GM Financial sees improved reporting and planning with Oracle Fusion Cloud EPM

As a wholly owned subsidiary of General Motors, GM Financial helps put “dreams in driveways” by providing vehicle financing through dealerships. To give company executives the data needed for month-end business reviews, variance analysis, and workforce planning, the company’s financial team had to harvest data from three financial applications plus additional databases, consolidate the data in a spreadsheet, and then create reports. Using Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), GM Financial standardized processes, reduced planning cycle times, and gained greater visibility into planning across finance and different lines of business. The company now has a single source for financial data, which executives receive via dashboards configured to their needs.   

GM Financial has grown steadily since GM acquired it in 2010, and over that time the company stood up various financial platforms to meet planning and reporting needs as they arose. For example, North American and Canadian financial planning ran on one system, activity-based costing on another, and international reporting on a third. The company knew it needed a planning and analysis environment that would make sense of all its financial data. It runs Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP and chose Oracle Fusion Cloud EPM to provide a one-stop platform for financial reporting, analytics, planning, and product profitability and cost management.

Future innovation was one of the biggest reasons GM Financial chose Oracle. Using Oracle Cloud EPM means the company gets new innovations and updates on a quarterly basis. Working alongside the Oracle Consulting team during implementation, the GM Financial team picked up tips on tasks such as creating new dashboards or analytics down the road. “We got to ride along with them and learn how to do the building, learn how to use the product, and innovate with it rather than just implement it and be done,” says Brian Mastropiero, financial vice president of financial planning analysis.

After implementing Oracle Fusion Cloud EPM, GM Financial gained more robust reporting capabilities. In the past, it took too long to even access data, let alone generate reports. Now, with faster access to data, reduced manual data collection errors, and an easy-to-navigate dashboard, employees can quickly create reports that help facilitate analysis and planning. Fewer manual tasks save time and costs associated with these data-related processes.

Labor is GM Financial’s biggest expense, so workforce planning is one of its most important uses of Oracle Cloud EPM. The company runs time studies for different business functions, so it understands how many more employees it needs to support a growing customer base. Using Oracle Cloud EPM Workforce Planning, GM Financial can plan and analyze staffing costs more efficiently and accurately and better collaborate on strategic workforce plans with HR.

In terms of innovation, the finance organization now has a small team focused on quickly developing and delivering new analytics views and dashboards for executive use. Next, the company is looking to use the AI and predictive planning capabilities embedded in Oracle Cloud EPM to support decision-making.

Oracle Consulting implemented Oracle Fusion Cloud EPM with GM Financial, helping the company revamp its processes as well as learn to use the application. “We've had success not just with Oracle’s technology, but with its consulting services. We’ve been able to innovate and bounce ideas off them and learn about things that we didn’t know,” says Mastropiero.