Unmasking the Dark Lord!!!

The rumours have been out there for a while but I can confirm The Dark Lord of EPM is Andy Carfax.

If you need help you can reach me at andycarfax@gmail.com

Oracle EPM (Hyperion) 11.1.2.3 released next week (w/c April 15th 2013)

The paragraph below was copied from an article floating around Linkedin.  The Dark Lord will provide a full analysis of the 11.1.2.3 functionality at a later date - watch this space!

 

Hyperion 11.1.2.3 will be generally available next week, according to Oracle officials outlining the Hyperion roadmap this week.

The new release is not as major as 11.1.2.2, but there are still a couple key takeaways. Those include:

•Support for aggregate storage (ASO) cubes in Hyperion Planning, which will require a full-use license for Essbase

•Workforce and capital users can add members on the fly in Hyperion Planning

•Dynamic points-of-view (POVs) and grid improvements in Hyperion Financial Management

•Hyperion Data Relationship Management (DRM) to get a data relationship governance module to create configurable workloads, which each separate module licensed per user

•Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management (HPCM) to be certified to run on Oracle Exalytics

•Hyperion Financial Data Management (FDM) and Enterprise Resource Planning Integrator (ERPI) to be combined into a single module. Existing customers will get an upgrade as part of maintenance.

•A subscription-based, per user per month cloud offering in the second half of 2013

Beyond 11.1.2.3, the most interesting thing on the horizon is that Oracle will look to leverage Endeca in EPM applications in the upcoming release. Speaking for the EPM community, we’re looking forward to this.

John O'Rourke, Oracle vice president of product marketing for enterprise performance management (EPM), outlined the roadmap during a session at the Collaborate user group conference this week. O'Rourke said that the fundamentals of EPM haven't changed in the last 15 years, but the business climate has. We’re seeing slow economic growth, the need to get things done faster, and the requirement to do it with fewer resources.

Rehashing Hyperion 11 1.2.2 features

 O'Rourke also detailed some features available in Hyperion 11.2.2.2, which has now been out for about a year. Two of the major ones are HPCM and the tax provision module for HFM. The tax provision module helps with tax reporting and provisioning.

HPCM, meanwhile, has been updated to enable micro-costing to use the database to perform allocation (SKU, customer, etc.). You can use it to create calc scripts on the fly. When you define allocation rules in HPCM, it creates the calc scripts, and the results are loaded to Essbase for reporting and analysis. The benefit is it gives you the ability to report fully allocated PNL at product, SKU, customer, etc. The result is improved reporting and analysis and the ability to see things like where the profits are, how your customers/products are performing/how much they are contributing to the bottom line, etc.

Top 10 BI Vendor Survey – Really?

There is currently a link to a Top 10 Business Intelligence Vendors report that is viral on the EPM groups on LinkedIn.  It is has been prepared by a company called CompareBusinessProducts.com.  If you check LinkedIn, you’ll find a link easily.

I have a few problems with this report.

Over half of the paper is graphing revenues and market share for 10 BI companies.

Comparing revenues and market share of vendors does not necessarily bear any resemblance to how good the products are.

For example, most people agree other phones are better in functionality than the iPhone but the iPhone is still the benchmark in smart phones.

Just because a big vendor has the capability to discount heavily or secures business off the back of large ERP implementations, where often the BI licence is given away for free. Point is, don't confuse the Top 10 with product functionality and performance.

The notes at the end are interesting but my advice would for a more detailed review would be to get hold of the Gartner reports which you can easily find on the net.

Finally, what use is a report that compares 2008, 2009 and 2010?  Don’t they know it’s 2013 now J

From ‘data’ to ‘insight’

I’m very excited and proud to be working with The Chartered Association of Management Accountants (CIMA) on a research paper entitled “From Data to Insight” due for release later in 2013.

I’ll be posting quite a bit about this subject as the research progresses but in our initial discussions yesterday, something popped into my mind about the difference between data and insight.

The first London Underground Map was developed by Harry Beck in 1931.  This is one of the finest examples of how data can be filtered and organised into information.  Beck realised that the physical locations of the stations were irrelevant to the passenger and to this end, Beck devised a map of straight lines running vertically, horizontally or at 45 degree angles. Although some lines have changed colour over the years, the original map has lasted over 80 years.

Harry’s legacy is there for all to see underneath London.  I’ll bet he would’ve been a great EPM consultant!