With the Hyperion suite “on premise” Performance Management consultants used to create different separate application modules: HFM for the consolidated statements; Planning, with the Essbase engine, for the Budget and Reporting; just to stay on the main ones.
In the consulting team, the consolidated senior consultant and the senior reporting and budgeting consultant spoke different languages and met with different customer users. The modules were implemented at times that were often far from each others, even years. The owners of the applications changed over time, there was the issue of how to integrate the world of the consolidated with the planning one, at the level of data and metadata.
There was the aspect of the purchase of additional licenses to be made available to the same user who was already “live” on the consolidation application, but had no access to the planning one, and remained interdicted by a “profane” of computer science.
The implementation projects risked being “short-sighted” because a module was implemented without having full visibility of the subsequent process to be covered. Risks of reworks on project streams already released. “River” meetings, where to put together general accounting and analytical accounting.
The implementation activity was more complex and certain reporting or financial close functions had to be reconstructed by passing days to write distant and insurmountable code for finance users and application controllers.
With regard to Hyperion, we have often heard controllers and managers of consolidated talk about “Ferrari” used maybe 10% of their possibilities. Very solid and market-leading applications for all Financial Close processes, but distant for all these reasons from the concept of “user friendly” so dear to users who already have different headaches in the normal activity of finance administration and controlling.
Today we implement also Oracle EPM Cloud Enterprise.
A unique suite that integrates all the Financial Closing modules. The Planning and the consolidated, together with the narrative reporting, or the account reconciliation are in the same environment. They talk to each other. Data Management integrates accounting data and takes them from one module to another; in the planning we launch allocations and manage worfklow and data validation; and then we import everything into the consolidated module to see the budget and forecast numbers at group level, and analyze the variances with the actuals.
The application key user and owner is active on the development of all Financial Close views and has the full history of application choices. It has a global vision of all developments phases and guides consultants within this global vision. Consultants grow in implementation best practices.
The new integrated modules introduce new functions, based on Oracle’s experience in the Performance Management sector on the various Closing processes. Technical and functional release updates on a monthly basis. These are economies of scale for simplified implementations (with less work for the EPM consultant!) and with key users who play more active roles and are owners of more accessible applications and faithful friends in stressful times during the closure days.
Obviously, with the Cloud, we no longer hear about compatibility issues and server or service restarts. But this is yet another theme.
Contact us to understand how ExperLab is already implementing the new Oracle EPM Cloud practice, both on new customers and on “on premise” applications to be progressively migrated to new technologies.