Barrick Gold: Successfully Migrating Financial Planning Platforms with Ascend Partners and OneStream

When your current financial software can no longer deliver the value you need, it’s time to make a change. The decision between upgrading a patchwork combination of point solutions and migrating to a best-in-class tool is easy — especially when you’ve got Ascend Partners implementing the new solution. When Barrick Gold faced this same decision, we helped them make the change to OneStream, the global leader in corporate performance management solutions.

Barrick Gold is a world leader in the mining industry. They operate in 13 countries with 16 operational sites that produce gold and copper. In total, Barrick Gold consolidates over 400 legal entities. Managing a company as sophisticated as Barrick with complex needs is no easy feat. As a result, the demands they place on their financial software are also high.

Dealing With Software Limitations

In the past, Barrick Gold was using Hyperion to manage their financial data, but it just wasn’t getting the job done. As a result, they were using multiple point solutions for their consolidating and planning, creating a slow, complicated process with the added complexity of constantly moving data between stand-alone software applications. To add to this, the company was continuing to grow with new acquisitions that would place even more demands on the software.

A main pain point that Barrick needed to address was the ability to consolidate and access financial information as fast as possible. The team considered the SAP Cloud suite or staying on their existing Hyperion solutions, but neither seemed to be able to handle all the capabilities Barrick required.

Choosing The Right CPM Solution

Barrick Gold faced a tough decision: upgrade their current systems and work within its limitations or make the switch to the more advanced platform, OneStream. OneStream is the intelligent finance platform for the modern enterprise. The platform allows users to unify financial consolidation, reporting, planning, and analytics through a single, extensible technology platform. After comparing all the solutions, Barrick realized that neither Hyperion nor SAP were considered mature enough to meet the complex needs of the company and OneStream was the way to go.

Barrick knew that migrating to OneStream would serve them better in the long run. However, transitioning onto a new platform can be time-consuming and complicated. Barrick arranged a meeting with the OneStream experts at Ascend to help them understand how the new software would be implemented.

The Ascend Advantage

At Ascend, we work exclusively with OneStream to accelerate the implementation process and minimize business disruption. We have sophisticated tools and templates that we’ve prebuilt to make the process smoother. After our meeting, Barrick Gold realized that we had the expertise and deep knowledge that would be needed to manage their transition to the OneStream platform.

Unlimited Capabilities and Possibilities

When it comes to mining, the data is of significant volume and complexity; currency values are continually changing, tax requirements vary from country to country,  and commodity prices fluctuate constantly.

To measure the value of assets within the mining industry, Barrick needed the ability to measure the life of mining in a financial system. Before switching to OneStream, Barrick used separate software for their forecasting. However, OneStream allows companies to build out the metadata once and align it with multiple business units under different functions. When work only needs to be done one time, there’s less room for user error.

With OneStream, Barrick no longer needed different software to get the job done. At the time of the implementation, OneStream was initially able to forecast 30 years ahead, but Barrick needed to forecast further into the future. OneStream was able to adjust this number specifically to meet Barrick’s needs after hearing this feedback. Now, OneStream allows forecasting of more than 60 years ahead.

Improved Workflows, Better Visibility and More

It’s been over a year since Barrick Gold implemented OneStream. The new platform has been nothing but positive for the company. Barrick has benefited from the improved workflows and additional security. There are over 400 entities in the workflow, and you can see the stage of any of these entities at any time. Full visibility means added accountabilities.

The company has reported more engagement between the worksites and corporate offices thanks to OneStream. Within the platform, workflow setups are there and easy for everyone to access. Actuals and planning share the same metadata and ratios calculations, creating more harmony.

Barrick is working to bring all its operations onto OneStream by the end of the year, which will only further benefit the company.

An Implementation Process With Proven Results

At Ascend, we want to make your transition to OneStream just as seamless and beneficial as it was for Barrick Gold. Our long-standing reputation as your most-trusted advisor for CPM solutions was made possible by our capable, reliable, and service-focused team, who are ready to work with you. We’ll work alongside your team for better training and increased learning opportunities for faster launches. Schedule a consultation today.

Authors:

Peter Popalis