Oracle Hyperion

Consolidation of multiple GLs in the Close process

Budgeting in multiple ways(zero based, driver based, strategic long term planning)

providing detailed task lists to help new planners be successful without a lot of training

ability to plan in web based forms or within the same form in excel

users most likely can not create a system themselves, it requires knowledgeable consultants to help get the most out of the system

Some users get frustrated because unlike excel based planning, there is structure and controls built in.

Consolidation engine is superb

User experience is great, web based

Easy to learn and grasp new application

None that I can think of

HFM is very powerful for financial consolidations .

Hyperion Planning is used to project accurate planning and thus provide the benefit to organization to do allocations and driver based planning so that it can justify the numbers based on headcount, number of stops & Revenue and thus provide valuable projections and thus help reduce the expenses.

Essbase is powerful engine helps provide analytical adhoc reporting for financial users . Performance of reporting and ease of use helps excellent customers experience when doing adhoc analysis.

Visual graphical reporting

Ability for 3rd party reporting tools connecting to Essbase database

get rid of complexity of having different components involved in Hyperion workspace environment connected to different suite of products involved in multiple components

Ease of modification of setting point of views.

Export in query mode is efficient.

Has information for all the cost centers and access to them is simple and straightforward.

Sometimes invalid POV's are hard to determine, so maybe include which one produces an error.

Workspace Hyperion can get a bit slow.

I'm a newer user and still in the process of coming across potential issues.

Very easy to use interactive GUI system, but also has powerful underlying ability to code as complex as necessary.

Easy mass distribution/access for multiple end users.

Expense is the number one concern.

Transmission of forecasting budgeting data

Group Consolidations

Tracking changes and version controls

Flexibility between Excel and Web based entry

Stability of excel add-in - called SmartView

Better sync between web based and Excel based data review

Stock analytical tools available to use

Custom reporting build capability

Very robust allowing you to cut the data in many ways

Goes hand in hand with Oracle EBS

Common EPM tool so easily able to recruit people with experience using it

Depending on the configuration, it is fairly straight forward to use

Integration with excel provides flexibility and automation potential (vs form base)

SmartView.bas (VBA object file) is fairly easy to learn and use, and allows automation of the tool through VBA programming.

SmartView add-in interface can be buggy at times

Generally it takes a lot of steps and time to data entry or update the forms

Too many versions, builds of the SmartView tool to keep track of and ensure you are running the right version

Support/help documents not helpful

Oracle Hyperion EPM helps in handling complex financial calculations related to costing & aging with ease.

You can always write new rules for handling the data the way you need it. Consolidating data at various levels can be easily handed through EPM.

Smart View Integration with Excel, helps in providing the financial information to key users, who after data arrangement produce the same to management for decision making.

The interface for designing the report is not as easy for a layman. The system doesn't allow major changes in the report once it is built which is quite a problem with the suite.

Emailing reports is one drawback with many limitations. There is a limit of around 250 characters for the body of the email. Also there is a limit on the number of characters that are allowed in the to and cc boxes.

There is some need of specialized knowledge of the hyperion product for the end user to start working over it.

HFM will handle complex calculation and consolidation rules extremely well. It's flexibility for writing new rules is unmatched in other products I have seen--the world is quite literally your oyster with this product. You will not come away saying "I wish we could get it to do_______" because it seems there is always a way!

The Smart View tool is how most of our users interact with HFM, and obviously the only way they interact with Essbase. It is a very good tool, and speed of Essbase queries is always strikingly fast. The HFM queries are slower, but that is due to the underlying structure of the database being much different than Essbase. Basically all of our reporting is done in Excel using the Smart View add-in.

One pain point for us is the consolidation and translation process. Needing to translate the data over and over again is frustrating and there is no visibility into how many users are running a translation. If multiple users attempt to translate the same data set, say goodbye to your performance but you have no way of knowing! (Unless you want to pull up a task audit which is not a very realistic expectation). It has the been the quickest way for us to bring the system to it's knees. The consolidation process performs in direct correlation to the complexity of the calculation/consolidation rules. So, while the product is extremely flexible, you still have to be careful how you design your rules and calculations to make sure that you do it on the smallest subset of data as possible to avoid large processing times. This makes sense, but requires some significant expertise that most organizations do not have in-house.

The Hyperion Financial Reporting product is ridiculously outdated and clunky to use. The interface for designing reports is not intuitive, and not easy to modify once a report is built. I think there must be a strategic decision to move away from it and go to something more like Oracle BI because I just can't understand why in the world they don't update the reporting product. It also requires a significant level of expertise to be able to use. Not a great solution at all if you want multiple end-users to create reports in something other than Excel. Nobody except the HFM admin (which I used to be) in our company even touches this module.

Another pain point is the amount of IT support that is required to run this thing, and again, specialized knowledge of Hyperion products and how they work is required for IT to adequately support it. This goes for application servers and the Oracle database that the applications are running on.