A Practical Approach to AI—The Ascend Way

How our standards, pilots, and people shape AI in OneStream delivery.

AI is changing how every firm works. The harder challenge is identifying where these changes create real value for our clients, and at Ascend we're meeting it deliberately, testing AI in our delivery practices before we scale it. It isn't enough to give everyone new tools and assume great results will follow.We have set up a program and established an approach reviewed by our senior executives and board, with clear priorities, pilot initiatives, and active executive participation on our AI team. In short, we haven't created a playground with fun new tools; we're building for quality, consistency, and value.

This work is still evolving, but I'll share what we're working on and the impacts we're considering.

More Than Faster Development

Of course, we're looking for time savings on application development, but we need to do more than that. We need to draw on the solution and support materials that OneStream provides and embed our Ascend accelerators, custom tools, and quality standards.

We'll need guardrails to ensure what we build with AI is as good as, or better than, what we build from scratch. As a consulting firm, we also need to evaluate the impact on the client experience and protect client confidentiality. And because consulting is built on people, not just technology, we must consider the impact on our culture.

The Foundation: Ascend’s AI Skills Library

Our foundation is the AI skills library: our knowledge base and a reusable set of instructions that teach AI how to complete tasks consistently. We're feeding it relevant reference material from OneStream and The Ascend Way, our standards for coding, design, and architecture. We're using AI to bake in our quality checks too.

Our most senior developers are supervising pilots of these development and quality tools on projects. As we test what we've built, we identify exceptions and feed them back to improve the foundational skills.

Quality Checks Throughout

Our quality assurance process is becoming more automated, so we can apply it earlier in the project, while there's still time to correct course. Because more of our standards are built into the development process from the start, we make fewer reactive corrections.

Tracing Requirements Through Design

Requirements and design documents are visible to our clients, and they're how we confirm we build what is expected. AI has a role here too, tracing requirements from one document to the next and confirming completeness.

Human Oversight at Every Stage

Looking ahead, we will also consider how AI can support project management, sales, and internal processes. Because employee input is an important part of our culture, we recently surveyed our team to collect their thoughts on AI.

The results reinforced what we see every day across our organization: a strong desire to eliminate routine work, accelerate delivery, and uncover new efficiencies, while maintaining the human expertise, oversight, and judgment required to deliver meaningful business outcomes. What's clear is that Ascend team members see value in AI, understand the risks, and are excited about what's to come.

That engagement matters because AI doesn't replace our people's expertise. Their platform experience, business knowledge, and technical skills will stay critical as we move forward. Our consultants remain accountable for design decisions and for checking the work they delegate to AI. For us, AI is consultant-led, AI-assisted.

Looking to Get Real Value from AI in OneStream?

If you're weighing how AI could support your planning, reporting, or consolidation processes, we're happy to share what we're developing from our pilots and hear what's working for you. Get in touch today to talk about your priorities.

About the Author

Debbie Gallagher is a Senior Project Manager at Ascend . She has many years of experience managing ERP and EPM projects. In addition to managing Ascend client engagements, Debbie manages Ascend’s internal AI project.