NCS Multistage, is a leading provider of highly-engineered products and support services that facilitate oil and natural gas well completions and field development strategies. NCS approached Oracle and EPMI to streamline their disparate and dated finance systems. While they were leveraging on-premise Hyperion and Excel for consolidations, planning, and budgeting processes, their team struggled to collaborate and gain useful insights from their disorganized troves of data. In addition, they were using BlackLine for account reconciliations with limited visibility into source data balances.
Prior to Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close, it would take several weeks to complete the month-end process. From an organizational perspective, NCS is composed of 16 separate legal entities, some of which were using Quickbooks and other minimalist accounting systems. Without a digital paper trail, any audit was costly and time-consuming. NCS’s Excel-based approach for intercompany eliminations and journals posed extensive risk for errors and tracking changes throughout the Close. Account reconciliations suffered from manual data loads and lacked automation. They knew there had to be a better and more efficient way that would mitigate risk and provide the reporting reliability that is required of a public company.
Through a partnership with Oracle and EPMI, NCS implemented Oracle Cloud Financial Consolidation, Planning, and Account Reconciliations to modernize their financial systems. They were able to shave down their month-end close process to several days, rather than weeks. The direct integration with Oracle also enabled drill-back functionality from reporting and reconciliations for a single version of the truth. Furthermore, NCS enabled an annual budget, 12-month rolling quarterly forecast, and a 3-5 year long-range plan.
In the words of Wade Bitter, Chief Accounting Officer: “Our close process will be much more automated with the implementation of Oracle EPM Cloud. It will save us a lot of time each month.”