5 Important Financial Data Management Best Practices

financial data management holland parker onestream houston texas

Global organizations understand the importance of high-quality financial data to align with corporate standards, satisfy internal controls, and meet external financial reporting requirements.

The challenge for many organizations is meeting the needs of financial data management without access to modern software for Corporate Performance Management (CPM).

If your organization is relying on Excel spreadsheets or outdated, legacy CPM software, you are likely challenged to fulfill the intricate needs of internal and external requirements in a desired fashion.

The headwind to meet the challenge could be time, cost, or other responsibilities. What this points to is the need for your team to follow data management best practices.

The pathway to support best practices is migrating to a unified, modern CPM solution that ensures the integrity of your financial data. The solution is OneStream XF.

How OneStream XF Supports Data Management Best Practices

The OneStream XF platform is the proven alternative to Excel spreadsheets and legacy CPM applications to support Finance. The platform was designed to simplify processes such as data management for sophisticated, global enterprises.

Organizations that migrate to OneStream Software gain confidence in the accuracy of their financial data because of the single source of data and the standard, defined, and repeatable processes for maximum confidence and reliability.

Following this path allows your organization to support data management best practices in the following five ways.

1. Simplify Data Integration

Data integration is critical to ensure the validity of the data. Organizations that rely on Excel or outdated CPM software know how complex the process is trying to integrate data from multiple sources.

To solve this challenge, OneStream created a series of capabilities that all naturally live and work together so that organizations don’t have to do the hard part of integrating or connecting separate technologies together.

OneStream built the OneStream XF platform to have a full set of capabilities to solve the most sophisticated business problems and give your team the ability to easily follow best practices for data integration. Complex data integration processes are now simplified.

2. Trust the Data

When handling financial data, your teams need to be able to trust the data. They need confidence that what they are seeing is accurate and reliable for internal and external reporting requirements.

OneStream XF improves the integrity of the data by delivering pre and post-data loading validations and confirmations. The result is complete confidence in the certification process.

Plus, the simplified data integration process builds upon itself. The OneStream XF platform includes powerful pre-built XF Integration Connectors with drill-back and drill-through capabilities to authenticate the source of the data in alignment with best practices. Data is trustworthy with OneStream.

WEBINAR

Building to the ‘Top’ with OneStream: HFM Replacement Story

3. Validate the Data

Before handing financial data to internal or external stakeholders, there is a critical final step of validating the data. For users of Excel spreadsheets or legacy CPM solutions, this becomes a time-consuming challenge attempting to validate the data.

OneStream XF supports the validation process through 100 percent data transparency. Plus, process change visibility is built into the platform to track changes from source to report, make adjustments, and address variances.

Instead of spending costly time tracking down where data came from, your team can spend more time ensuring the validity of the data in accordance with best practices. Data sources are validated and transparent.

4. Audit the Data

Sophisticated organizations need strict audit controls to ensure that your teams followed data management best practices when working with the data.

OneStream XF includes built-in audit trails and financial intelligence to deliver transparency, auditability, and data protection for complete confidence and compliance.

The data is captured in distinct buckets, journal adjustments and eliminations never disappear during Consolidations, data protection is automatic, and the platform has built-in protections against inadvertent data overrides. Audits are automatic; not burdensome.

5. Improve Data Management

Finally, organizations that utilize OneStream XF can improve their entire data management process to ensure continued alignment with data management best practices for internal and external purposes.

Guided Workflows in the OneStream XF platform help organizations achieve financial data quality management and verification throughout financial consolidation, reporting, and planning processes.

These processes help standardize and simplify data collections and analysis, end-users continue to gain knowledge and experience interacting with workflows, and OneStream XF serves up the correct processes and reports to optimize time management. The quality of your data management builds upon itself to meet the next challenge.

Work With HollandParker for OneStream XF Implementation

5 Important Financial Data Management Best Practices 1

Our CPM consulting firm is supremely confident in OneStream XF to support your financial data management needs and to help align with data management best practices.

As a Diamond Implementation partner, we can support your organization with the migration to OneStream XF to replace Excel spreadsheets or outdated, fragmented CPM software.

OneStream simplified the complexities of managing financial data to ensure accuracy and reliability for your organization. To find out more about how data is trustworthy, validated, and auditable in the OneStream XF platform, contact our firm today.

We would appreciate the opportunity to discuss the challenges you experience with financial data management in your organization.

Share this

About the author

Holland Parker

The Pre-Transformation Checklist for Finance

An 11-Step Risk Reduction Tool for CFOs and CAOs Who Aren’t Sure Where to Start

By following this checklist, organizations can systematically approach their finance technology transformation, ensuring that all critical aspects are addressed and that the transition is smooth and successful.

Related posts you might like

Building to the ‘Top’ with OneStream: An HFM Replacement Story

View Post
CPM

An introduction to Corporate Performance Management Software (CPM)

View Post

HollandParker Named 2022 Power of the Platform Winner by OneStream

View Post

Privacy Policy

Introduction

Welcome to Holland Parker. We are committed to protecting your personal information and your right to privacy. If you have any questions or concerns about our policy or our practices with regard to your personal information, please contact us at [email protected].

Information We Collect

We collect personal information that you provide to us when expressing an interest in obtaining information about us or our products and services, when participating in activities on the website, or otherwise contacting us.

The personal information that we collect depends on the context of your interactions with us and the website, the choices you make, and the products and features you use. The personal information we collect can include the following:

  • Name and Contact Data: We collect your first and last name, email address, postal address, phone number, and other similar contact data.
  • Payment Data: We collect data necessary to process your payment if you make purchases, such as your payment instrument number (e.g., a credit card number), and the security code associated with your payment instrument.
  • Login Credentials: We collect passwords, password hints, and similar security information used for authentication and account access.
  • Other Information: We collect any other information you directly provide to us through our website.

How We Use Your Information

We use personal information collected via our website for a variety of business purposes described below. We process your personal information for these purposes in reliance on our legitimate business interests, in order to enter into or perform a contract with you, with your consent, and/or for compliance with our legal obligations.

We use the information we collect or receive:

  • To send administrative information to you.
  • To fulfill and manage your orders.
  • To post testimonials.
  • To request feedback.
  • To send you marketing and promotional communications.
  • To deliver targeted advertising to you.
  • For other business purposes.

Sharing Your Information

We may process or share your data that we hold based on the following legal basis:

  • Consent: We may process your data if you have given us specific consent to use your personal information for a specific purpose.
  • Legitimate Interests: We may process your data when it is reasonably necessary to achieve our legitimate business interests.
  • Performance of a Contract: Where we have entered into a contract with you, we may process your personal information to fulfill the terms of our contract.
  • Legal Obligations: We may disclose your information where we are legally required to do so in order to comply with applicable law, governmental requests, a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process.
  • Vital Interests: We may disclose your information where we believe it is necessary to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding potential violations of our policies, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the safety of any person, and illegal activities.

Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies

We may use cookies and similar tracking technologies to access or store information. Specific information about how we use such technologies and how you can refuse certain cookies is set out in our Cookie Policy.

Data Security

We aim to protect your personal information through a system of organizational and technical security measures. We have implemented appropriate technical and organizational security measures designed to protect the security of any personal information we process.

Retention of Data

We will only keep your personal information for as long as it is necessary for the purposes set out in this privacy policy unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law.

Your Privacy Rights

In some regions, such as the European Economic Area (EEA), you have certain rights under applicable data protection laws. These may include the right to (i) request access and obtain a copy of your personal information, (ii) request rectification or erasure; (iii) restrict the processing of your personal information; and (iv) if applicable, to data portability.

Updates to This Policy

We may update this privacy policy from time to time in order to reflect changes to our practices or for other operational, legal, or regulatory reasons.

Contact Us

If you have questions or comments about this policy, you may contact us by email at [email protected].

The Pre-Transformation Checklist for Finance

Tap into wisdom gained through 300+ finance transformations to uncover answers to questions you have and those you should.

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.