"Hyperion EPM Ultras" Fantasy Football League

Following the exciting news that the Dark Lord is soon to be joining KPMG to build the new Oracle EPM Practice and the start of the new Premier League season, I have created a fantasy league private league called "Hyperion EPM Ultras"

There will be a prize for the winner at the end of the season.

To enter, Click here to Fantasy League Premier site

League code is 1549801-570079

Any problems, contact the Dark Lord for an invite

Oracle Hyperion EPM 11.1.2.3. Patch 500 – New features

Oracle released EPM version 11.1.2.3. almost a year ago and it was hailed as a minimal feature update but consolidating on the quantum leap forward to 11.1.2.2. but without the bugs.

 

In the main, they were right but those that have moved to 11.1.2.3. have noticed some really frustrating performance defects over the past few months.  Oracle have saved up the bug fixes and bundled them together with a patch release called “500” which is one of the biggest releases the Dark Lord has ever seen.

Given that, it seemed like a good opportunity to summarise these for your enjoyment so here goes:

Supported Path

Note this is only a patch for 11.1.2.3.0

Third Party Software

WOW – Actually supported for Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 10.  Firefox gets a boost too and 24 is now supported, 17 no longer.

Office 2013 now joins the party too!

Virtualization

For years and years, Oracle and Hyperion beforehand would not support virtual technology, insisting that if a problem could not be resolved, you would need to replicate the problem on a physical solution for them to support.

Name me somebody who’s not using virtualisation in some way shape or form……….

Well from now onwards, Oracle are officially supporting Microsoft Hyper-V (Virtualization Windows Server 2008 and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) for Windows).

BIG NEWS!!!

Mobile

So we all love mobile technology eh.  With the 11.1.2.3.0. release it became possible to view Financial Reports using a mobile device but it didn’t work too well.  Now it does, hooray.

There is an EPM app, available through itunes and the Google app store.  I’ve not found it yet so can’t offer and opinion but it’s supposed to work on:

i)                 Hyperion Planning

ii)                Hyperion Financial Management

iii)              Hyperion Tax Provision Management

As soon as I get a chance I will be reviewing this and will feed back to you all the juicy info.

Administrators can make available to planners a tablet-friendly user interface for performing common planning tasks such as accessing their task lists, working with data, approving budgets, viewing reports, and controlling settings…………..interesting, need to play here.

All of this works for IOS 7 and Android 4.1, 4.2 & 4.3

FDMEE

Now certified for Peoplesoft 9.2, whoopee

Defects fixed

There is a huge list of defects fixed in this patch release.  I will create a separate post for this.

Summary

I’ve missed out loads and just concentrated on some highlights.

The readme doc is 76 pages long and available through the Oracle web site.  If you have any questions, drop me a line.

Cheers,

TDL

CGMA European Conference - Maximising ROI in Finance System Development

For those that don’t know, the Chartered Global Management Accountant CGMA is a joint venture between the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants CIMA and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants AICPA, creating a recognised global brand of accounting professional.

The European CGMA conference is November 13^th and 14^th in London and I shall be speaking about Maximising ROI in Finance System Development.

Many interesting speakers on the Bill including Nick Leeson and Robert Peston and a presentation of the CIMA research study “From insight to impact: unlocking opportunities in big data” by Peter Simons which I shall definitely be attending with interest.

I’d urge you to go if you can.

http://www.cgma.org/Development/Conferences/Pages/cgma-european-conference.aspx

 

 

The Dark Lord is speaking for CIMA - Derby Oct 10th

Following on from the first session in Hull last month, I’m speaking in Derby on October 10^th for the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants.  The session is called “From spreadsheets to systems”, details below.

http://www.cimaglobal.com/Events-and-cpd-courses/Events/CPD-Technical-update-business-intelligence2/

CPD technical update: "From spreadsheets to systems"

When Lotus 123 was introduced in 1982, few could have predicted the impact spreadsheets would have on the working environment for the next 30 years.

In today’s modern finance function, our complex planning and reporting requirements have outgrown the humble spreadsheet driving the need to establish a more systematic approach for performance management solutions.

What you can gain?

By attending this half-day event you will:

• review the appropriate use of the spreadsheet in today’s modern finance environment
• be walked through an implementation roadmap to best practice using enterprise performance management systems
• discover how your processes will change from working with spreadsheets to working in a systematic based environment
• receive tips and tricks to ensure successful implementations and the pitfalls to avoid
• receive demonstrations for the solutions discussed.

 

 

The Dark Lord of EPM is speaking at APPS13

I’m speaking at the Oracle User Group conference “APPS13” in London on Tuesday October 15^th.  These events are usually a great place to network with other Oracle users and you will definitely pick up tips and tricks in the breakout sessions.

I’d urge you to go if you can.

http://www.apps13.ukoug.org/

Synopsis of presentation below.

To consolidate or not to consolidate, that is the question!

With continued improvements in OLAP over the past 10 years, the FD may ask the question “why should he invest in a ‘big bang’ consolidation system when he can dump the trial balance into an agile Essbase cube”. Many times I have the following phrase....."We're not big enough to consolidate; we just need a reporting cube to add everything up". The need for a solution like Hyperion Financial Management has nothing to do with size. This presentation will go through the questions you need to ask in advance to determine whether you need a reporting cube or a consolidation system to assist making the correct decision. We will examine and discuss the key drivers to implement a consolidation system, rather than a reporting system, focussing on the following focus areas:

Requirement for Control

Requirement for Workflow

Requirement to Improve the Quality of submission

Requirement to handle Currency

Requirement to report a Complex company structure

Requirement to handle inter group trading

Compliance Requirements

 

 

Why Investing in EPM is like ‘Buying a Yacht'

Last week I was on holiday in Sardinia and the gods were definitely shining as we just happened to be there at the same time as some friends who have a yacht out there.

We spent a couple of days on board with our friends relaxing in total luxury, being pampered by the crew who did a superb job in making us feel very, very special.  A big thank you J & K.  One of my everlasting memories will be the expectant look on the faces of tourists on the dock as we backed into port, trying to work out if we were famous movie stars or rock gods and then walking on by when they realised I was just normal fat bloke with a nice red British lobster tan  :)

On the way home, I was browsing on the web and looking at the price of chartering yachts and I found a lovely boat called "Va Bene",  which is owned by a hero of mine: Eric Clapton.  Checking the price for a week in August - £200,000 for 7 days !!!!!!

Sadly, the first thought in my mind was "I could implement a decent EPM project for less than that!"

So it got me thinking, what is more value for money?  Would I want to spend a week on Slowhand's lovely boat or implement a world class planning or reporting solution.....

The thought process to justify either is fairly similar.

You see, if you ever thought about owning a yacht and cruising the med, you'd never do it.  Aside from the initial cost, they constantly need maintenance and the running costs are horrendous.

Financially, owning a yacht doesn't make sense but for the time you are on board the yachts, you feel like you're on top of the world.  The special feeling you get cannot be measured in value, it's priceless.  If you can afford it, just do it...........

Similarly, the business cases for EPM projects are also difficult to justify if you look purely on financials.

Some companies try to justify on headcount savings but realistically the heads that get saved in 'Excel churning' should be used elsewhere more productively in analyzing the results rather than producing them.

I have seen some business cases trying estimate savings around reducing the risk made from errors in spreadsheets and even percentages of profit improvement driven by better decision making......REALLY!  The irony here is that these business cases have come from the finance department who should know better.

There is no question that in the mid to large modern finance function; you cannot support the business with just Excel as your tool.  It's pointless to make up numbers so why bother.

Conclusion!

If you're a reasonable mature finance divisional head who is frustrated at the amount of time it takes to plan or report, are nervous about the quality of numbers produced by your team by their 1,000 spreadsheets...........buy an EPM solution.

Alternatively, if you’ve already made your millions and fancy cruising around the med ..........buy a yacht!

Oracle EPM (Hyperion) 11.1.2.3. New Feature Highlights

Last week Oracle held a 4 day conference in Milan to present the new features that come with EPM version 11.1.2.3. that was released a couple of weeks ago.  If you want to see the complete new features in detail related to each product then you can always check out the documentation library on the Oracle web site but here's a few highlights that got me slightly excited.

HFM (Hyperion Financial Management)

The last release 11.1.2.2. was the most significant change to the HFM user interface for many years, using Oracle's ADF front end.  Being so new, there have been many performance issues reported around speed.  Big message from Oracle is that the new version is lightning fast by comparison.......hope so!

You can now execute rules from a web form Rick click in a similar way to Hyperion Planning which is nice.

One for the administrators is a log to compare metadata versions.  This sounds nice, handy to check exactly which metadata change stopped your consolidation rule from working.

Data forms and grids are a little more customizable but dot 2 was the major step change, this one just works.........so they say.

FDM (Financial Data Management)

FDM is going and will and now be called FDMEE, standing for Enterprise Edition.  They new product looks exactly the same as the old product and is certified as having the same level of functionality but is built on the ERPi platform.

Larry doesn't play golf with Bill, so the Windows client has gone finally,but the fish are still there.  It's quicker and can handle more so I'm quite liking the sound of this, but haven't used it yet!  In this release, you'll still get the old FDM but its last chance saloon as from 11.1.2.4. it will be completely dead.

FCM (Financial Close Management)

No massive changes with the latest release but they have added 'Tim to complete' on the tasks so you can report on it when you do you Close debrief.

ARM (Account Reconciliation Management)

Yes I know this is technically bundled as part of FCM but this doesn't really make sense as its a completely different set of users performing the month end balance sheet reconciliations to those that control the overall month end process.

No major improvements since its launch in the last release and still doesn't have transactional balances but its a nice product and I can see real benefit to those customers that need some way of controlling the monthly chore of balance sheet recs.

DM (Disclosure Management)

A few enhancements here such as being able to view the dates when documents were uploaded but general feeling is that it's closing the gap on the competition but still behind.

Tax Provisioning

This is a reasonably new product to the UK market built to compete with products such as Longview.  It's effectively a pure built HFM application that you us to collate date and then apply tax calculations to manage your tax number and then send the journal back into the ledger at the end.

It looks good but list price is not cheap at $5k with minimal user number of 20.  Given most tax departments are fairly small it might have been better to price list at $20k with minimum order number of 5, just my opinion.

This module has led to the creation of new HFM functionality to use users to create simple rules within the application and the VB scripting is automatically created out of the back end.  This is very much trying to hand the control from the consultant back to the finance guy.  I wonder how efficient the rules are but maybe we're seeing the future of HFM being developed by finance, not the consultant..........gulp!

Sustainability Reporting

Another pure built HFM application but this is not very expensive at all, in fact it's completely free when you buy HFM.

It's compliant with the Global Reporting Initiative.  To be honest, I didn't look to carefully into this product and got to be suspicious when Larry gives something away for free...............

Smartview

So this is where the spreadsheet jockeys stand to attention.  Larry brought in a few nice touches with 11.1.2.2. and carries that forward in this release.  FR reports exported into Smartview keep the formats better now and it's faster to retrieve data.

You can now add to metadata for Hyperion Planning using Smartview.  Very funky feature and one that I hope will be extended for other products.

Financial Reporting

Here's a big one...................you can now view financial reports using an iPad AND other devices using Android operating device.  I thought Larry would be faithful to Apple for ever but he's a smart man so he's recognizing that there's an awful lot of Android out there.

There's no app, you just use your browser to a web address of the reports repository.  Hardly any set up required, just 11.1.2.3. installed.  There are going to be a lot of happy FDs out there soon.

OFMA (Oracle Financial Management Application)

OFMA is the only dashboard reporting application out there that gives you true 'real time' reporting functionality on top of your HFM application.n The competition have to move the data out to a DB to report on it.

The downside is that you have to buy OBIEE and OFMA which is a fairly expensive way to get some dash boarding out of HFM.  If you have OBIEE already then obviously the price becomes reasonable.

Obviously OBIEE gives you access to mobile reporting but given that FR is now able to report on mobile for free, I think it's a tricky sell.  The current release still comes working with the four custom dimensions but next release will give you access to the new unlimited capability.  Dunno - for me the jury is still out.

HP (Hyperion Planning)

The majority of the updates were in the bolt on applications that run on Planning.  11.1.2.3. is the version that will be used for the cloud offering due to be released later this year.

PSPB (Public Sector Planning & Budgeting)

Decision packages were a great piece of functionality that were introduced in 11.1.2.2. but being new, they were a little clunky.  New in this release is the ability to copy decision packages which is very cool.  There's also some extra ability to upload supporting information and annotations.

PFP (Project Financial Planning)

I'm still. Not so sure about this module.  Once it gets a few customers singing its praises then I’ll stand up and take a bit more notice.  There is new functionality to import metadata through relational tables but that's about it.

DRM (Dimensional Relationship Management)

Main update it his release was DRG, the G standing for governance.  Nice logical step, well done a Oracle.  I have had many discussions with customers who have been asking for a way to manage approvals for changes......well here it is.  I haven't used it yet but the demo looked good.  Looking forward to seeing this work.

HPCM (Hyperion Cost & Profitability Management)

I love this product.  Back in the day when we were struggling with Activity Based Costing using Excel and Access, it really was a painful process.  HPCM can be used fairly out of the box which is great.  The traceability maps are wonderful, shame you still can't print them :(

In this release there have been some major performance enhancements to ensure lighting fast calculations.  It is also now certified to run on Exalytics if you want warp speed.

You also now get the ability to have three ASO reporting cubes, one for each detailed profitability model.  There's a new destination stage balancing report too.

SUMMARY

After the mind blowing changes to 11.1.2.2. I wasn't too excited about 11.1.2.3. but actually there has been a lot of really useful smoothing of the edges and if the performance improvements work I might actually be recommending to my customers a move to the bleeding edge release..............for the first time EVER!