When it comes to financial systems, SAP is the bedrock for large enterprises in industries such as mining, manufacturing, and energy, as well as many others. Financial close, though, often runs on something else entirely: manual extracts, intermediate files, partial integrations stitched together case by case. Each of those methods carries the same risk: delay, drift, and no way to confirm the numbers in the planning platform match what’s actually in SAP.
For organizations managing multiple entities, cost centers, and profit centers across jurisdictions, that gap slows down close, complicates audits, and forces finance teams to spend time defending numbers instead of acting on them.
This is an issue that several of our clients have encountered. Each ran S/4HANA or ECC. Each needed OneStream to centralize Trial Balances and support consolidation, entity-level analysis, and management reporting. Each had been getting there through manual processes and one-off integrations with no real trail back to the source data.
The gap wasn't the planning platform. It was the connection feeding it.
SAP BTP and SAP Integration Suite (CPI) became the connective layer between SAP and OneStream, decoupling the two systems and centralizing security, transformation, and monitoring in a single architecture.
CDS Views and OData services exposed Trial Balance data by Company Code, Cost Center, Profit Center, General Ledger Account, and Segment—the dimensions these businesses run on. S/4HANA environments used optimized CDS Views; ECC environments used adapted equivalents, so the data model stayed consistent regardless of SAP version. CPI consumed those services, transformed the data into OneStream's dimensional format, and kept every flow traceable end to end.
Drill Back lets a user go from a consolidated balance in OneStream directly to the underlying accounting document in SAP, in many cases landing in SAP Fiori itself. Where standard Fiori drill-back wasn't precise enough, the team extended those apps using SAP Business Application Studio, so Fiori could accept parameters passed from OneStream and route users to the exact transaction rather than the general ledger area.
Auditors can now trace a reported number back to its source document instead of taking it on faith.
The right connectivity model depends on a client's security posture and integration roadmap:
The shift showed up first in how finance teams worked, not just in what they reported. Reconciliation stopped being a monthly headache. Numbers stopped needing a caveat. The results:
Finance teams spend less time reconciling and more time analyzing.
Take a mining or precious metals company, for instance. It manages volatile pricing and multi-jurisdiction reporting with less margin for error. A fragmented SAP-to-OneStream connection, fed by manual extracts, adds risk at exactly the point where finance teams can least afford it.
A direct, traceable line to the source system removes that risk. And because the connectivity model is selected for each client’s environment rather than fixed in advance, the same architecture extends to the next system (another ERP, a new acquisition’s SAP instance, a data warehouse) without rebuilding from scratch.
Ascend Partners is the Diamond Standard in EPM Advisory & Delivery. From our headquarters in New York, NY, we work with finance and data leaders across North America to choose, build and run the systems they depend on. Our experienced teams help clients close faster, plan with confidence and trust their numbers, on whichever platform best fits their needs.