Ascend Partners and OneStream in Real Estate

Our leadership team has a long and successful track record of implementing CPM solutions at real estate firms. In fact, Ascend Partner’s first client was a REIT called First Capital Reality. First Capital Reality remains a large OneStream proponent and reference, so much so that we recently started a new project to enhance and modernize their application to reflect the business and organizational changes that have occurred over the past eight years.

Ascend has worked with 10 real estate companies over the past nine years to deliver very complex OneStream consolidation and planning solutions, enabling us to build up deep expertise in this sector. Real estate firms often have intricate ownership structures and the need for alternative rollups. Our extensive implementation experience with this type of consolidation accounting puts us at the forefront of the real estate sector and allows us to apply our time-tested consolidation principles that are needed to address the challenges faced by global real estate firms.

On the planning side, real estate firms often have very complicated planning and reporting requirements that are unique to their industry. Ascend has developed a comprehensive and repeatable system to transition planning ecosystems such as Hyperion and Excel into OneStream for even the largest of real estate firms. This is important because these companies often rely on complex driver-based models that are unique by line of business, and they heavily utilize Excel which is not sustainable. Having a systematic approach to building their planning and reporting in OneStream allows us to decrease both time and spend for the implementation. This streamlined approach enables companies to quickly realize the benefits of planning, budgeting and forecasting in OneStream and avoids a drawn-out implementation process that would have otherwise been encountered with other partners who don’t have Ascend’s level of experience in the real estate sector.

Ascend's Real Estate Clients

JDE & OneStream 

Most real estate firms, regardless of their industry niche, use JD Edwards as their main ERP. In our team’s experience, companies and teams that use “JDE” are loyal to the system and care deeply about how other systems interact with it. Organizations often rely on third-party tools with minimal functionality such as Spreadsheet Server, Reports Now, and Hubble, to produce some sort of reporting. We also commonly see companies using JDE for their consolidations which leads to a “black box” that few people in an organization can understand.

This is why Ascend is the partner of choice to lead large complex integrations with JDE and OneStream. Over the years our experience has led us to develop the “dos and don’ts” of developing a OneStream application that works seamlessly with JDE. We are brought in to unwind the “black-box” and develop consolidation methodology from the ground up in OneStream that meets the client's needs and works within their JDE chart of accounts.

In the real estate sector, we commonly see firms doing consolidations in JDE, some reporting in a third-party system, and the bulk of their planning (and other work) in Excel. We see this as a great opportunity for firms to streamline and standardize both their consolidation and planning processes and eliminate fragmented financial reporting through adoption of the unified OneStream Intelligent Finance platform.

Ascend can play an integral role when determining how OneStream can be impactful at a real estate company or answering any questions about OneStream’s compatibility with JDE. If your organization needs help with complex consolidation or planning issues, please do not hesitate to reach out.