As the financial landscape evolves, the need for real-time data processing and automation has become essential for organizations seeking precision and efficiency in their financial close processes. I recently attended a webinar hosted by OneStream, featuring KPMG and AutoCanada, where experts discussed how AI, automation, and unified platforms are reshaping the future of financial management. The session provided valuable insights into how OneStream's solutions are transforming complex financial workflows and driving operational success.

Financial Transformation with OneStream

One of the key highlights of the webinar was AutoCanada's journey toward modernizing its financial close and consolidation processes with OneStream's unified platform. As a growing automotive retail group, AutoCanada faced challenges typical of organizations that expand through acquisitions—managing multiple legal entities, ERP systems, and manual consolidation efforts.

By implementing OneStream’s platform, AutoCanada significantly streamlined these processes, automating key financial operations and reducing the need for manual data entry. The platform's ability to provide best-in-class capabilities for financial close, consolidation, financial and operational planning, reporting and analysis within a single, unified platform was a game-changer for their finance team.

Addressing Common Financial Challenges

During the webinar, KPMG highlighted the challenges faced by many organizations in managing financial data, particularly those with complex organizational structures like AutoCanada, which operates over 350 legal entities. The complexities of consolidating data from multiple ERPs and ensuring data accuracy were major hurdles. OneStream’s platform addressed these pain points by simplifying and standardizing data, making the consolidation process faster and more reliable. This, coupled with the integration of their data lake infrastructure, has improved the overall efficiency of financial operations and provided greater clarity in reporting.

KPMG’s National Lead Partner for EPM, Eric Wood, emphasised that adopting a phased approach to implementation was key. Instead of a “big bang” rollout, they delivered value incrementally, starting with consolidation and intercompany eliminations before moving on to more advanced tasks like account reconciliations and tax reporting.

The Role of AI in Financial Close

One of the most exciting aspects of the discussion was the role AI plays in improving the accuracy and efficiency of financial close processes. OneStream’s Sensible ML is integrated throughout the platform as a core service, allowing organizations to leverage machine learning and predictive analytics, real-time reporting, and automation of repetitive tasks.

According to Trevor Walker, Senior Product Marketing Manager at OneStream, “because we took the fundamental design approach from the ground up to uniquely unify financial close & consolidations, financial and operational planning, reporting, and analysis in a single platform, our customers can achieve greater efficiency in all their management  processes. And because all platform services, including AI Services, are reusable across all solutions and extensible into the future, customers like AutoCanada can continue to extend their value by tackling more of their challenges in the close process, streamline planning and forecasting, and leverage AI to gain greater insights and productivity, without the complexity of multiple solutions, tools, and integration”

AutoCanada, can now focus on Account Reconciliations, Tax and how to leverage AI as a vital tool in automating intercompany matching and streamlining data flows.. This kind of automation allows their finance team to focus on higher-value tasks, such as analysis and decision-making, rather than manual data manipulation.

KPMG’s Intelligent Close and the Future of Financial Reporting

KPMG introduced their Intelligent Close concept during the webinar, which integrates trusted transactions, autonomous accounting, and real-time reporting. This approach complements OneStream’s platform by ensuring that financial close processes are not only efficient but also optimized for accuracy. As AI continues to evolve, solutions like OneStream’s will further drive real-time financial reporting, allowing organizations to process large volumes of data and derive actionable insights in seconds.

Eric Wood from KPMG mentioned that this combination of AI-driven solutions and expert financial guidance is key to achieving real-time financial reporting—a goal that many organizations are striving for but find difficult to realize without the right tools.

Future-Proofing Financial Operations with OneStream

The collaboration between AutoCanada, KPMG, and OneStream demonstrates the potential of unified platforms to drive financial transformation. As businesses continue to grow and manage increasingly complex financial structures, investing in solutions that automate and streamline processes will be critical. OneStream’s ability to manage these complexities—while providing insights to the financials with transparency to AI results and context to the corporate knowledge driving the impact to the financials—sets it apart as a leader in this space.

According to Pradnya Gugale, Senior Analyst at QKS Group’s perspective, “OneStream's robust platform is particularly valuable for its ability to adapt to complex financial environments.” She believes "OneStream’s unified platform, with its AI-driven capabilities, empowers organizations to modernize their financial close processes, ensuring not only compliance and data integrity but also enhanced operational efficiency."

Conclusion

In today’s fast-paced business environment, the demand for real-time financial reporting is only growing. OneStream’s unified platform, combined with KPMG’s Intelligent Close methodology, offers organizations a powerful solution to meet these demands. By leveraging AI and automation, businesses like AutoCanada can transform their financial operations, achieving greater accuracy, efficiency, and transparency in the financial close process.

For organizations looking to modernize and streamline their financial operations, OneStream offers a compelling solution that is both future-proof and scalable, capable of meeting the evolving needs of the finance industry.

Author: Pradnya Gugale, Senior Analyst at QKS Group