStream

Well-suited: Migrating from planning in Excel, scenarios when multiple users are involved in the planning process, scenarios where there is a commitment to improve the planning process and accuracy.

Less appropriate: Where users are looking for a lower-overhead, more visual, less-connected solution.

OneStream is best suited for medium to large companies that find themselves doing a wide variety of manual processes during their financial close cycle will get the most benefit. That does mean a lot of change so there has to be very intentional communication around change management in order to get the buy in that is necessary for success.

Incentivized

• Customizable platform: Enables its users to handle just about any kind of budgeting scenarios tailored to each customer needs, whether based on drivers, allocations integrations with other systems (such as S&OP processes).
• Easy integration with other systems: As data is stored within an MS SQL database it is very easy to integrate other applications with it for reporting, such as Tableau or PowerBI or from other downline systems such as S&OP.
• Real-time: Enables the possibility to calculate bottom line results for all applications immediately allowing the possibility to calculate easily what-if scenarios.
• Not stuck: within a single way of budgeting. as part of the beyond budgeting movement, companies have been creating a more driver-based high-level forecasting which is often a problem with specific budgeting systems that are locked within the P&L statement. Here you can make it as simple or as complicated as needed.

• Consolidation engine is powerful, we have around 500 entities translating from multiple source currencies into a common currency at good speed.
• We leverage the Flash and Quarterly forecast providing users with pre seeded data so they only need to make tweaks rather then filling in a lot of manual forms.
• We use Transaction matching for processing a lot of intercompany matching invoices from the ERP systems which helps end users a lot. Data is fed in from source ERPS and TXM generates the auto matches based on criteria provided.
• We have a custom Tax module which we use to pull in tax entries from the consolidation side and this gives the Tax teams starting position for their tax calculations and enables them to also do a quarterly forecast estimate.
• OneStream has great dashboarding capabilities for a whole range of use cases from charts and graphs, to drill-back data to running even steps that users can execute without having access to the source code/rules in the background!

• Interface: The interface is built in Silverlight, so is a little clunky and inflexible. Kepion are, however, planning to launch a HTML5 version in March 2018, which will greatly enhance the product.
• Visualisation: We usually use Kepion for data entry and deep analysis, and then leverage tools like Power BI or Tableau to visualise data or create aggregated management reports.

• Provide some more prebuilt dashboards that serve as reference examples for specific topics, to allow users to gain an idea of all that is possible
• Provide some clear cut explanations to explain some of the standard concepts, to allow companies that start their implementation to gain a quick understanding of how things work

Currently we are using OneStream with people 80 - 100 to load the PL, BS , Forecast budget and People Planning. OneStream give us more visibility on trend and way forward thinking. Thanks to OneStream for the tool which helps the business in growing way. Thinking of innovation OneStream is right path.

Incentivized

Overall usability as an end-user is very easy. There are more people in the system getting information now than the prior platform used. People are gathering their information quicker as well. From an administrator standpoint, there are fewer glitches and issues than the prior platform. This is very good.

Incentivized

OneStream support is focused on the infrastructure. Which means mainly when there issues with accessing to the system, they will be able to help. When the question is to much leaning towards functional it really becomes billable. The other issue is that the response time is not optimal. There is a lot of pingpong of messages and the time between the message can sometimes be long. Sometimes this result into a simple ticket to be taking days before it is closed.

Incentivized

onestream offers a range of training. I have attended a number of trainings. During the trainings a vast amount of information is discussed. The trainings also include exercises. The speed of the training is pretty high. When reviewing the training material afterwards, I found that the material is not complete as reference as it relies also very much on the verbal explanation and elaboration.

Incentivized

We are a Microsoft gold analytics partner. As such, we were looking for a Microsoft friendly solution which would fit into our analytics stack with Tableau on top. Kepion is a lightweight easy to use solution which integrates perfectly with the Microsoft framework. It is much easier to use and intuitive than the heavy Cognos and SAP/BO systems. However, if my existing infrastructure is Cognos, SAP or Oracle I would consider using that technology. For Microsoft SQL companies this is a great choice.

OneStream is much more robust, has functionality around creating financial statements in Common Currency which other systems we used could not handle. OneStream has a really good structure around it. We believe it's a much better fit for a Global company of our size. We're just scratching a surface of what the system capabilities are.

Incentivized

• Customers have moved from multiple EPM systems as well as multiple EPM applications to OneStream.
• Their ROI has been quite high as lesser admins are required, no need to move data back & forth, no need for an additional dashboarding / BI tool, once a user is on OneStream can leverage it for more than 50+ use cases at no additional license cost.
• Automation, direct integration, scheduling, complex calculation capabilities, all help to further improve ROI and free up the time for the team to do value-adding tasks.
• Last but not the least is the confidence on the numbers is much higher.