If there’s one takeaway from last week’s OneStream Splash 2024 conference, it’s that the CFO’s office is yet another function that AI will impact. This represents a huge opportunity for services partners, especially OneStream partners.
OneStream provides the leading performance management platform that simplifies and unifies consolidation, planning, reporting, and analytics and empowers the Office of the CFO.
As an active investor in Black Diamond Advisory, a Diamond consulting and Development partner for OneStream, Tercera has observed OneStream’s remarkable rise since early 2021. This was the year we finally had to experience Splash, which is how we found ourselves sipping Gigabyte Gregs – alongside OneStream customers and execs – with a Delorian in the background talking about AI.
With nearly 3000 people attending this year’s user event, it’s clear OneStream is onto something. In fact, the buzz in the room and focus on the power of the platform reminded us of the early days of Salesforce. The rumors of OneStream’s impending IPO for an estimated $6 billion valuation could be partly the cause of this, however, we believe its modern platform and laser focus on customer success are bigger reasons.
100% customer success is a guiding principle for not only OneStream but also for their 250+ partners. Partners are responsible for 96% of OneStream implementations and play a critical role in platform enablement and adoption. With customers growing 21% YoY and a 98% renewal rate, the numbers don’t lie.
Partners are responsible for 96% of OneStream implementations and play a critical role in platform enablement and adoption. With customers growing 21% YoY and a 98% renewal rate, the numbers don’t lie.
At its core, OneStream Splash is a learning event. It was incredible to see customers and partners presenting alongside each other to rooms full of packed audiences over the course of four days. What stood out most is just how much OneStream customers are true evangelists for the brand.
A spot in the partner ecosystem is particularly valuable, which is why OneStream has been featured in the Tercera 30 list of top cloud ecosystems for services partners since inception.
OneStream intentionally grows its ecosystem by only 5% each year because they go deep to ensure every partner has the resources and opportunities they need to succeed. It’s hard for new entrants to break in, but it’s both lucrative and stable for IT service providers once they’re part of the family.
According to Stephanie Cramp, OneStream’s Senior Vice President of Alliances, that’s especially true if they bring AI expertise to the table. Read more about what OneStream looks for in its partners in our Tercera 30 profile here.
Accelerating AI adoption
AI is something that OneStream covered at length during the event, highlighting its Sensible AI portfolio, which is a set of packaged applied AI solutions designed specifically for finance leaders – such as forecasting and scenario planning. With ML and AI models built directly on top of OneStream’s unified data model and proprietary financial intelligence, finance leaders can use trusted enterprise data to quickly identify trends and business drivers and improve forecast accuracy.
During the keynote address by Tom Shea, OneStream’s Founder and CEO, we got to see a demo of OneStream’s Sensible GenAI, which allows users to use natural language to query data while providing traceability and documentation for the generated responses. Microsoft also joined the keynote to talk about the power of their partnership, the momentum of the joint go-to-market efforts, and how OneStream is the only corporate performance management platform that runs entirely on Azure.
We also saw how Sensible ML is helping customers like Sonoco, a multi-billion dollar packaging company, improve purchasing and SKU-level forecasting. Sonoco began a pilot program with one plant and controller, and they were able to improve purchasing pattern predictions by 25%. The company is now tackling SKU-level forecasting across 14 European plants and seeing even more accuracy. AI may be the biggest buzzword today, but OneStream is going beyond the hype to deliver real tangible value to its users.
AI may be the biggest buzzword today, but OneStream is going beyond the hype to deliver real tangible value to its users.
CFOs may be one of the first groups to effectively use AI to get more mileage out of both internal and external data. Previously, it would take a team of data scientists significant time and effort to do what today’s AI can do in a fraction of the time. OneStream’s Sensible AI portfolio democratizes data science internally and ignites the power of the FP&A team.
Where there’s enterprise value coupled with complexity in implementation, we see a big opportunity for service providers. Service partners are a linchpin in how OneStream delivers results and ensures customer success, whether that’s integrating OneStream’s AI offerings with the rest of the finance team’s tech stack, tailoring the UI to the end user’s exact needs or building packaged solutions that extend the OneStream platform.
The OneStream ecosystem is one to keep an eye on. If you want to join the party, give us a ring.
