Video · August 7, 2025
How Barrick Gold built a Finance platform fast enough to close first in mining
About this video
Barrick Gold, the world's second largest gold producer, arrived at OneStream after years of M&A activity left it managing a deeply complex financial architecture across hundreds of legal entities with mismatched systems and charts of accounts. The new CFO set two clear mandates: close the books faster than any other mining company and digest a new acquisition in under three months.
OneStream delivered on both. Month-end close compressed from 10 business days to six or seven, and 420 legal entities were converted from legacy ERPs into SAP and OneStream over two and a half years. Barrick can now onboard any new acquisition with confidence, applying a standardized conversion process that removes the fear and complexity that once came with every deal.
Speakers
Director of Financial System Integration | Barrick Gold
Key takeaways
- Years of M&A activity created a financial architecture too complex to support the speed the business now demands. Mismatched systems, charts of accounts, and legal entity structures made closing fast and integrating acquisitions quickly nearly impossible without a platform overhaul.
- The CFO set two mandates: close faster than any mining peer and absorb a new acquisition in under three months. OneStream became the platform chosen to make both achievable, replacing a legacy landscape that was too big, too slow, and too rigid for what Barrick needed.
- Month-endclose compressed from 10 business days to six or sevenend to end. That gain came from a combination of a stronger ERP and OneStream's consolidation capabilities working together acrossa highly complex global entity structure.
- 420 legal entities were converted from legacy ERPs into SAP and OneStream in two and a half years. That proven conversion playbook means Barrick can now onboard any new acquisition into Barrick's standard chart of accounts without hesitation or fear.
- Financial transformation is the prerequisite for AI readiness in a volatile, data-hungry business environment. Barrick's platform modernization was not just about closing faster. It was about building the strong, simplified, standardized foundation that makes stepping into the future of Finance possible.
Read Full Transcript
My name is Etienne Durafour and I'm the Director of the Financial System Integration for Barrick Gold. So Barrick Gold is the second biggest gold producer in the world and we produce gold and copper. Barrick Gold is quite a company as well that has been growing by M&A activity.
So we did a lot of acquisition. And when you do an acquisition, you have to digest and embed different companies, different systems, different chart of accounting. And what happened at Barrick, it's after all these years of acquisition, we ended up with a very complex financial architecture landscape.
The mandate from our new CFO was to be able to be the first in the mining industry to close our books on a monthly and quarterly basis. And two, the mandate was to be able to consolidate or to digest a new acquisition in less than three months.
But it was time to just completely change our system. And OneStream was definitely the leader that we wanted the XCO to approve. First, the benefit and the gain that we have like very quickly on OneStream was the month-end process.
We were able to reduce from 10 business days to 6-7 from end-to-end with a better ERP, but mostly as well on our consolidation system. And finally, we have proven to the CFO that we converted 420 legal entities in two and a half years from the old ERPs to the new SAP and into OneStream for forecasting.
So now we knew that any new acquisition, we are not afraid of a new company coming. We will do exactly what we did with the data conversion and bring them in our Barrick standard, in our Barrick chart of accounting.
We have everything to be able to digest them tomorrow. We have everything to be able to digest them tomorrow. We arrive in a stage right now with the volatility on the market, with the business asking for a lot of data.
The system has to be strong, simplified, standardized, to be quick and efficient. All systems are not designed for that. The legacy systems are way too big, and it was the past. And the only way to be able to step in the future and to be active on AI, it's by going through this financial transformation.
Create a platform for the future. Take finance further.
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