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Success Story | Retail

From Fragmented to Future‑Proof: A Leading Canadian Retailer’s Financial Transformation

How a Major Canadian Grocery Retailer Accelerated Financial Consolidation & Reporting with OneStream and Ascend Partners.

Our client is Canada’s third-largest grocery and pharmacy chain, with over $20B in annual revenue and a vast retail footprint of 992 grocery stores and 641 pharmacies. Headquartered in Quebec, it employs over 95,000 people and plays a critical role in the nation’s food and health supply chain. As part of a $1B modernization initiative, the company launched a $420M fully automated distribution centre to drive operational innovation.

Our client wished to overhaul its consolidation and reporting workflows and gain a greater level of visibility and oversight over its financial operations. After some evaluation of possible vendors, it chose OneStream and Ascend Partners as both the solution and implementation partner of choice.

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The Challenge 

  • Fragmented Financial Systems: Our client relied on SAP ECC and S4 Hana trial balances across multiple entities—creating a disconnected architecture with limited consolidated visibility.
  • Manual, Lengthy Closing Cycles: Month-end and quarter-end processes were highly manual, slowing reporting and delaying insights.
  • Limited Reporting & Analysis: Legacy tools restricted ad hoc reporting and dynamic analysis, making it harder to respond to evolving business needs.
  • Inefficient CapEx Budgeting: Capital expenditure planning was not integrated with actuals or strategic forecasting, impacting budget alignment.
  • Over-reliance on Excel for Consolidation: The retailer’s financial consolidation process depended on large Excel spreadsheets, which were slow to open, prone to timing out, and difficult to manage at scale.
  • Siloed Data Across Units: Disparate sources made consolidation and analysis across the entire network challenging.
  • Lack of Workflow Governance and Data Security: Data uploads lacked consistency without a centralized workflow or audit mechanisms, making change tracking and implementing uniform handling practices difficult.

Business Value

By choosing OneStream and Ascend, our client streamlined its operations and gained valuable strategic insights that continue to drive stronger business performance and unlock new opportunities for the future.


Data Integration Journey

  • SAP Integration: Connected SAP Trial Balance and store production hours for comprehensive financial visibility.
  • Automated Data Flow /Scheduled Data import: Enabled hourly import, validation, load, and consolidation at period close using Marketplace’s Data Import Schedule Manager.
Alternate Hierarchy Consolidations
  • Multi-Hierarchy Support: Empowered the consolidation team to manage statutory and management, and added company views.
  • Dynamic Reporting: Created a mirror dimension in UD5 to distinguish performance of stores/entities opened <1 year vs >1 year.

Intercompany Eliminations

  • Automated Intercompany Logic: Streamlined elimination of advances and billings with customized matching logic.
  • Division-Level Reporting: Leveraged tailored Intercompany reports to reconcile eliminations at both division and base entity levels.

Retail Calendar Setup

  • Custom Fiscal Calendar: Implemented a 13-period structure aligned with retail fiscal year ending on the last Saturday of September.
  • 52/53 Week Flexibility: Extended Q3 (16 weeks) for accurate seasonal planning and reporting.

Smart Reporting & Form Design for Precision Planning

  • Multi-Level Reporting: Created summarized views with drill-through links to detailed reports for deeper analysis and transparency.
  • Margin Account Reporting: Segmented reporting for stores open <1 year vs >1 year, supporting performance tracking and strategic planning.
  • Calendar-Aware Data Forms: Designed forms to toggle inclusion of week 53 data, ensuring accurate reporting across fiscal variations.

Visibility and Drill-Down Capabilities:

  • Enables users to easily explore financial data in detail, tracing figures back to their source for accurate and informed decision-making.

Choose Ascend to implement your OneStream solution.


Why Ascend?

Our team possesses the perfect combination of technical expertise and extensive knowledge to provide cutting-edge solutions that perfectly align with the constantly evolving technological landscape of today and tomorrow.

About OneStream

OneStream is the fastest-growing Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) and Corporate Performance Management (CPM) platform, transforming financial processes for over 1,200 customers around the world. Recognized as a Top Quadrant leader by Gartner, OneStream empowers businesses across industries like mining, manufacturing, real estate, higher education, and retail.

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