Private Equity Corporate Performance Management Implementation (2024)

When the clock starts on the hold period, private equity (PE) sponsors are looking for optimized, pre-configured financial planning and reporting solutions they can quickly stand up – and ideally repeat across their portfolio. Often, a complicated Excel package or smaller corporate performance management (CPM) tool is brought in.

What’s gained is a barebones CPM architecture that “suffices for now.” But what’s lost is the opportunity to significantly enhance value to maximize returns.

PE sponsors and portfolio company CFOs must think bigger.

The Pitfalls of Legacy Systems and Spreadsheets

While Excel or smaller CPM tools might offer basic functionality, they fall short in several key areas:

• Limited scalability: Excel quickly becomes unwieldy as data volumes increase. Smaller CPM solutions often lack the capacity to handle the complex financial consolidation, reporting, and budgeting needs of portfolio companies.
• Data silos and inaccuracy: Spreadsheets are prone to human and technical error. Legacy CPM tools might not offer real-time data integration, creating silos and hindering collaboration.
• Controls and compliance: The lack of standardization, repeatability, and transparency makes it difficult to implement and enforce role-based access, version control, approvals, reconciliations, and more. This means audit traceability is suboptimal and creates audit inefficiencies.
• Inefficient workflows: Manual data entry and consolidation are time-consuming, and companies often don’t spend the time to remediate process inefficiencies. Spreadsheets lack automation capabilities, resulting in repetitive tasks and inefficient FP&A processes that restrict timely performance reporting.
• Limited visibility and analytics: Basic tools lack the advanced reporting and analytics functionalities needed for deep dives into the company’s performance to make data-driven decisions.

These limitations lead to wasted time, inaccurate data, and an incomplete view of the portfolio company’s financial health, which leads to missed opportunities for growth optimization and value creation during the hold period.

Conquering CPM at Speed and Scale

Traditionally, CFOs and FP&A leaders have been unable to devote the time and resources required to deploy a more robust, forward-looking CPM platform because the time-to-value is too long. That’s changing thanks to progressive implementation partners like CrossCountry Consulting who deliver rapid deployments, accelerators, and out-of-the-box configurations that shorten the timeline for recouping a CPM investment.

Enterprise-grade CPM tools like OneStream, for example, provide a powerful, unified solution that overcomes the limitations and short-term thinking inherent in legacy systems. This means:

• Expedited deployment for faster time-to-value: Pre-configured templates and pre-built rules get the system up and running quickly, allowing teams to see and adopt best practices sooner.
• Scalability to match ambitions: Modern CPM solutions scale to accommodate the growing complexity of portfolio companies, the evolving responsibilities of the Office of the CFO (OCFO), and inorganic growth, enabling highly acquisitive companies the ability to maintain their forward momentum while still seamlessly integrating add-ons as needed.
• Automated workflows and eliminated silos: Manual, time-sensitive tasks like close, consolidation, account reconciliation, and reporting cause undue operational and reporting risk but can be automated to minimize such risks. CPMs can integrate with existing ERP systems and data sources to remove data silos, improve data accuracy, and .
• Advanced analytics and reporting: Gain deeper insights, drill down into performance metrics, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions to optimize performance and capitalize on prescriptive financial signaling.
• Enhanced collaboration and visibility: CPMs empower PE sponsors to facilitate efficient collaboration between portfolio company teams and build peer CFO communities. Real-time data access and centralized reporting ensure all stakeholders have a clear picture of financial health, trends, and best practices.

In the past, these benefits were out of reach for time-strapped organizations. But with the right technology and the right implementation partner, they’re reliably achievable.

Maximizing Investment and Driving Returns with OneStream

Portfolio company CFOs deploying OneStream gain significant value quickly, such as:

• Best-in-class financial workflows: Reports, charts of account rationalization, financial modeling, forecasting, budgeting, close, consolidation, and other key cycles are powered by automation and predictive insights.
• Support M&A growth strategy: The flexibility and configuration of data mapping and transformation features enables the platform to effectively scale with inorganic growth. Newly acquired companies’ systems can easily be integrated to ensure consistency with existing or new rules, thereby accelerating M&A integration.
• Enhanced accuracy: Streamlined data integration and reporting reduce errors and ensure consistent, reliable data ingested from across the business and delivered across the portfolio.
• Self-service reporting: Generate standardized reports and dashboards quickly and easily, meeting reporting requirements with ease.
• Increased collaboration: Ingest and communicate functional data from all key enterprise functions, like HR, Sales & Marketing, Corporate FP&A, Legal, and Ops Finance.
• Continuous improvement: Regular fine-tuning, enhancements, add-ons, and health checks are readily available and easy to integrate from the OneStream Marketplace, ensuring today’s investment scales with evolving PE needs.

The above translates to reduced costs, improved performance, and stronger exit readiness.

With comprehensive expertise developing OCFO playbooks in collaboration with PE sponsors, CrossCountry Consulting serves as an extension of portfolio support, operating partners, and deal teams. To proactively design and implement transformative performance management enhancements, contact CrossCountry Consulting today.