One Platform for Every System in the Office of the CFO

Richard Ray is Head of Products & Solutions at TouchstoneFMS (part of the Touchstone Group), a services company that deploys finance systems to the office of the CFO. Touchstone has been a Timextender partner for 14 years, and in that time, the problem it solves for clients hasn't changed: too many systems, not enough visibility.

"The biggest data problem we were facing is having multiple systems, so disparate systems across various different environments, and pulling those all together for a single source of truth is what Timextender has given us the ability to do." — Richard Ray

Finance Is Never Just One System

Office-of-the-CFO clients bring more than a finance platform to the table. Alongside the core system, there are HR platforms, expense tools, and operational databases, each managed separately, each holding a piece of the picture the business actually needs. "So we needed something to bring all of that together," Richard says. "And really that's what triggered that decision."

The goal was never to replace any one system. It was to stop treating them as separate problems.

Value They Could See Right Away

Richard doesn't frame the payoff as something clients had to wait months to feel. "I would say that we saw a value pretty much instantly," he says. 

"We were able to stitch multiple systems together, and the clients could instantly see that there was benefit in that solution." - Richard Ray

In finance transformation projects, that early visibility matters. Stakeholders are often asked to commit to a new approach before they can see results. Being able to show a unified view of the data early removes a lot of that friction.

Reporting Is Just the Start

Asked what Timextender does for the business, Richard is direct: reporting is the primary objective. A single source of truth is what makes consistent, trustworthy reporting possible across every system a client runs.

But a second use case has grown alongside it. Touchstone uses Timextender's output files to feed downstream systems, so the data doesn't just get reported on. It flows onward, enabling integration between systems that previously had no way of talking to each other through a shared data foundation.

How TouchstoneBI Put It into Practice at PEI Media

That capability shows up directly in TouchstoneBI's (part of the Touchstone Group) work with PEI Media, specialist publishers for the financial services industry. PEI Media needed to connect data from multiple disparate production systems into a single data environment that could power reporting. Complex joins and transformations that previously had to be handled inside Tableau were moved into the data warehouse, where the logic could be maintained once and trusted everywhere.

TouchstoneBI delivered the project on time and on budget, adding an extra data source before the first phase was even complete. Key stakeholders had value within three months. PEI Media's CTIO described going from a mountain of spreadsheets and multiple interpretations of the data to a reporting suite that could finally deliver a unified customer view.

The MCP Server and XPilot Analytics Join the Picture

Richard sees the next phase of the partnership taking shape around AI and Timextender's new MCP Server and Xpilot Analytics.

"With the new AI capabilities that we've got with the MCP server and XPilot Analytics, I think it's really taking everything to the next level, all within a single solution."  - Richard Ray

For Touchstone, that's a continuation of the same principle that has guided the partnership from the start. Get all the data into one place first. Build a foundation you can trust. Everything on top of it, reporting, downstream integration, or AI-ready data for analytics, gets stronger as a result.

"For someone who's considering Timextender for a solution, I would say it's the answer to all your data questions and the issues that you've got." — Richard Ray

Fourteen years gives you a clear view of what actually moves a data project forward. For Touchstone, the answer has consistently been a single platform that connects any data source, delivers to any destination, and now extends into AI. 

Want to learn more about how Timextender can convert your data into insights?

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