.svg "EPMware"){kind=small}
EPMware
Software
Every finance organization eventually reaches the same crossroads. Business continues to evolve at an accelerating pace as new facilities open, organizations restructure, acquisitions introduce entirely new reporting entities, and planning models become increasingly sophisticated. Yet while finance applications continue to modernize, the processes that manage the financial structures behind those systems often remain surprisingly manual. Many organizations still rely on spreadsheets, paper forms, email approvals, and disconnected workflows to manage financial metadata. Although these processes may have been sufficient years ago, they quickly become a barrier to agility as the business grows.
For Select Medical, one of the nation's largest providers of critical illness recovery hospitals, rehabilitation hospitals, outpatient rehabilitation clinics, and occupational health centers, this challenge became increasingly apparent during the company's transition from Oracle Hyperion to OneStream. Rather than viewing the project as simply another system implementation, the finance systems team recognized an opportunity to rethink how financial master data was governed across the organization. The objective wasn't simply to replace one application with another. It was to modernize the operational processes surrounding financial systems so that Finance could respond to business change more quickly and with greater confidence.
James, who led both the evaluation and implementation of EPMware, recalled just how manual the existing process had become. "Everything was on paper. We had an actual paper signature metadata maintenance process. Adobe signed documents were getting passed around. There was an Excel document, somebody would print it and sign it and scan it back in." While the process technically worked, it required significant administrative effort and delayed the availability of critical financial structures throughout the organization.
Many finance transformation initiatives focus exclusively on the implementation of a new ERP or EPM platform. Select Medical deliberately chose a broader perspective. The leadership team understood that replacing Hyperion with OneStream would certainly modernize financial consolidation, but it would not solve the inefficiencies surrounding metadata governance unless those processes were redesigned at the same time.
At the center of the challenge was volume. The organization averaged approximately 350 metadata changes every month across Oracle ERP and OneStream. New departments, facilities, reporting entities, planning members, and organizational changes were constantly being introduced, yet the manual approval process forced the finance systems team to batch nearly all of those changes together at month end. Business users requesting a new hierarchy or planning member early in the month often had to wait until just before close before seeing that change reflected in production.
James described the impact candidly: "If you requested something in the beginning of the month, you weren't going to be able to see or utilize that metadata for a whole month." The problem was not simply administrative inefficiency. Delayed metadata prevented planners from modeling new business operations, slowed reporting, and introduced unnecessary friction between Finance and the business units it supported.
The OneStream implementation created the ideal opportunity to challenge those longstanding processes. Rather than replicating existing workflows in a new platform, the team asked a much broader question: How should financial metadata be managed if we were designing the process from scratch today? That shift in thinking ultimately became the catalyst for a much broader operational transformation.
Processed a substantial number of new metadata elements in thirty minutes.
75% decrease in metadata management time.
Approval chains were streamlined & delays eliminated.
Financial planning cycles became more responsive.
As the project evolved, the team realized that success was not simply about automating an existing workflow. It was about changing ownership. Historically, Finance depended on technical administrators to receive requests, coordinate approvals, perform metadata updates, and deploy changes into production. The people requesting the business changes rarely controlled the process itself.
Select Medical envisioned a different operating model. Finance users would initiate requests as soon as business changes were identified. Business stakeholders would approve those requests through structured workflows, and once approved, metadata would automatically deploy into production without waiting for scheduled month-end processing. Rather than acting as transaction processors, the finance systems team could focus on governing the overall process while Finance assumed ownership of its own organizational structures.
"We wanted to put some of the power back into Finance's hands," James explained. Today, many approved metadata requests move from submission to production in less than twenty-four hours, fundamentally changing how quickly the organization can respond to business change.
The transformation also improved transparency throughout the organization. Instead of requests disappearing into email inboxes or waiting for month-end processing, Finance gained visibility into where requests stood, who was responsible for approvals, and when changes would become available. Governance became embedded into the process without slowing the business down.
The modernization effort also addressed another challenge that had quietly developed over time. Because metadata was maintained manually across multiple systems, Oracle ERP, OneStream, Development, User Acceptance Testing, and Production environments frequently contained different versions of the organization's financial structures. These inconsistencies complicated testing, slowed deployments, and required frequent synchronization efforts.
"The hierarchies in our different systems, in OneStream and Oracle, didn't line up either because they were manually maintained," James explained.
By centralizing metadata governance, Select Medical established a single controlled process for maintaining financial structures across every environment. Approved changes now propagate consistently throughout Oracle ERP, OneStream, Development, UAT, and Production, eliminating the need to repeatedly copy entire applications simply to synchronize metadata. The result is a true single source of truth that provides greater confidence for both business users and system administrators while significantly reducing administrative overhead.
The impact extends beyond operational efficiency. When planning teams, financial reporting teams, accounting, and IT all reference the same governed structures, reporting becomes more consistent, testing becomes more reliable, and Finance can make decisions with greater confidence. Metadata stops being an administrative burden and instead becomes a strategic asset supporting every downstream financial process.
As part of its evaluation, Select Medical reviewed several approaches to solving the problem. Oracle Enterprise Data Management (EDM), OneStream Application Control Manager (ACM), and internally managed processes were all considered. Each addressed part of the organization's requirements, but none aligned as closely with the team's vision for long-term governance.
Oracle EDM offered comprehensive functionality but introduced licensing considerations that became increasingly difficult to justify given the organization's volume of metadata changes. OneStream ACM provided native metadata capabilities within the platform, but it lacked the level of enterprise workflow, configurability, and scalability required to support nearly 3,000 users and hundreds of monthly metadata changes.
What ultimately differentiated EPMware was not simply the breadth of functionality. It was the flexibility of the platform. Rather than forcing Select Medical to adapt its business processes to fit the software, the platform could be configured to reflect how the organization actually operated. Dynamic forms, configurable approval workflows, custom metadata attributes, conditional fields, and business-specific validation rules allowed the solution to fit naturally into existing finance processes.
James summarized it best when describing the evaluation: "It felt more like a platform than an out-of-the-box tool." That flexibility gave the organization confidence that the solution could evolve alongside the business instead of becoming another system that would eventually require replacement.
Technology was only one part of the evaluation. The implementation team placed equal importance on selecting a partner that would remain engaged well beyond go-live. Enterprise software inevitably evolves as organizations grow, acquire new businesses, and refine their operating models. Having a vendor willing to collaborate on those changes was viewed as equally important as the underlying technology.
"We really prioritize a partner that's able to provide support and is willing to be engaged," James explained. "That was probably priority number one for us."
That philosophy influenced the entire implementation. Rather than delivering software and stepping away, the EPMware team worked alongside Select Medical to refine workflows, optimize approval routing, support enhancements, and continuously improve the governance process as new requirements emerged. The relationship evolved into an ongoing partnership focused on helping Finance achieve its broader operational objectives.
For organizations evaluating enterprise technology, that distinction matters. Software capabilities can often appear similar during demonstrations, but long-term success frequently depends on the quality of the people standing behind the platform.
The operational improvements became visible almost immediately after implementation, but the true business value extended well beyond faster metadata processing.
Before EPMware, one full-time employee spent nearly all of their time managing metadata requests, manually coordinating approvals, and implementing changes. Following implementation, that responsibility dropped to roughly twenty-five percent of their workload, allowing the individual to focus on higher-value initiatives such as reporting, analytics, and broader finance transformation projects.
The organization also discovered opportunities to simplify its governance model. By analyzing approval workflows after implementation, Select Medical identified reviewers who were routinely approving requests that did not require their involvement. Approval chains were streamlined, unnecessary delays were eliminated, and the organization optimized governance without sacrificing control. James noted that these improvements became evident within the first three months after implementation.
Perhaps most importantly, Finance no longer had to wait for month-end to gain access to new financial structures. Planning cycles became more responsive, operational changes were reflected in financial systems far more quickly, and the business could move at a pace that better matched its growth.
Every successful transformation has a defining moment—the point at which the organization realizes the investment has fundamentally changed how it operates.
For Select Medical, that moment arrived during a significant acquisition. The transaction required a substantial number of new metadata elements to be introduced into the financial environment under aggressive timelines. Under the previous process, coordinating those changes would have required extensive manual effort across multiple members of the finance systems team.
Instead, the team assembled a bulk upload template, processed the required metadata, and completed the work in approximately thirty minutes.
"That was one of the moments where we were like... OK... this was a good call," James recalled.
The value of the investment was no longer measured by workflow automation or deployment speed. It was measured by the organization's ability to respond confidently to significant business events without creating operational disruption.
Finance leaders today are under constant pressure to accelerate planning cycles, integrate acquisitions more quickly, improve data quality, and provide the business with faster insight. Achieving those objectives requires more than implementing modern ERP and EPM platforms. It requires modernizing the governance processes that control the financial structures those platforms depend on.
Select Medical recognized that metadata governance was not an isolated IT initiative. It was a finance transformation initiative. By treating financial master data as a strategic business asset rather than an administrative task, the organization created a governance model that enables Finance to move faster while maintaining consistency, transparency, and control.
For executives evaluating their own finance transformation roadmap, the lesson is straightforward. Modernizing financial systems without modernizing financial master data leaves one of the most important operational processes unchanged. Organizations that invest in governed, business-owned metadata create more than operational efficiency—they build the agility to support growth, respond to change, and make better financial decisions with confidence.
As business complexity continues to increase, the question is no longer whether financial metadata governance is necessary. The question is whether Finance is prepared to own it.
EPMware stands out in the marketplace by combining metadata management and data governance capabilities in a single, intuitive platform. EPMware has built-in application intelligence, making managing hierarchies and data governance seamless and creating dimensional consistency across all subscribing applications.
Contact us to learn how EPMware empowers business users to take control of their metadata to drive innovation and successful business outcomes.