100: The Future of Finance with OneStream Co-Founder Craig Colby

Welcome to the CPM Customer Success Podcast, where we help office of finance leaders enable an exact solution to enhance their corporate performance. Without spending countless nights and weekends in the office. Hi, I'm your host, Andy Smetana from Nova Advisory. Nova Advisory is a 100% OneStream professional services diamond implementation partner.

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You can check that out now at Nova Advisory's website, Nova advisory.com/podcast and subscribe to the CPM Customer Success podcast newsletter today. Andy: So to celebrate the CPM customer success episode 100, we have a special guest, Craig Colby here with us. Um, Craig's a founder of OneStream.

He's one of the executive team members and leaders, and been in instrumental, of course, in OneStream success. So Craig, welcome to the show. Really happy to have you here today. Craig: Thanks so much Andy.

I, uh. You know, this is all I think about. This is all I do. It's kind of, uh, super personal to me, so really happy to be with you.

Andy: Yeah. Well, we, we value your time as well and, uh, let's, let's start with kind of an intro, Craig, and into, you know, our audience. It's a OneStream, uh, focused audience that includes, you know, prospects and customers that may, may have not yet met you. Craig: Yeah.

Andy: Uh, could you describe your role, OneStream, and what your current areas of focus and passion are? Craig: Yeah. So, uh, you know, I, I'm one of the founders of OneStream. Uh, so I had previously ran all of what you think of as the go-to-market activities, uh, everything from sales and alliances, uh, marketing, all those things, and, and.

I, I've done all those jobs also personally. Uh, so when you start a company, you don't have a whole lot of employees. So you, do all the jobs, uh, that you need to do pre-sales, sales, uh, marketing alliances. So come with, you know, a vast amount of I, I'll call.

Practical field experience in building up one stream. And right now I'm focused on success. So that is all I care about. When I say success, I, I mean really the success of the company, the product and the customer, um, and really the entire community.

So think partners as well. And, uh, that success I strongly believe revolves around. everything easier, faster, more consumable, more, uh, adoptable, so customers can be, uh, more successful quickly and then continue their journey to deliver more value again quickly with less risk. So that's what I'm focused on right now.

And, uh, we call that express. Um, and that's really the idea of lowering the risk and, um, improving the deliverable. That the, that the customer actually gets. And goes with not just one stream doing it, it's our partner community.

It's the entire ecosystem. Um, you know, from product development all the way through to, know, going live on the software and then, and then doing more. Andy: I love it. I, and you're in the, the right place.

I mean, CPM customer success is all about success for, for our mutual customers. So, um, love it and love your passion. So let's get in. I heard you speak, uh, last year, uh, Craig, about the finance 2035 vision that OneStream.

Is a study of paper, um, and you're on stage and you spoke about it. Um, I'd love to kind of have you, for our audience talk about, you know, those core capabilities of a world class finance organization. Presumably, you know, our, our customers are aspire to be world class in finance. Um, you've considered some of these.

Capabilities as table stakes for their, for their businesses. So can you talk about what some of these kind of core capabilities are? Craig: Yeah, so finance 2035, uh, f first of all, it was an independent, uh, survey of, you know, C-level executives, finance professionals, investors, really our, our community and, uh, trying to understand what's, what's happening in the market and the challenges that customers are facing today, but the results that came out of it. I think are super interesting because all stuff that we kind of knew Andy.

We, we kinda knew that your data was in silos, if you had multiple disparate point solutions, that it's really hard to organize to that data and, and customers want a unified view of their data. They want one thing to look at one version. Truth, which has been, the word, has been overused for years because it's, it's never really happened. You can't have one version of truth you have five different systems that all have a revenue number.

It's just not possible, right? so they want one true version of truth. They want to be able to take advantage. Advantage of the most elegant technologies.

AI that they can become more efficient and more effective. they're worried because it is moving so fast that if they don't act soon, they're gonna be left behind. that's what finance 2035 told us. But I didn't need that study to know that that was true before the study.

I knew it because if you're out in the field, if you're customer facing, these are the conversations that you have. Every single day and, and we've had for years. Why is it so hard just to compare your actual to budget? Well, I've got two different systems, two different data definitions, and the numbers never line up.

it takes the most talented people in the organization line those numbers up just to do a variance report. Yeah, that's not efficient, that's not effective. And that's, if you ask me why we built OneStream, built it to Unify finance. We built it to have a common single platform where all these solutions and the data naturally lives together there's one truth and all solutions leverage that truth to be able to deliver value for the organization.

So that's, I mean, that's why we started the company. Andy: Yeah, and I've, I've, we see at Nova Advisor, we see customers and, and prospective customers before they start their, their OneStream journey. And they're struggling to close the books. They're struggling to create a plan, an annual operating plan.

And, and if you struggle to do those core things, it's really difficult to be a strategic leader. So, uh, that finance 2035 vision is, is something we were, you know, excited to be released 'cause really enabling finance leaders to, to do more and more with the platform. Craig: Yeah. You know, if you've ever, uh, seen one of my keynotes, um, you know, one of my phrases that I'm super passionate about is the corn more.

Andy, you know, this, you got to, customers, really large, sophisticated organization are s. struggling to be efficient and effective. Closing the books, doing the financial forecast, doing the a OP, doing what I call the blocking and tackling account wrecks of finance. That's the blocking and tackle.

You have to do those things efficiently and effectively to even be able to think about taking on the additional challenges and being a better business partner, uh, to the business. And finance departments have struggled with this for. I, I, I know it. It's one key reasons.

the disparate nature of the systems. If you got four different systems out there that do four different things, and they all have their own data definition, they all have their own model and they all operate differently, have a single truth. It's not possible to do. So once you unify, once you bring these systems together, you have a cohesive view of your business that always operates on a single truth.

One data set you know is auditable, accurate, controlled, that you know you can rely on every single month to be accurate for financial reporting, but also help inform the new forecast. Now you have operating leverage. Now you can think about doing more. There is no more without the core.

You, you, you gotta get the core right? So I'm super passionate about that. And we will talk a little bit about CPM Express later, but CPM Express today is all about delivering that core with a, a really high level of quality in a really fast timeframe. Andy: Yeah.

Let's, let's, let's Craig: uh, Andy: transition into that then, Craig. So, uh, we, we've talked on this podcast about CPM Express. We've introduced it. Uh, we've had one of one Streams architects of the solution, Peter Fuer, come on and, and speak about it.

But I know you're passionate about it. You've already, uh, prefaced it a few times and teased it. Could you describe one stream's approach to how you help organizations kind of bridge that gap as they aspire to get to that 2035? Via the development of the CPM Express solution.

Craig: Yeah. You know, let's take a step back and think about where we came from, right? And we all came from, uh, a software environment where you, you started an implementation with a bit of a blank slate, right? You have a very powerful software.

Solution in one stream, but we're asking the customer and trying to decide on what we're gonna deliver and how we're gonna deliver it. We call that, you know, doing our, our discovery and our design. And it creates a, a tremendous amount of variables in the project when in reality about 80% of customers are really trying to accomplish very similar things. So we took our learnings.

From 1700 implementations, we put our absolute best architects on it. We, we put the guys who wrote the book on consolidation and planning, they wrote the books on it, and we put them on this to build a packaged application approach that delivered more out of the box in a faster timeframe lowered the risk of delivering an implementation, a high quality implementation, and delivered more. On more value on day one, and that's really important. Our CPM Express customers are getting this tremendous value because there's so many, I call 'em assets and artifacts already prebuilt in this system.

the choices in the market been very clear. You either start with a blank slate or you start with a packaged application. I call them a A box you have to conform your business. To that box.

As soon as you change the box at all, everything breaks and you can no longer use that box you start from scratch and. It's really kind of, you know, whatever you build in it is exactly what you will, you will get out the solution. CPM Express strikes the balance right down the middle of that. It delivers a ton of value, a ton of prebuilt assets and artifacts out of the box, and a package application that just works.

A chart of accounts, cashflow, all these things. if you choose to change any of those things. You don't break the box, you can still move on and deliver a high value, high quality solution and flex it to the needs of your business. So it really strikes it.

It hits it right down the fairway, if you will, of balancing the flexibility that we're named for is known for, and the power with. a ton of prebuilt capabilities, so you lower your risk and we ensure you're gonna be successful. And, um, that, that's winning out there. We we're, we're winning with this solution.

I know your company specifically Nova's, a, a, a, I'll call it a early adopter of that mindset and delivering those solutions out there. And it turns out customers really like it. They get a ton outta the box. They get that success.

You know, Peter always says, take the standup double. You know, you get that success out of the box. And now once you have success and you've delivered that implementation and, and that first phase of the project. You can go after a little more.

You can deliver consolidations, then planning or vice versa, deliver account recs. You start to build on that momentum and these solutions, they just work. They're fast to deploy and they're at a really high level of quality and they reduce the, what I call the implementation risk of starting with a a blank slate. Andy: You, we've seen tons of success with, with, uh, starting from a CPM Express approach and pretty much all, all of our projects start from, with that foundation.

It's more of a question of why, why you wouldn't, and, and in our case, we're, we're just finding it. It makes all the sense in the world to start, start there. And because it's really, as you mentioned, the flexibility to grow and expand the platform and to suit the sophisticated nature of our customers. Uh, needs.

There's really no, no limit to that. But I would like to just have you kind of talk about, I think you already touched on, you can start wherever you want. Start in closing consolidation, start in fp and a, but could you talk about that pa fast pace to value how finance teams can get the value in, in weeks rather than the late, you know, waiting for the, the typical like months or some cases, other platforms, years, uh, to value. Craig: Yeah.

Yeah. Well, it, it all starts with having a, an application that already works. So let's talk about the chart of accounts for a second. 'cause it's, it's interesting.

What we did is offered a very high level chart of accounts so that. know the majority of customers, they have a revenue account, right, Andy? And they've got this, their expense accounts, they've got these standard accounts that it is very high level. And then because OneStream has, as part of the technology, what we call extensible dimensionality, I know you know all about it, but it's the ability to layer in the operationally relevant levels of detail for each business unit and each business process.

That's part of the, our standard technology. Every customer gets that. So it allows you to deliver a very, uh, targeted solution that meets the needs of your customer consolidation, for planning with the right levels of detail for each. So consolidation might be at a lower level of detail.

The forecast might be at a higher or vice versa, whatever the needs of the business are. And whatever the needs of the business process are, either actuals or budget or forecast, they can all have their own levels of detail. gives us a unique competitive advantage to deliver a package to application approach. Because you can take advantage of a standard, you can layer in the operationally relevant levels of detail for each customer, and off you go.

Typical customers are loading and tying out data. Somewhere around week two and week three. That's very different than loading and tying out data in week 16 Andy: You know, when you find, when, when you accelerate it, that, that fast. I mean, I, I grew up doing ERPs.

That, that you're talking reconciled data month nine 10 plus of a project and, and legacy. Craig: standard, Andy: Yeah. Legacy EPM solutions the same. Craig: apologize for it 'cause we were solving.

You know, sophisticated, you know, business problems and we were doing it with a technology and that was the way you did it for, for these organizations. So, you know, I, it, it's just an, it's now an evolution. Andy, you, you learn so much. And again, it's the 80 20 rule.

What can we deliver? Out of the box, that 80% will fit the 80%, uh, barrier and get them going and get them started. And then we'll build on the 20%, the custom consolidation logic or calculations that are specific to that customer for their unique reporting requirements. They're still gonna all have some level of uniqueness, and they're gonna have some level of similarity.

And you brought up a point earlier, you know, why wouldn't you, I've heard a couple reasons why you wouldn't. But it's just a couple. Andy: Yeah. Yeah, it's, it makes all the.

Craig: I'm, at an opt out, not an opt in. Now in, in my, in the evolution of CPM you kinda have to tell me why you wouldn't. Take advantage of all of these assets and artifacts that are just ready for you to deliver a success rather than why you would. So this is now, and it's turning into, this is just the way we do it.

It's the best practice. And you're gonna, you're gonna thank me later for you really are. I know. know you're gonna appreciate it and you're gonna love it.

'cause that's the feedback that we've been getting from our customers and our partners has been phenomenal. It's not been good. been great. It's not that we can't continue to improve, though.

I, I would never say that there's no such thing as perfect there. It's never been. There's no, it's never no, there's no perfect. Okay.

So we can continue to. Improve and dial in these solutions and improve everything about them. we know it works. It's documented really, really well, and we know it produces a high level value very quickly for the customer that they appreciate.

So those are, those are now facts in the marketplace. Andy: And so when, when customers see Craig, when they see the reconciled data early in the process, what's the reaction? You, you see all, all of the customers. Craig: It's phenomenal, right?

Andy: It's, it is. I'm just, you see more than I, I do. So when you have that trust, they, they, it really becomes a turning point for teams and, and they, they maybe shift from skepticism to ambition. Craig: A hundred percent.

You just said the perfect word. It's trust. Soon as you, you start loading, reconciling data and you, you see a, a, p, and a. You see the report and you go.

Hey, like we did this so fast and it's at such a high level of quality. You gain trust and you gain confidence so that feel like you can keep that momentum going and and deliver. The more in the project, then the more are all the things we want to do, not the things we have to do. They're the things we wanted.

They're the things that make us a world class finance organization is becoming a better business partner to the business and giving insights. they weren't getting before, right? They were always getting a p and l. You're gonna, I don't care if you're consolidating in Excel, you're gonna produce a p and l 'cause you, you had to, They were always getting that.

If they can do that significantly faster and with a higher level of confidence and trust, now and consistently each, each, and every month. Quarter and quarter year, year over year. Now you give, give, giving yourself what I think of as operational leverage to the finance department to do all the things you wanna do to become a better business partner to the business. Andy: What we find is tilt finance teams solve those kind of core platform.

The, the core, core, I should say, process, uh, challenges they've had. They really need to, to get those done first, get that core kind of established so it stops taking up all their energy and they can really start focusing on, on doing more and, and solving their, their larger problems. Craig: That's, that's exactly how I'm, how I'm thinking about it. So I'm, um, you know, this, I'm pretty fanatical right now, so I'm, I'm driving this, uh, pretty hard with our customers and partners, but kind of a no, it, it's kind of becoming a no-brainer.

Um, who wouldn't wanna start, you know, on second base, who, who wants to start in the batter's box and Andy: Yeah, I mean, I, I really, I, I think you, you probably have a hundred percent know, as I'm assuming that's, that's typically what we see, you know, people, people want to get to the, to the more exciting, you know, have, they want to know that they can create an annual operating plan or they can close their books. They can consolidate accurately, timely, uh, but they really want to get to more exciting, um, advisor, you know, more be finance advisors to the organization.

Craig: right. it. Andy: So how does having that kind of strong foundation established, how does that change the type of questions finance can ask and, and really answer for their businesses? Craig: Yeah, there's a new, there's a new time to value paradigm that we're in and, and I don't, um.

I, I, I'm, I wanna stay away from absolutes because if you're million dollar company, you've got, uh, you know, seven entities, you're pretty different than a $40 billion company, uh, with the 2,500 entities. And we, we serve those ends of the market. So I stay away from ab absolutes. So what I think of is.

A faster time to value, lower risk and higher quality. That that's the conversation that has, that has changed. Um, I, no longer question will we be successful. It's just when we are successful, should we be thinking about as phase two?

What should we be thinking about? Where are you gonna get the most bang for your buck? What's really driving? Your finance transformation and how do we get there as fast as possible?

Again, by having a foundational solution, you've set yourself up for having those better conversations, those deeper conversations of how do we double click down and deliver more operationally relevant reporting to the business, the business owners, the managers, the the people on the front lines. Who need this information faster, right? It has to be accurate. It has to be a high level of quality.

It has to be verifiable, auditable, all those things. If you throw out numbers and people don't trust it, forget about it. Right? Like I.

is the number. Andy: Yep. Craig: That's great. I don't trust it because I can't see where it can't, I don't under, I don't get it.

If you, if you give them numbers that they can trust that are auditable, verifiable, and trusted, now you can start having better conversations about how to double click down on those and get more detailed information so that they can make changes, the subtle changes in their business that they need to make. To adapt to what they see in the numbers. And so that's, that's what we're driving towards. And, uh, we, we have hundreds and hundreds of customers that already do that in OneStream, but you get to drive towards that result much quicker, with CPM Express.

Yeah. Andy: Love it. So I think that's a good, good kind of segue into the next topic. I feel like you can't do a podcast these days without talking about ai.

So I'm gonna ask you about AI and one stream's kind of vi vision, well, not really vision, vision that you're executing on today. So let's start with the, the context of the finance executive. You're A CFO. How is AI different for A CFO compared to other parts of the organization?

Craig: Yeah. for the CFO, the way I think about AI is not a whole lot different than the way I think about. Core. And what I mean by that is I, I've said these words before, trusted, verifiable, auditable, understandable.

If ai, when we are coming up with AI predictions and, and I'm gonna start with sensible AI forecasting, uh, our predictive solution that allows us to get more accurate. And faster forecasting capabilities for customers. If that information is delivered out of, uh, I call it a black box science experiment. It's not trusted by the business and it actually adds zero value to the business.

It's great that you came up with the number. can't trust it, I can't verify it. I can't use that forecast. we do in one stream around ai, whether it's our agenta capabilities or our predictive capabilities, whatever it is, it's an enterprise level solution that can scale and that has an element of verifiability.

Trust built into it. So you can see exactly the makeup and why and how we got to whatever number it is, and then we can feed those numbers back into your core solution so you can produce your forecast often because it is truly unified to the financial process. So when I think about ai. same trust element, the same auditability element, the the numbers have to be verifiable or else they are useless in the office of the CFO.

No one's gonna use them, no one's gonna leverage them, and they won't be taken advantage of. So the, the goal is, again, is to reduce cycle times of, of these processes, and we call it a no-touch, low-touch forecast. Gain confidence in the numbers by offering true transparency into exactly how every number was obtained and, and allow the business to offer its own, I'll call it. Um, you know, its, its own business intuition into the number IE.

doing a promotion, and when we do a promotion, we see a 15% average uptick. You know, and, and, and going back and looking at those numbers and those historical trends, um, to those numbers in inserting that business into intuition, into the process. So it's not just a magic box, it's based around the business. It's based around historical data.

It's based around things that that business actually does to drive sales or, or increase. Um, you know, some level of marketing, whatever it is that, that makes and delivers a change to those numbers, into the process so that you can get a lot of confidence and move forward with your process. The whole goal being more accuracy faster cycle times, and I, I know you know this, the average improvement in accuracy is about 24%, the average improvement in cycle time is about 85%. Those are, you're a billion dollar or $10 billion company and you're 1% more accurate in your forecast every month you're winning.

Right? The 1% is dramatic if you're two. Andy: For sake of clarity, I'm sorry to cut you off. We're talking about real results seen by OneStream customers implementing sensible AI forecasting.

Yeah. Craig: This is a hundred hundreds of projects going back and auditing the results. Not everyone gets 25%, some get 15 and some get more, but that's the average. And, and for our customers and our constituents, is a needle mover, Andy, that is a needle mover, that accuracy, and they're doing it faster with less effort.

So everything comes back to efficiency and effectiveness, getting. Confidence, getting verifiable information as efficient, efficiently and as effectively as you possibly can. and that's finance transformation. That's transformative a finance department because that lets them be truly a business partner and offer more value, uh, to driving true business results out there.

Andy: So if I think about, and kind of tie, tie back what you've talked about today, Craig, like. Finance can accept mostly accurate, mostly accurate, doesn't, doesn't serve anything. And actually it, it, it serves distrust. So getting to the core of the, the platform, establishing that foundation, getting accuracy, building confidence, allowing drill back, proving the data really is the table stakes that then allows you to launch into future capabilities like ai.

Craig: Absolutely, and, and that's, that serves all areas of, I'll call it the, the finance department that is not specific to consolidation or forecasting or ai. It's everywhere. This is, this is the mindset of one stream. This is, you know.

I'll call it Tom. Tom has driven this since day one, standard to find repeatable, auditable, transparent, trusted, secure, those are words that we've said since the very first day of starting the company. He's like, if you don't have that, then you have nothing. Andy: Yep.

And getting there. CPM Express is the enabler, it's the starting point. Um, so as we kind of put a, put a wrap on this Craig and kind of start closing out, as you look towards the future, what will differentiate most successful finance organizations? Craig: Uh, it's their ability to respond more quickly to a very fast changing environment.

What's happening right now, Andy? Oil prices are then they're falling a little bit, but I think they're gonna skyrocket again because there's uncertainty in the market. There's uncertainty in in the Middle East. How does that affect your business?

some businesses, it's gonna be pretty impactful, right? You have to be able to adjust really quickly to what's happening, uh, in the external markets and. All of the OneStream solutions are really based around the ability to be agile and to to be able to react to those changes virtually instantly. You can't react before you can what if before, but you can't react before and it, the sensible AI has.

What if forecasting? I, you could have already modeled out what if oil's at a hundred. That could already be in there because sensible I forecasting has those what if scenario, uh, capabilities, which are really powerful. But you have to be able to make decisions today on stuff that happened today.

And, and that's the, that's transformational. Um, that's where finance is going is it has to be agile. And if it's not. Super efficient.

If it's not super effective, if it's not all unified, if you've gotta do this in four or five or six different places, Andy, who, who can do that? No. No one can do that. Andy: Yeah.

Yeah, Craig: no finance department can do it if they've got five different systems Andy: certainly not. Craig: definitions. it's not possible It's not you. You already, you've already failed on day one.

Because you're never gonna align and realign those systems what's happening in the market quick enough to be the business partner you want to be. So it all starts with the foundation of a platform. One truly unified sol, you know, solution that does many different things where all of that metadata and data naturally and easily live together and can always be compared used in other solutions. And you know, it's accurate, you know it's audible, you know it's trusted, you know it's secure.

Andy: So Craig, if we could give and really depart on this note, if you could give one piece of advice to finance leaders that are looking to modernize today, what would that be? Craig: Well, there's no substitute for a single rational solution all your metadata and data naturally live together. Um, it is to unify this and let's think about AI for a second, Andy. am I gonna take advantage of AI if I've got appointed at three, four, or five different places?

That's why the, the finance 20, 30, 35 stuff is so ob obvious. Yes, they want to, they're struggling with disparate system. Of course they are. already suffering from an inefficient and effective system.

So unification is everything. It is absolutely everything. You can buy a nice solution for account Rex. That's great.

How do you reconcile and make sure you are what you're reconciling is exactly what you've re reported. If it's in a different, different system, someone's gotta do it, and they do. not efficient and that's not effective point solutions. And I don't care what software you're buying, any point solutions solve one thing, they usually solve it well, but they're.

Not efficient and they're not effective you're not gonna have the agility that you need to be a world class finance organization that since day one of OneStream that has been, we, we drew up all our competitors and how many products they had to sell. And modules or applications that you had to piece together just to compare actual to budget or do a a strategic plan or do a forecast. It's too com That's too complex. And because it's too complex, you're never gonna win.

It's just as simple as that. So, um, know, you're simplifying when you're unifying and you're giving yourself operational leverage so you can do the stuff that really matters to your business. And so that's my advice is unification is everything. And, um, there's no substitute for it.

Andy: Wonderful. Well really appreciate the time today, Craig. We'll look forward to seeing you, uh, splash. It's coming up here in a couple months and, uh, and talk.

Craig: on, on all, all this stuff. Actually, we're, we're working on our presentation, as I'm sure you are for some of your customers, Andy: We are. Craig: right now as well. Andy: Yeah.

All right. Take care, Craig. Uh, Craig, I really appreciate it. Speak soon.

Thanks for joining us for this episode of CPM Customer Success Reminder to check out the CPM Customer Success Weekly email newsletter to stay informed of the latest CPM customer success episodes and OneStream News. You can check that out now at the Nova Advisory website, Nova advisory.com/podcast and subscribe to the CPM Customer Success podcast email newsletter today. Thanks again for listening, and I'll catch you next week for another episode of CPM, customer Success.