101: Building up Finance in Construction Companies

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.

We help OneStream customers and prospective OneStream customers get the most out of their OneStream investments. For CPM customer Success listeners, we now have a weekly email newsletter to keep you informed on the latest CPM customer success news by subscribing today. We'll keep you informed on episode releases, including customer success stories. OneStream interviews and capabilities to keep you up to date about one Stream's unified platform for finance.

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. If you're leading finance in a construction or infrastructure organization, complexity is part of the operating model. It shows up in project accounting, cost tracking, backlog management, and forecasting.

It's present in how systems are structured across business units and in how data flows from the field financial reporting. As organizations grow. Whether organically or through acquisition, that complexity tends to compound. Finance is expected to bring structure to that environment, not just to report on performance, but to provide clarity, consistency, and confidence in the numbers that leadership depends on.

In this episode, we'll walk through two transformation stories from construction focused organizations. Each one faced a different type of financial complexity, and in both cases, the combination of a unified platform and thoughtful implementation design helped bring a more controlled and scalable approach to finance. Construction. Finance operates differently.

For most industries, financial performance isn't tied to a simple production cycle. Instead, it's spread across long-term projects that evolve over time. Revenue recognition depends on progress costs shift As projects develop, forecasting requires a constant reassessment of what's complete and what remains. Because of this, finance leaders are often working to answer questions that go beyond standard reporting.

They're trying to understand where profitability is coming from at a project level, whether costs to complete estimates are still reliable, and how accurately backlog reflects future revenue. At the same time, the underlying data is rarely centralized. Many organizations operate with multiple ERP systems, separate job costing tools and reporting processes that rely heavily on spreadsheets. Over time, these layers create friction.

Data has to be reconciled manually. Reporting timelines, stretch confidence in the numbers can start to erode The structure supporting the finance team hasn't kept pace with the complexity of the business. So today's first CPM customer success story. Centers on a construction infrastructure services company that have reached a point where growth was beginning to outpace its financial systems.

We'll refer to them as a BC construction group. A B, C was expanding its operations and evolving its organization structure. New cost centers were being introduced, reporting expectations were increasing, and data was coming from a wider range of systems despite that progress. On the operational side, the financial environment remained difficult to manage.

The team spent a significant amount of time validating data across sources, reconciling their accounts, and preparing reports. Delivering timely insights to stakeholders was becoming more challenging, and confidence in the underlying data was not where it needed to be. There was also an added constraint the organization needed to modernize without losing data or disputing existing workflows. That requirement made a simple system replacement unrealistic.

So instead of layering incremental fixes onto an existing environment, a, b, C chose to rebuild its financial foundation in a more structured way. Using OneStream Nova Advisory helped the organization redesign its application to better reflect how the business actually operates. Dimensionality was updated to align with the current organization structure and data from multiple sources, both historic and ongoing, was integrated into a single platform. Just as importantly, workflows were introduced to guide how data is validated and how reporting is completed.

This created a more consistent process across the finance function, reducing reliance on informal or manual steps. The implementation followed a phased approach, which allowed the business to continue operating without disruption while gradually transitioning to the new model. With the new structure in place, a, b, C saw a meaningful shift in how finance operated reporting became more efficient, and the process of validating data was more controlled. The team had greater confidence in the numbers they were producing, and they were able to spend less time reconciling discrepancies at a broader level.

The organization now had a platform that could scale with its growth. As structures evolve or new requirements emerge, the system's designed to adapt without requiring a complete rebuild. In construction growth introduces complexity faster than systems can absorb it. Addressing that gap requires not only improving reporting speed, but also introducing a foundation that aligns with how the business is structured and how it plans to grow.

The second CPM customer success story for this week involves a larger, more decentralized organization operating across multiple construction and infrastructure businesses. We'll refer to this organization as Atlas Solutions. Atlas had grown into a network of operating companies each with its own systems and processes. There are 13 different ERPs in place, along with multiple charts of accounts and reporting structures.

From a finance perspective, this created a fragmented environment. Consolidating results require significant manual effort and inconsistencies between systems often led to errors or delays. It was difficult to view the organization as a single entity, which limited the ability to analyze performance at a consolidated level. At the same time, the company was continuing to grow without a more scalable approach, the complexity would only increase.

Leadership recognized that the issue wasn't limited to reporting inefficiencies. The organization lacked a centralized structure for managing their financial data. What was needed was a platform that could bring consistency across operating companies while still accommodating the differences in how each business functioned. With OneStream and Nova Advisory Atlas implemented a unified platform for consolidations, reporting and planning.

The system was designed to handle multiple business structures through extensible dimensionality, allowing each operating company to maintain its own view of the data while still contributing to a standardized corporate structure. Workflows were introduced to guide data collection and validation, creating a more consistent process across the organization. In addition, planning capabilities were integrated into the same platform, allowing finance to connect historical results with forward-looking projections.

This also enabled a new form of analysis. Including the ability to evaluate backlog across sectors and regions and important capability in construction environments. The shift to unified platform had a noticeable impact. Atlas gained a single source of truth for its financial data.

It reduced the need for manual reconciliations and it improved the overall data quality. Reporting became more consistent and adoption increased across operating companies. As processes became clearer and easier to follow, perhaps most importantly, leadership could now view the organization holistically. Instead of piecing together information from different systems, they had access to a consolidated view that supported better decision making.

Decentralized construction organizations often accept fragmentation as a given. This example shows it's possible to introduce structure without sacrificing flexibility, creating a more cohesive finance function across the enterprise. The patterns in these CPM customer success stories are consistent with what many finance leaders in construction experience. Their systems evolve over time, often independently across their business units.

The reporting processes become more manual. As complexity increases and as the organization grows, it becomes more difficult to maintain a clear and consistent view of their performance. A unified platform addresses these challenges by bringing a data process and reporting into a single environment. And with centralized data management, finance teams can rely on a consistent version of the truth.

With structured workflows, they can ensure that processes are followed and data is validated. And with integrated planning capabilities, they can connect financial results to operational drivers like backlog and project performance. When these elements come together, the role of finance begins to shift. Instead of focusing primarily on data preparation and reconciliation, teams are able to spend more time analyzing results and supporting the business.

They can engage more directly with operations, provide insights into project performance, and contribute to strategic planning. This is particularly important in construction where financial outcomes are closely tied to operational execution. Having timely, reliable information allows finance to play a more active role in guiding decisions. Construction finance will always involve a degree of complexity.

The nature of the business requires it. The question is whether that complexity is managed in a way that supports clarity and control, or whether it creates friction and uncertainty. The organizations we discussed today took a structured approach to addressing that challenge by implementing OneStream and aligning their systems with their business needs, they established a more reliable foundation for reporting, planning, and analysis. For finance leaders, the opportunity is to move towards that same level of structure.

Creating an environment where data is consistent, processes are controlled, and insights are readily available. 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.