Case Study
Interface Brings Real-Time Forecasting to Finance with OneStream
Interface was founded in 1973 and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. As a global leader in modular flooring, the company offers an integrated collection of carpet tiles and resilient flooring and is widely recognized for innovation in sustainability, biomimicry, recycling, and products engineered to go beyond carbon neutral to carbon negative.
As Interface continued refining its finance operations, the company wanted to move beyond a labor-intensive Excel-based forecast process and adopt a more responsive FP&A solution. MindStream Analytics helped Interface automate and unify forecasting in OneStream so the business could move faster and make more proactive decisions.
The Challenge:
Interface’s monthly corporate regional departmental forecast process had been performed in Excel. After spending two years standardizing that spreadsheet-based approach, the company had achieved consistency and stability, but the process remained highly manual and the forecast was still always one month behind the business. That meant finance teams were working hard just to maintain the cycle, without gaining the real-time visibility they needed.
The monthly initialization process was especially laborious. Actual summary data was refreshed through the OneStream Excel add-in, while transactional departmental detail came from the ERP for review and analysis. Once all the data was compiled and reviewed by a single analyst, workbooks were saved individually by department and distributed by email to departmental heads for completion. By the time the finished forecast workbooks were returned, consolidated, and reviewed at a high level, it was already time to start the next cycle again.
Interface also needed more functionality than spreadsheets could efficiently support. The company wanted a spreadsheet-style user experience, but also needed the ability to track current forecasts, prior forecasts, actual-to-budget comparisons, project details, departmental details, vendor-level support, workflow, data security, tracking, consolidation, parameter options, business rules, and people planning. The existing process was as streamlined as possible within Excel, but it was still too time-consuming, too manual, and too reactive.
The Solution
MindStream Analytics designed a OneStream FP&A solution that brought five different regional forecast processes together in one unified platform. The new solution was initially built for Corporate, but it was designed so Regions and Areas across the company could also use it over time. The goal was to create a more automated, real-time planning environment while keeping the usability and flexibility Interface valued.
The solution included a bottom-up, pre-seeded monthly forecast and annual budget at summary-account level, leveraging extensibility within OneStream. The budget structure included four versions, first pass, AOP Deck Targets, December Targets, and Final Targets, while the monthly forecast was designed around a 36-month rolling approach. People Planning was also incorporated through the Marketplace Solution for all corporate positions, and the new environment was built to support both forecasting and the future annual operating plan process.
MindStream also converted Excel spreadsheets into OneStream Cube View dashboards, enabling automation of input forms and reports. These included non-project departmental expense summaries and supporting detail worksheets, project departmental input worksheets, departmental T&E expense planning, other operating income and expense input, basic revenue and cost inputs, comparative reporting, and access to general ledger transactional detail supporting project, supplemental, and subsidiary account analysis in OneStream custom tables.
Key solution components included:
The Result
With MindStream’s guidance, Interface moved from a forecast process that was always one month behind to a real-time planning environment in OneStream. The company significantly improved the speed and efficiency of its monthly forecasting cycle while increasing visibility into both forecasts and supporting details. Department managers gained more control, and finance teams gained a stronger platform for timely analysis and decision-making.
The biggest performance gain was cycle time. By partnering with MindStream Analytics, Interface reduced its cycle from 30 days to 5 days, a reduction of more than 83 percent. That improvement helped transform forecasting from a repetitive spreadsheet exercise into a more scalable and actionable finance process.
Overall, the new OneStream solution gave Interface a more automated, centralized, and future-ready FP&A framework. Instead of spending most of the month refreshing, distributing, collecting, and consolidating spreadsheets, the business now has a system designed to support real-time insight, broader adoption, and more proactive planning.