Black Diamond Podcast

Black Diamond Podcast

Welcome to the BDA Podcast! Join us each week as we dive into the latest trends, insights, and best practices that are shaping the fintech landscape. Our expert guests—from seasoned consultants to industry leaders—share their experiences and strategies for success in the ever-changing world of financial technology.

  1. 11/20/2025

    S2E9 | OneStream Director Reveals Why ML Isn't Scary

    Tiffany Ma, Director of Product Marketing for AI and Operational Analytics at OneStream, returns for her second podcast appearance to share what's really happening with AI in finance. From 100+ live customer implementations to natural resource forecasting, the AI hype is meeting actual results. Remember when Tom Shea showed IBM Watson back in 2017 and shocked everyone by saying "this is really hard, I'm not gonna sell it to you"? That honesty was refreshing, but also showed the problem - AI was expensive, complicated, and required data scientists writing Python for years. Fast forward to today and OneStream's cracked the code on what they call "applied AI" - purpose-built for finance, no coding required, delivering results in weeks instead of years. But here's what's really interesting - the use cases have exploded beyond what anyone expected. Started with demand forecasting, expanded to P&L, now customers are doing workforce planning, cash management, even trying to forecast the materials needed to produce steel. That's not your typical FP&A use case, but when you have a tool that's agile enough to iterate quickly, people start getting creative. Tiffany breaks down why OneStream renamed Sensible Machine Learning to Sensible AI. Machine learning is quantitative - numbers forecasting numbers. But they've added generative AI for automated commentary and variance analysis, plus agentic AI with their new agents. They couldn't box themselves into "machine learning only" when the solution does way more than that.

    21 min
  2. 10/23/2025

    S2E7 | Cutting Planning Time By a Week

    Ricky LaBerge shares how a global manufacturing company transformed both consolidation and planning processes with OneStream.  Their old planning system was basically just a repository. Offline models everywhere, constant data loading issues, and fire drills that ate up valuable time. Instead of discussing the business, they were stuck trying to get numbers into the system.  After their OneStream implementation, there were no more fire drills. They were consistently closing books and issuing results to management on day four instead of day five. On the planning side, they started working before books are even closed thanks to the accordion setup. Thorough reviews happen a week earlier than before, and they keep shaving days off every year. DexKo was an amalgamation of an American firm and a German firm with completely different planning processes. BDA's Accordion Rolling Forecast helped bring them together while keeping separate models for different brands. The challenge wasn't technical - it was getting everyone aligned on new processes. Ricky's advice to companies starting their OneStream journey: From his consulting side: Ask lots of questions, keep requirements simple, don't spend 80% development time on 10% value, and really focus on design because it's expensive to change later. From his industry side: Training is everything. OneStream can be intimidating. Prying Excel from finance people's hands is hard, but communicate the value and it works.

    12 min
  3. 08/14/2025

    S2E3 | From Skepticism to Success

    Hosts Greg Beaton and Ryann Hristovsky sit down with Adrian Griffin, Financial Systems Manager at Subaru of America, to explore an incredible transformation story. Recorded at OneStream Splash 2025 in Nashville, this episode reveals how Subaru evolved from skeptics to enterprise-wide advocates through strategic implementation and smart change management. Key Discussion Points: Corporate transformation journey: How Subaru went from skeptical to having departments compete for the next OneStream project Beyond traditional CPM: Custom OneStream applications for extended warranty business (Added Security) using relational tables and cube integration VIN-level transaction drilling: Custom development enabling users to "see the VIN behind the numbers" with seamless Oracle ERP integration Change management strategies: Overcoming Excel dependency while maintaining user comfort Platform scalability: Multiple OneStream initiatives including consolidation, planning, account reconciliation, and marketplace solutions Real-time data integration: Nightly staging table processes connecting Oracle sub-ledger detail with OneStream summary reporting Adrian shares honest insights about user adoption challenges, the balance between summary-level reporting and transaction detail requirements, and how OneStream's platform capabilities enabled custom solutions beyond traditional financial consolidation. This episode demonstrates the power of how gradual transformation can turn into important change.

    19 min
  4. 07/17/2025

    S2E2 | Digital Transformation At Scale

    We sit down with Dane Arbuckle from Richardson International to explore how a 160-year-old agribusiness company successfully transformed their finance operations through strategic OneStream implementation. This compelling conversation reveals the critical lessons learned from scaling digital transformation across complex business models. Key Discussion Points: Building dedicated digital transformation teams: Why Richardson's Digital Ambition Group became the key to OneStream success From Excel chaos to one-click consolidation: How finance teams eliminated the "smoosh" of manual spreadsheet linking The power of future-proofing: Learning from phase one mistakes to build scalable, long-term solutions Accordion Rolling Forecast implementation: Real-time collaborative planning across diverse business units (grain, processing, retail) User adoption strategies: How teams evolved from Excel dependency to leveraging OneStream's cube views and dashboards Advanced functionality roadmap: Narrative reporting, Genesis no-code solutions, and machine learning applications Cultural transformation: Teaching 160-year-old processes to embrace automated consolidation and real-time reporting Dane shares candid insights about Richardson's journey from fragmented Excel-based reporting to unified OneStream consolidation, planning, and forecasting. This episode offers valuable lessons for finance leaders managing complex, multi-entity organizations seeking to scale their digital transformation efforts.

    23 min

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
2 Ratings

About

Welcome to the BDA Podcast! Join us each week as we dive into the latest trends, insights, and best practices that are shaping the fintech landscape. Our expert guests—from seasoned consultants to industry leaders—share their experiences and strategies for success in the ever-changing world of financial technology.