Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Performance Management vs. Xero

It is well suited in a geographically distributed environment where you have various key participants in multiple time zones providing input and necessary explanations on performance and measured success It is less appropriate where you have a single office environment with a single finance department working together. It is also less suited when the GL is NOT an Oracle product and the interface between the GL and the reporting software needs to be implemented with utmost care and handling.

Incentivized

If they are using foreign exchange I always use Xero. If I need reporting to be customized we always use Xero. If the client is already working in a software and it is working for them we will leave them in the software they are in.

• Account Reconciliation CLoud Services provides tight integration with Oracle R12 and 11i . Provides drillback capability. It is flexible and provides rich functionality to users.
• We have implemented ARCS on cloud and migrated planning and budgeting from On premise to PBCS and EPBCS. Functionality is onpar with onpremise. Provides regular updates monthly
• We don't need to upgrades every year and saved a lot on Hardware.

Incentivized

• Their method of moving between screens was very logical and intuitive which is not a "given" attribute among software packages.
• Finding transactions was relatively easy with just common sense.
• The use of this software was generally well received in that the accountants did not discredit the software as cheap, poorly organized, or timely to learn. No one at Corporate had a vendetta against using Xero.
• It does a good job of allowing the users to drill down to the final detail of an account balance - which is fundamental to the accounting department's needs.

Incentivized

• The limitation of constrained out of the box dimensions that requires ripping the initial implementation to add the new dimensions is a major drawback.
• Smartview interface is cumbersome for many.
• The only financial adapter is available for integration for other modules we have to go with file-based uploads which is cumbersome and not real-time.
• It is very costly in terms of licensing unlike other Oracle products.

Incentivized

• Occasionally, the price increases and I feel that prices should be fixed for long-term users as there are very few changes in the software from when I started using it 6 years ago.
• It would be useful to have the emails sent with invoices saved.
• Visual dashboards are limited.

Incentivized

We have a pretty good userbase who are at the high level who gained value from this tool. Discontinuing this tool is prone to impact their day to day operations. Also the data in this tool cannot alter the source, which maintains the integrity of this tool. Smartview is a cool addition that gained lot of traction as well.

Incentivized

In addition to the matters covered in this review, my reason for renewing this product is that Xero's functionality and the constant updates that the company provides, makes the software even more business friendly. The software therefore builds a brand loyalty among customers.

EPM usability is good in some modules but needs some improvement in others

Incentivized

Xero has all the features that you need, basically. From chart of accounts, reconciling books, to making annual financial reports. What I'm currently looking for Xero right now is to provide more broader integration with the other apps so we can use it for customer-facing experience also. All in all, everything works well!

Incentivized

EPM has been so far available all the time

Incentivized

We have been actively using and 100% Xero based for our ecommerce accounting practice for over 4 years. There has on been one real outage for more than 5 minutes. Xero was open and transparent about the outage, what they were doing to resolve the issue, and provided 15 minute updates. Showing how they care about their customers and partners. Plus, showing that their customers care too, were understanding, and went surfing or in our case took a nap. Couldn't run our business without Xero as a partner.

The product performance is so far very good

Incentivized

Pages generally load quickly, but it's a fairly common occurrence to have pages taking a bit longer than I'd like to load (as in, 4+ seconds). Occasionally I have to refresh a page to get it to work. Bank feed and integrations tend to be slow in general, but that could easily be due to API latency on the side of the other parties. Most of the time, though, the bank feeds refresh before I login so it's not a huge problem. Not necessarily good performance compared to a local app like QuickBooks desktop, but definitely good performance for a cloud application. Room for growth? yes.

Incentivized

Support from our implementation partner is a 10/10, but support from Oracle is awful. Case in point: recently over a 2-day period, there were a series of intermittent outages. Oracle actually asked US for the outage time-stamps. I would have thought that, since we were paying them, they should probably be able to tell us!

Incentivized

Always respond and keep issues open until you are satisfied with the result. Generally good responses, in the past, I had some support responses that were really basic and really annoying. They type where "have your tried restarting your computer" style of answers. Well, of course, I went through all the basics before contacting them. Duh, but I suppose not everyone does. Otherwise, it would be a 10. The last year has shown a marked improvement in the support responses however.

The format was great; someone was there to ask questions or help if you were stuck.

Incentivized

All of Xero's training is online and available for anyone (business owner or accountants) to learn and become experts in their system. There is a range of content from product training to real world webinars from their partners. Xero is beautiful accounting software and their training is the same.

I suggest doubling the time to implement from the initial quote you get from the Sales team. That's always been the case for me for multiple EPMs now. The out-of-the-box functionality of Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud is pretty robust so I appreciate that and it really helped us get the ball rolling quickly.

Incentivized

If it can be done, time the implementation near a new fiscal year so you can start clean. Otherwise, you have to go back and do historical data from the beginning of the fiscal year, which can be brain draining.

Incentivized

Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud fared very well against Adaptive, Anaplan, and Host Analytics. We ultimately decided on Oracle due to its reputation and strength of existing customers. We are happy with our decision.

Incentivized

I've used a lot of different accounting systems. Many of them so big and powerful, but a hassle to get set up. Xero is light, inexpensive, and easy to use. When I originally selected them they seemed like they were developing new features at a quick rate as well. I was invited to be part of focus sessions to make the product better. That part has slowed down significantly though.

The product is scalable

Incentivized

I have yet to fully stress test the product given the size of the company where I am using it. I am sure as we scale to more customers, more vendors and more reporting requirements, I will have a better understanding of what it is capable of in terms of bandwidth and processing

Incentivized

• Significantly reduced the amount of money we spent for the maintenance of in-house hardware.
• We now need less employees to manage the configurations of Oracle EPM Cloud.
• There have been many time savings as a whole to apply to more productive causes.

Incentivized

• Saved many hours through automatic invoices and followups
• Saved many hours by allowing transactions to start via bank feeds (ie I don't have to input a transaction and mark it against what is in the bank/cc account; rather, the transaction in the account is where you input the transaction into the books.
• Has the scalability my business requires, and not much more.

Incentivized