State governments face growing pressure to deliver timely, transparent financial management while navigating economic uncertainty, regulatory requirements, and rising public expectations. At one Northeastern U.S. State Agency managing billions of dollars across multiple departments and programs, outdated processes made meeting those expectations increasingly difficult.

Through its partnership with HP Marin and the implementation of OneStream, the agency modernized its core finance operations. Budgeting and planning cycles were shortened, data and reporting accuracy improved, and the agency gained a unified, secure platform to support critical operations.

The Challenge

Prior to the transformation, the agency relied on legacy tools and manual workflows for its strategic planning and budget execution. This legacy approach created significant operational challenges, including:

▪ Disconnected spreadsheets and legacy systems that complicated budget creation, leading to version control issues and reconciliation errors.

▪ Highly manual preparation of the legislatively required budget book and reports, which took months to complete, delaying budget approval and hindering agency decision-making.

▪ Separate capital and asset tracking outside of core budget processes, limiting visibility into how long-term investments aligned with funding decisions.

▪ Workforce planning that lacked integration with financial data, making it difficult to accurately budget personnel costs.

▪ Decentralized budgeting for operational projects and initiatives, forcing the central office to focus on file organization rather than project approval.

▪ Lack of integration between the legacy budgeting system and the Statewide Financial System (SFS), limiting the ability to compare budgets to actual spending.

Together, these challenges left the agency spending more time on administrative work than on the analysis needed to effectively budget and allocate resources.

The Transformation

The agency selected OneStream based on its ability to meet their budgeting, forecasting, and reporting requirements and partnered with HP Marin, a OneStream implementation partner with experience supporting public-sector finance initiatives, to lead the implementation. OneStream was available through the state’s approved software contract list, and HP Marin Group was engaged as an approved consulting firm under existing state contracts, allowing the agency to proceed within established procurement guidelines.

Key components of the transformation scope included:

▪ End-to-End Budgeting and Planning: Deployment of automated workflows for budget formulation, forecasting, and spend plan management, to replace spreadsheets and legacy tools.

▪ Integrated Workforce Planning: Implementation of workforce planning to model headcount, compensation, benefits, and turnover alongside non-personal service budgets.

▪ Capital Planning: Configuration of capital planning within the core budget process to manage capital projects and asset investments alongside operating budgets.

▪ Operational Project Budgeting and Approvals: Centralized creation, tracking, and approval of operational projects and initiatives to replace disjointed document upload and approval processes.

▪ Automated Budget Book: Software was configured to automatically populate the Budget Book, eliminating manual data updates and allowing central office staff to focus on narrative commentary. Document check-in and check-out controls were implemented to support collaborative editing while preventing version conflicts.

▪ Daily Integration with the State’s Central Finance System (SFS): Automated daily updates of actual expenditure data from SFS, to keep actual spending synchronized with the budgeting environment.

▪ Security and Controls: Application of role-based security access to ensure users can access appropriate data and functionality in accordance with public-sector requirements.

HP Marin worked closely with the agency to design and implement the solution in a way that aligned with existing budgeting structures, approval workflows, and compliance and reporting requirements.

A phased rollout, carefully scoped around the agency’s budget cycles, minimized disruption to ongoing operations. Change management, hands‑on training, and user adoption support helped central office and departmental users transition smoothly from legacy processes and adopt modern finance best practices.

Transformation Results

Collectively, these capabilities delivered several key benefits to the agency, including:

▪ Accelerated Cycles: Budgeting, forecasting, and reporting cycles were reduced from months to weeks, allowing staff to spend less time on manual processes and more time on analysis and decision support.

▪ Improved Data Accuracy and Reconciliation Efficiency: Centralizing budgeting, workforce, capital, and expenditure data into a single system established a single source of truth, eliminating manual reconciliation efforts and version conflicts while improving accuracy and reporting consistency.

▪ Optimized Workforce and Resource Management: Integrated workforce planning improved visibility into personnel costs, supporting more detailed and accurate budget development.

▪ Enhanced Alignment of Capital Investments:Bringing capital projects into the core budget process improved visibility into multi‑year funding needs and ensured capital investment decisions were evaluated alongside operating budget priorities.

▪ Faster Budget Book Production: Automated data flowing into the budget book each year reduced manual updates and rework, cutting preparation time by over 60% and supporting on-time delivery of legislatively required materials.

▪ Reduced Administrative Burden on Central Office Staff: Centralized project workflows and approval processes eliminated manual document handling activities, allowing budget analysts to spend more of their time reviewing and approving projects instead of organizing files.

Agency leadership noted that the platform improved day‑to‑day operations and gave teams a more stable foundation for future planning, shifting focus away from maintaining outdated tools and back to the agency’s work.

What This Enabled

With OneStream in place, the state agency established a more efficient, reliable approach to budgeting, forecasting, and reporting. Through a practical, collaboratively scoped implementation, HP Marin, leveraging its public sector and OneStream experience, helped transition core finance processes away from legacy tools and towards a modern, integrated environment. The agency is now positioned to manage complexity with greater clarity and confidence as requirements continue to evolve.

HP Marin Group – Experience-Based | Solutions-Focused | Results-Driven.