Webinar On-Demand · September 30, 2026
Engineering the Modern Financial Close at Stellantis
About this webinar
Every great vehicle runs on precision engineering, the right components, and a clear road ahead. The same is true for owning the close.
Join Stellantis, Avvale, and OneStream to discover how one of the world's leading automotive companies modernized its financial close and consolidation to improve visibility, streamline reporting, and build confidence in its results. Facing a landmark merger, fragmented legacy systems, and hundreds of legal entities, Stellantis' Finance team needed a more scalable foundation. By eliminating manual processes and reducing rework, they built the precision and speed to close with confidence.
Walk away with practical insights to shift your close process into a higher gear.
Speakers
Global Finance Transformation Leader, Stellantis
Partner, Avvale
Senior Manager, Product Marketing, OneStream
Key takeaways
You'll learn:
- How to reduce manual effort and boost confidence in financial data
- Best practices for increasing visibility across close and reporting
- Lessons from Stellantis' implementation journey with Avvale and OneStream
- Why a modern Finance platform is the right foundation for future growth.
Webinar Transcript
Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us.
The, the webinar will begin in about one minute as we're waiting for everyone to arrive. The webinar will begin in about thirty seconds.
Thank you for attending. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's webinar, engineering the financial close at Stellantis.
I'm Tina Heismann. I'm the senior product marketing manager for financial close consolidations here at OneStream, and I'm excited to be joined today by our customer, Stellantis, along with our partner, Avali, for a discussion on how Stellantis was able to modernize their financial close.
Financial organizations today are under increasing pressure to close faster, improve transparency, and manage growing complexity across global operations. And much like engineering a modern vehicle, the modern financial close depends on hundreds of connected processes working together with precision, visibility, and control.
Modernizing the close is no longer just about reducing cycle times. It's about building a more connected, continuous close process that performs at scale.
During today's session, you'll hear how Stellantis partnered with Avali and OneStream to streamline and standardize financial close processes, improve visibility across the organization, and build a stronger foundation for scalable finance operations. We'll discuss key challenges they set out to solve, the approach they took to transformation, key lessons learned along the way, and the impact of modernized financial close process is having on the business today.
We're excited to have you with us, so let's go ahead and get started. So I'm joined today by Andrea Striglio, global finance transformation leader at Stellantis.
Andrea, can you give us a in the audience a quick introduction, please?
03:12 - 03:47
Hi, everybody. I'm Andrea Striglio.
I have, thirty seven years of professional background in the automotive sector covering multiple roles within finance, including CFO roles for EMEA Region and Maserati. Now as a head of global finance transformation, I'm leading the OneStream project since, the early stage of decision making on OneStream platform, and I'm responsible for the financial transformation roadmap that includes also several others finance global projects.
03:47 - 03:57
Thank you, Andrea. And, our partner, Francesco Rutigliani, CPM practice director at Avali.
03:57 - 04:20
Yeah. Thanks, Tina.
Thanks everybody for joining today. Yeah.
I'm Francesco Tijani. I lead the corporate performance management practice, in Abole, globally, and, I am a charter accountant and have been working in the last twenty five years developing, application, in on EPM practice.
04:20 - 06:44
Thank you, Francesco, and welcome to both Andrea and Francesco. Looking forward to our session today, and hearing all about the Stellantis story.
So let's take a quick look at how we're gonna spend our time today. We'll begin with, partnerships driving performance and how Stellantis, Aveli, and OneStream work together to support finance transformation at scale.
And after that, we'll get into to a little bit about building the foundation for a modern close, including the importance of connected processes, standardization, and visibility across the organization. And then we're really gonna dive into engineering the modern financial close, how Stellantis is evolving towards a more streamlined and continuous approach to close with one stream.
After that, we'll have a little chat about lessons learned from the road and how Stellantis, some of the key insights and takeaways from their implementation and transformation journey. And then we'll also take a look at what's down the road for Stellantis as they continue to their modern closed journey.
And finally, we're gonna wrap it up with a little bit of q and a if we have time from the audience. They'll be you know, feel free to ask your questions in the chat throughout the session, and, and then we'll wrap it up with a few closing thoughts and resources from one stream.
So modernizing the, financial close at a global organization like Stellantis requires more than just technology. It really takes a strong collaboration, shared goals, and the right expertise across every stage of the journey.
Just like engineering a high performing vehicle, success depends on having the right components working together seamlessly. In this case, that meant combining Stellantis' vision for finance transformation, OneStream's unified platform, and Aveli's industry and implementation expertise.
Together, the partnership focused on building a stronger foundation for a more connected and modern financial close, helping improve visibility, efficiency, and control across finance operations. So I'd like to turn it over to Francesco to introduce Evali and share more about their role in helping drive this transformation forward.
Francesco?
06:45 - 09:25
Okay. Yes.
Just quick words about Avale. So Avale is a global digital, system integrator, that support, customers and partners, in their innovation and digital transformation with, with the with attention on the on the circular economy and the sustainability.
We support our customer, in several market and and sectors. You can see some of the logos over there.
We have a history of more than twenty years, and we are growing every every year. We can, we can count on, more than 20 offices in 11 counties.
So we cover, all all the Europe, Saudi Arabia, Latin America, and North America. At the moment, we are more than three three thousand five hundred people.
And, yeah, what, what we distinguish ourselves that we can combine, both functional competencies and technical competencies and deep knowledge of the technology we work on like like one three. Next slide, please.
As I anticipated, I had the global EPM practice that can count on more than 500 for for a five, 550 people with the strong skills and competencies on all the CFO services. So corporate performance management, ESG, and, supported with the with the AI.
We have the chance to, in these last twenty years, work on more than 500 projects, and we are managing more than, 400 active customers. Our competence areas are for sure the, consolidation.
So financial close, account reconciliation, all the sustainability reporting and integrated reporting, the x p and a and the financial planning also together with the supply chain planning and reporting. And, we have also, center of excellence on, on OneStream with over 120 dedicated consultants on, on OneStream.
We have been working, with, with OneStream since, 2019. And, here we can see the the lower part of the slides some of our customers on, where we implemented OneStream.
Next slide, please.
09:25 - 12:47
K. Thank you, Francesco.
So I'm excited to share how Stellantis is redefining efficiency through the staff transformation initiative leveraging on OneStream platform. This journey is about, simplifying complexity and driving innovation in finance operation.
So Stellantis, as most of you know, is a global mobility leader with 14 iconic automotive brands. It operates across mainstream premium, sport utility, luxury, and American segments.
Beyond vehicle manufacturing, Stellantis generates also recurring revenue through high margin after sales service, like parts standard wording, standard warranty, and data. Through subsidiaries and strategic partnership, we offer financial solution as retail financing, leasing, and rentals to support customer retention and sales growth.
These companies must comply with a set of financial reporting regulation that are designed for the banking industry. Our unique portfolio of iconic brands give us the ability to offer to our customer a real freedom of choice, and that remains at the end of our strategy moving forward, strengthening execution across the business and fully leveraging our global scale together with our strong regional roots and partnership.
Next chart. These slides provide the background of Stellantis and set the stage for why transformation in finance was real.
Stellantis was formed back in January 2021 through the merger of PSA and FCA, creating one of the world's largest automotive groups. In 2020 in 2017, PSA strengthened its European foot print by acquiring for acquiring from General Motors, Opel.
Back in 2009, Fiat expanded its presence in The USA, US by acquiring Chrysler and and subsequently completed a major reorganization that laid the foundation for Fiat Chrysler Dubai. Then in 2024, the automotive international, a new Stellantis lead joint venture, launched its operation to the to distribute outside of China the vehicles of the motor based on a strategic align alliance with the Chinese OEM.
So Stellantis merger brought significant challenges. First, diverse system and processes created the complexity leading to EV manual work and no single source of truth for finance and business leaders.
Second, the scale is massive, five OEM and over 400 legal entities. Third, organizational complexity, so a matrix structure with six region, for team brands, more than 10 global functions, and multiple transversal business unit, like financial service, pro one like commercial vehicles, used cars, and so on.
So the start initiative was executed to address these challenges.
12:47 - 14:18
Thank you, Andrea, for the overview and sharing more about, Stellantis' background and global scale. That context is really important, because understanding the environment the finance teams are operating in today, especially in a business with this level of complexity and reach is you know, really gives us perspective as to to the the, grand scale of this project.
So with the background in place, we're now going to move into the next part of the discussion, building the foundation for the financial close. And in this section, we're really gonna start to explore how Stellantis approach the underlying structure of its finance environment and the key elements that needed to be in place to support a more modern financial close.
So let's dive in. You know, the key takeaway here is that engineering a closed performance doesn't start with technology or reporting.
It really starts with a strong foundation underneath everything else. And much like a vehicle blueprint, if the underlying design isn't consistent and well structured, it becomes difficult to scale performance or main maintain control as complexity grows.
So let's carry that forward as we move into this how this blueprint blueprint was brought to life. I'm going to hand it over to Andrea to walk us through the project and the objectives they set out to achieve.
Over to you, Andrea.
14:18 - 22:03
Thank you, Tina. So since the very first, project kickoff workshop, we recognized that for a project of this scale, it was essential to establish a strong and clear communication strategy along with a dedicated, positive identity.
To build an engaged and open minded, the larger project community, we are to clearly define the vision and objective in simple and accessible terms, encourage a mindset that embrace change and transformation in how we work, and foster the commitment to successful delivery through collaboration and shared partners. So the initial cornerstone of our internal communication strategy was the launch of the project naming and logo.
So start that stands for Stellantis Advanced Reporting, and the t represent the the the transformation, the tool, and the technology are all core elements of the journey. Start is not just a tool.
It's a a mindset shift. It aims to unify financial reporting across the organization, simplify processes, and empower teams with reliable data.
This transformation is driven by process redesign, technology, people engagement, and data governance. The vision statement of staff is to transform the way we work in Stellantis.
It's about creating an effective, efficient, and innovative finance organization, and this initiative leverage diversity and values to build a collaborative culture. Next slide.
So staff covers financial reporting and consolidation, account reconciliation, and intercompany matching. It integrates managerial and external reporting data and processes the guiding principle of our pop our people at the center, one platform leveraging all mainstream technology, flexible and scalable architecture, and reduce complexity.
The objective is to improve data consistency, harmonize metrics and processes, and enable faster decision making. Next chart.
We have engaged over 400 finance user actively participating in the project to be sure all regions and functions are represented. We have conducted over 250 global design workshop covering data model, new chart of account, processes, reports, as well as financial and nonfinancial TPI.
We have successfully onboarded and trained more than 3,000 user within the finance community. In the bottom of the chart, some highlights on the key design principle.
We have defined a core data model for both man management business review and external reporting, driven by one feed multiple view approach. As part of the data model, we have introduced a new financial reporting chart to account from the previous four with a huge reduction in terms of number of account.
We have deployed a global allocation engine to streamline allocation across regions. The benefits are clear, lower total cost of ownership, improved efficiency, speed, and compliance, and a system and a simplified system landscape that supports scalability and future growth.
Next slide. So on the left, you see the key challenges we face, fragmented system, outdated legacy technology, and limited analytical capabilities.
Many of those come from silvered processes and the reliance on multiple data sources, which hinder efficiency and transparency. Stellantis addresses these challenges by introducing a unified data model with a scalable dimension and harmonized financial reporting metrics and KPIs.
These enable consistent and transparent data for both managerial business review and external reporting. A major milestone in our in our data monetization journey has been the development of a new financial reporting chat to account along with full mapping rules across all accounting data sources.
This includes integration of 18 diverse SAP ten days. The project was streamed as engaged hundreds of key users across all regions, ensuring growth alignment and operational accuracy.
In parallel, the team has defined and implemented numerous enhancement to the accounting system to enrich the granularity in the ERPs to meet the requirements of the new data model. The unified OneStream platform streamlines Stellantis' consolidation process and significantly reduce demand and closing time.
The flexible dimensions allows rapid adaptation to organizational changes, while optimized analytics and reportings provide deep insight into large volumes of financial data. Next chart.
Let's walk through the journey together. We kicked it off in September 2002, 2022, sorry, setting the foundation for a multiple year transformation.
The first big milestone was the deployment of account reconciliation across 140 legal entities in all region, delivered in four waves from February to September 2024. This parallel project for Stream was our front runner, and we had to do things right since the beginning to gain trust across the organization.
While that was happening, the big phase of financial flows was going on. And using the agile methodology, we began first with UART in late twenty three, followed by other two URT two URT streams of, functionalities related released by Avaya in 2024.
In September 24, we began the first parallel run followed by the risk assessment and the setup the setup of the coin life strategy including the two parallel runs, one in March for January and February closing and another one in April for March closing, reconciling the data with the legacy system for q one and then going live in April month and closing. A stabilization phase forward safeguarding the smooth operation through the half year closing in June 2025 with all external reporting requirements that has been met, both in terms of quality and timing.
From there, the focus shifted to forecast '25 go live in September and budget '26 go live in October 2025. In parallel, we had also the worst team on the intercompany transaction matching that went live in August 25.
This journey has been an ad anything but linear and sequential. It was a coordinated effort requiring collaboration across teams and regions, driving up towards the fully integrated and streamlined financial processes.
22:03 - 24:00
Actually, Andrea, I wanted to, you know, kinda step in here a little bit because I'm I'm hearing so many interesting things. And one of the things that really stood out to me is that this transformation, it it wasn't approached as a single implementation.
It wasn't an isolated finance project. This was a carefully engineered, multiphase modernization journey really designed to support the global organization, operating at incredible scale and complexity.
And, I know I keep going back to this, but, you know, the the theme fits, similar to how a modern vehicle platform is really developed. The transformation required strong coordination and phased execution and rigorous testing and really the ability to connect multiple systems and processes into a more unified, platform.
And I guess what's especially interesting is how this program evolved over time, starting with modernizing the financial close and then expanding across reconciliations, transaction matching. And when organizations talk about modernization, it's easy to focus only on the technology.
But transformations at this scale really depend on, you know, a structured execution, stakeholder alignment, and really building confidence throughout each phase of the journey. And looking at the time line, that you've shown us there, you know, we can really see how Stellantis approached this as a long term operational transformation.
So, Andrea, I guess, one of the things that stands out is the amount of testing, validation, and phased deployment involved throughout the program. From your perspective, why was that phased approach so important for Stellantis given the scale and complexity of the organization? Oh,.
24:00 - 24:57
it was extremely relevant because at the end, we, we need to gain trust and confidence, from, all the stakeholders and users. So all those phase of, testing and parallel run was, the the the key in order to, confirm, let's say, after the risk assessment, that all the the all the figures of the financial reporting that will be then used for external reporting were accurate and consistent with what was originally reported in q one.
And so this q one phase, 2025, with a parallel run was, quite heavy in terms of workload, but was essential to give the right confidence to all the senior leaders that we were waiting to go live.
24:57 - 25:08
Yeah. Thank you, Andrea, for that.
And Francesco, is there anything from your side that you'd like to add on to this approach that, Stellantis took?
25:08 - 25:47
Well, I think that have been, very useful to have an overall idea of the entire, project perimeter at the beginning. So we were able to, design from a from a from a functional and and moreover a technical perspective the the the entire journey leveraging all the capabilities of the platform, including the extensibility.
So having a a a a wider idea of the entire perimeter of the project allow us to use at the best, all the functionalities offered by by OneStream platform.
25:47 - 25:56
Yeah. Excellent.
Tina, as we we will see later, I mean, the the the journey didn't finish, at the end of twenty twenty five, of course.
25:56 - 29:24
Yes. Looking forward to hearing more about that as well.
So what this journey really highlights is that, modernizing the financial close isn't about making one process slightly faster or replacing one legacy application with another. It's about fundamentally rethinking how finance operations are connected, governed, and scaled across the enterprise.
In many ways, that mirrors the broader transformation happening across the automotive industry itself. Modern vehicles are no longer engineered as disconnected mechanical systems.
They're built on integrated platforms where software, data, automation, and operational intelligence work together continuously and in real time. The modern financial close is evolving in a very similar way.
So in this next section, we're going to take a closer look at what the modern close means in practice through Stellantis' journey. We'll start by looking at OneStream's approach to the modern financial close, and then we'll walk through Stellantis' close and consolidation, account reps, and transaction matching journeys.
When we talk about the modern financial close, what we're really describing is a shift from a disconnected, reactive finance process to a more unified and continuously managed operating model. This is what organizations mean when they talk about a continuous close, not a point in time activity, but an operating rhythm where close consolidation, reconciliation, and reporting are happening in a connected way.
Historically, many closed processes were heavily sequential. Teams waiting on data, reconciling offline, managing exceptions manually, and often working across multiple systems with limited visibility into the bigger picture.
The modern close changes that dynamic entirely. With OneStream, finance processes become more connected and continuous, enabling organizations to move closer to a continuous close where data, reconciliations, reporting, and controls operate together in near real time as part of a single governed process.
Organizations can accelerate consolidations and financial reporting while improving the frequency and consistency of reconciliations throughout the closed cycle, not just at month end. And because everything is built in a unified platform, teams can move from reporting results to understanding them with greater speed, consistency, and confidence.
Ultimately, the modern close is no longer just a month end event. It becomes a continuously operating finance platform, one that improves decision speed, strengthens operational agility, and creates a more scalable foundation for planning, forecasting, and future growth.
So, Francesco, I'll hand it over to you to walk us through the, technical landscape, and then Andrea will talk to us a little bit about, you know, what the process what the consolidation process was like before the transformation, some of the key challenges that they were facing, and how the operating model evolved into a more connected and standardized approach. But, Francesco, let's talk about the technical landscape.
29:24 - 31:49
Yeah. Hi, Stina.
Yeah. If you look at, this picture, you you can realize that we have to face, a complexity linked to the huge number of data sources, ERP data sources to be integrated into into the consolidation data model coming from 20 different SAP systems.
Then during the project, we the some of the cars some of the companies have migrated to central finance tool, and then we had to, manage other other legacy systems, integration for other small smaller companies. So it was very useful to have a really powerful data management functionalities inside OneStream that allowed us for sure to easily integrate and map all the several dimensions that have been managed in the in the data model that we will see in a in a few minutes.
And then we were able both to upload, check, and validate data for all the companies' legal entities belonging in the group, especially because we had to integrate business entities and not legal entities. So we had to manage on the 7,500 business entities.
And then for sure, we guaranteed also the drill back and drill down functionalities from one stream allowing people to better understand and to explain every single number. This was made for for the actual data, but then beside the the the actual data, we had also to integrate in other several ways, forecast and budget data and nonfinancial KPIs, leveraging the capability of the tool to to read and upload text files, data from, other data sources and other databases, and, for sure, also Excel files.
So we we use the several way that the the OneStream to upload data to integrate all the data that were needed, both for actuals and forecast and budget. So I hand over to to Andrea that will give some more information about the process and the and the and the and the application.
31:49 - 39:17
Thank you, Francisco. So let's take a look at how staff has transformed our consolidation process.
Stellantis, the financial reporting with Stellantis was highly complex and resource intensive. External based only on external reporting that was relying on three legacy application, while the managerial reporting was largely manual and Excel based.
This, created inefficiency, risk of errors, and made the entire process rigid and slow. Different region and functions worked in silos, which meant limited integration and lack of one source of truth across organization.
Now we start. We have introduced a fully integrated and streamlined approach based on the global data model.
Consolidation now occurs in parallel across all regions, significantly accelerating the closing cycle. The allocation engine reduce manual volumes, enabling faster and more accurate manager reporting.
We also standardized the briefing book templates for all the reporting levels, ensuring consistency and clarity in financial disclosures. What is the result? A process that is not only faster and more efficient, but also provides a better data quality and transparency.
This transformation allows us to focus less on manual tasks and more on delivering insight that drive decision making for Stellantis. To improve the consolidation process, we have implemented also the intercompany transaction matching based on data at legal entity level, sourced from the ERPs to cleanse imbalances before finance final data validation of the legal entities is happening in start as we will see later.
Next chart. This slide is a bit the core of, our data model design.
This this summarize the foundation of the data model design. We have defined four core accountability models as part of the group business performance management framework.
This model guarantees that financial and operational performance is monitored from multiple perspective using a one feed multiple view approach and is consistent with the accountability and decision making at every level of the organization. On the top left, the regional model is built around the geographic market.
So the regional performance are measured on a well sold basis, meaning that the value chain is reported in the region that sell the product in each market. It consolidates multiple dimension, the brands, parts and service, manufacturing, engineering, and so on into a single view.
To build that that competes the Stellantis consolidation, the organizational hierarchies includes financial service supported by a dedicated data model that is tailored to their specific requirements and also holding in numbers. This model ensures that regional accountability is is transparent and aligned with the IFRS standard for external reporting.
Then on the top right, there is the brand model that focuses on the global profitability of each brand, split in passenger car and light commercial vehicles if applicable. It includes a detailed breakdown for new vehicle, used vehicle, and patent service.
And this model helps helps us understand how each region and market contributes to the global profitability of the brand and support, of course, the brand level decision making. Business unit model, bottom left, is a cross matrix approach to evaluate region and market contribution to global profitability of each business unit.
It drives transparency and strategic alignment by showing how different business unit contribute to a creative growth across the Stellantis portfolio. Then on the bottom right, you have the global function model that measures the total cost of each global function, such as, purchasing, HR, finance, so the typical corporate function, and and assess how this function contributes to achieving company targets efficiency.
It provides detailed cost breakdown by cost nature and account, enabling deeper analysis and cost control. Next chart.
So let's talk about account reconciliation. Account reconciliation is a key element of internal control.
Settings are configured during account creation and the revised annual. As you see at the bottom of the chart, the process includes risk assessment, periodic activity, and monitoring.
And then the at the end, the managers oversees the process to ensure accuracy and compliance. As we mentioned at the beginning, this new new process was set up for 140 legal entity at the at the beginning, 2024.
Now is expanded to other legal entities in scope, and we are targeting approximately 150 legal entity to be, live by the end of this year. Then, next chart.
So we have implemented one new file tool for account reconciliation, eliminated the fragmented processes, and enabling flexibility at legal entity level and consistent governance across all regions. The key design managements are synchronized with the core the core data model that we've seen before, like the the the digital entity code, the coding, the chart of account, the chart of control, and so on.
So we have the real time monitoring and centralized governance to reduce risk and enforce compliance. Intercompany reconciliation is now proactive and leverage on automation.
Transaction level details are automatically extracted from the accounting system to feed OneStream, and the process relies on several steps. So from workday minus five, potential imbalance are detected early and solved by the legal entities.
The process includes other two step of reconciliation cycles, report analysis and follow ups. These are reducing manual effort and enhance policy compliance and, help us in also, accelerating, the the the closing time.
39:17 - 40:06
Loved hearing the story about Stellantis and and your journey, through the different business processes, that inner company, which I can only imagine at a company of, Stellantis' scope is, just, has to be an amazing, solution for your company. But I wanted to take a few minutes to chat with you and Francesco and talk about lessons from the road.
So let's talk about maybe some of the things that you learned along the way, that type of thing. So, Andrea, I was wondering, what was the biggest realization or mindset shift for the organization as you move toward a more modern financial close?
40:06 - 40:59
Thank you, Tina. So this transformation was, not just about system.
It was about collaboration, resilience, and leadership. Teams across regions come together to build a fully integrated, streamlined financial processes.
We have proven what's possible when we work as one team. One of the biggest challenging was, challenge was to integrate the external reporting needs and the managerial reporting needs, removing barriers and solving a conflicting priorities across accounting, controlling, FPA, treasury, and so on to build a robust foundation in both aspects.
The convergent and harmonized data model, including also the new chart on account, for example, and the new streamlined harmonized processes.
40:59 - 41:19
Excellent. Love that.
So, I guess, where do you think that the organization started to feel, the operational impact first? Was it more visibility, better governance? You know, you mentioned efficiency earlier. Was it something else, do you think?
41:19 - 43:05
The first tangible result for the finance organization was the h one of twenty twenty five closing. So the after three months of, from Goliath, demonstrating in real life the benefit on several aspects, reliable and consistent financial reporting, governance of the process, and of the one stream application time saving in the monthly closing operation, also in the speed of, managing several consolidation hierarchies as we have seen before in the archetypes of the data model.
I mean, we we have, I wouldn't mention that the the the wide number of consolidation structure that we have. And, I mean, we were really happy to the reaction of the application of the platform in, in the, how fast the consolidation has been managed during, h one closing.
Regarding flexibility, I can highlight that following the the appointment of the the new CEO in the second part of twenty twenty five and some changes that occurred in the organization, we have been capable also to quickly adapting the external and managerial financial reporting, because we we have changed the reporting segment for the year end closing and manage also in parallel the monthly restatement of all the 2025 period. So this has been done on time and with there's no transition for the use.
43:05 - 43:29
That's excellent. So it sounds like all of the above is the answer to that question.
Right? That's that's wonderful. Thank you.
So my last question for you, for organizations that are early in their modernization journey, What advice would you give them around preparing the business for a transformation of the scale?
43:29 - 45:46
Thank you for the question. This for us, the journey was a roller coaster.
Our leadership transition, complex challenges, and bold decision that shaped this journey. But, that's the essence of the transformation, and that's change, stay focused, and keep pushing forward.
From our experience, I can highlight four points. Firstly, change management.
When you need process projects that, will influence thousands of users worldwide, people must always be at the center. It's not only about the core team that is fully dedicated to the project.
You must build a larger community of expert. So you need to have a clear and simple communication strategy about the vision and the objective, a project identity to build the momentum, and and then keep them continuously engaged and informed so that they can feel proud of being part of the community that is changing how we work, and they will be the ambassador for all other users.
Second is the data model design that need to start with a clear assessment and understanding of the company business performance, management framework, and metrics, and how this relates to managerial accountability model and the external reporting needs. Key decision must be solid, and keep always the focus on your must have at the landing point.
Third is think forward and assess the organizational changes that will be eventually needed, not only in terms of change of roles and responsibility, but also setting up a center of excellence that will own the maintenance of the data model and the continuous improvement in the application. In our experience, the selected CUI Resources have been part of the project team since the early stage of the journey.
As four point, there is a key to have a strong commitment from the leadership from the leadership team and if applicable, as it was in our reality, to define share objective to be included in the variable payout.
45:46 - 46:12
That's excellent. Thank you so much, Andrea.
I wanted to switch gears for a moment and think about things from the implementation side. So, Francesco, I have a couple of questions, for you as well.
So, you know, from an implementation perspective, what were some of the most important design decisions that help make the transformation scalable long term?
46:12 - 47:38
Well, for for Vola, as Andrea anticipated, we dedicated enough time for the for the for the analysis and the and the technical design because we have to manage a huge number of legal entities belonging to different sector. We had the the car market sector, the holding sectors, then, the financial services sector.
So, as we said, we had to integrate several chart of accounts with different granularity into a unique group chart of accounts. So, it this took time.
And then, for sure, we leverage the, the platform or the capability of or the platform to manage several dimensions. So we we used all the user dimensions that were available, sharing where possible, the demographic among the the the the single all the companies in order to, yeah, to leverage also these these functionalities, of OneStream.
And, for sure, not thinking only about the group reporting, statutory manager, but also leveraging the data sources, the same data sources to populate also account reconciliation or intercompany the intercompany transaction matching. These are the first steps of a longer journey where we we leverage again the the power pool of the platform to manage the future processes of Stellantis.
47:38 - 49:04
Yeah. If I can compliment, Tina, I mean, the the maybe just to, explain a bit more about the the concept of one source, multiple viewers.
But just to mention before, we have more than 7,000 business entities. So it means that each of our legal entity is split in multiple business entity, and the the the purpose of this business entity is to be the the, as in the lake of bricks.
So let's say the the the base brick that needs to to feed all the different archetype that we have seen before in the data model. So this was very, very challenging but very interesting, in the in the part of the implementation, and, is what allows us to, to achieve the the the results that we have obtained.
Taking in mind that, we have, redefined all the coding, also starting from the the chart of account. So with the a new coding that, was not the one of PSA, was not the one of CSCA, but was a brand new defined for Stellantis as well as many of the other coding that we have, defined and implemented in the user dimension.
So I use one.
49:04 - 49:05
Yeah.
49:05 - 49:26
And and also oh, I would also add that we are too guaranteed that the top level consolidation figures were automatically balanced. So that was another challenge for that.
Finding such a huge number of elements that roll up in several different consolidation hierarchies.
49:26 - 49:49
Very complex. Very complex.
So, you know, the opposite of that. So, Francesca, I want to know with such a complex environment, how did you approach simplifying that, especially where there were already so many established processes and systems in place?
49:49 - 50:43
Yeah. For sure, as, as Andrea described, in the former environment to we we came from different consolidation tools, different or nonexisting account reconciliation tools, and then, above all, also the intercompany transaction matching made both mostly on Excel or other tools.
So, really, the the success of the project was to pay attention and collect all the information at the same time in order to design something that was homogeneous and, allow, allow people to to fasten their activity sharing where possible the same sources in order to avoid duplicated data and also misalignment among the data that could come from different different data sources.
50:43 - 51:41
Yeah. Tina, if I may add the, I mean, the keyword is converge and harmonize because, of course, as we mentioned at the very beginning, coming from a reality with many different system and tools.
Let's say that the the simplification was achieved, bringing, let's say, in a unique tool, all the, the needs and the requirements from the the different perspective. So these, the the the complexity of Stellantis is, is still there.
It's not something we can change. The point is the complexity of the business, is the complexity of the organization, and so on.
So what we we need to simplify is what is behind in order to achieve the possibility for finance to to provide, reliable data on time and speed up all the processes and harmonizing also the processes.
51:41 - 52:06
Excellent. Well, thank you both for, for having that, chat and, you know, kinda revisiting some of the lessons from the road.
So I know one of the things as we look forward and, Andrea, you had had alluded to it briefly before. But what's next? So I'd love to hear about, you know, what's next for, Stellantis.
52:06 - 54:19
Yeah. Let's see.
Our partnership with, OneStream is, something we are leveraging also, because it is a platform, not not just a finance consolidation, a financial close, or account reconciliation. So we we we have, other projects on the way, some that are still linked to the financial reporting like the capital by capital reporting that will go live shortly in, in h one.
We have all a a big multiyear project that is, you know, we call, Maya, that is margin intelligence analytics, with the the purpose again of, converging and harmonizing the the margin analysis at the greater level of details. So we start here to brand that now we are going down at the level of, Caroline, channel sales, and so on in the planning tool of, of our stream, involving again, all the regions and and, trying again a similar effort to converge into one platform.
And, and this will, in terms of vision, will help us also in setting the foundation for a better usage of AI for predictive forecasting and and stuff like that. Another project that is already taken off is a group test reporting.
Again, also this is currently in another application, and you want to to, onboard also the the group treasury reporting within one stream. There are several other offerings that are going because, as I said before, the the organization is starting live.
We just announced our our strategic our strategic plan in the past days. So we need to react faster to to those, to those change and get prepared for what's next.
54:19 - 55:34
Great. Thank you, Andrea.
So, I know, ordinarily, we leave a little bit of time to to look at, some of the questions that have come in from the chat, but we're we're running out of time here today. So we will, gather those and, and get back to, to everyone with the responses.
A lot of great questions in the chat. But with that, I think, you know, I wanna say thank you to, Andrea and Francesco for sharing, the Stellantis story.
It was incredible. Really enjoyed, the path that you're on and, you know, lots of great things to look forward to.
So excited that you've already, been realizing a lot of benefits from, from the OneStream platform. And, you know, for those of you on the webinar that are interested in staying connected with OneStream or learning about how you can start your own modern financial close journey, you can scan the QR code that's on the slide, and that will take you to our financial close hub.
It's filled with different blogs, ebooks, and videos to help you get started on your close journey today. And with that, I'd like to say thank you to everyone who attended, and we'll see you on the next webinar.
Thank you.
55:34 - 55:35
Thank you.
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