Item: Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Performance Management
Rating: 8
Author: Vishal Shivdasani

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

My client is a multi-billion, multi-national construction and infrastructure company. Oracle EPM cloud was used to report monthly, quarterly, half year and full year. EPM cloud is also used to consolidate through the divisions and with the parent company in the UK. Reporting to the London Stock Exchange, providing timely consolidations to the level of detail required, over various divisions globally was a problem that the client struggled with for many years. Ultimately, they upgraded from HFM (standalone, on-prem) to Oracle EPM Cloud across the US and currently being implemented across all global divisions. The predominant problem being addressed is seamless consolidation and vital data capture for reporting on IFRS and GAAP globally.

Pros and Cons

Data integrity
Cloud integration - high availability and locally implemented instances that provide a custom feel
Systematic and customized capture of vital information
Does not necessarily require a dedicated administrator

Menus are not always intuitive.
When errors occur it is not always easy to pinpoint where the errors are coming from.
Customization is always a challenge with many products. Stock reports and operational financial information needs to be a priority during the implementation phase, so that a fully functioning finance department is not debilitated once live.

Implementation Rating

2 stage upgrade GL and reporting: GL - from Coins to JD Edwards, Reporting - from HFM to EPM Cloud. As with all implementations, the key is to do your homework and put in the hard work up front. This will save a whole bunch of heartache later on. Make sure you need a cloud implementation.

Return on Investment

Time savings
Labor savings
Faster close
Seamless consolidations
ability to report to parent
Parent can pull information from local instance
Smartview / Excel interface can be tricky

Alternatives Considered

IBM Cognos, IBM Cognos Planning, SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation), Adaptive Insights and Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management

It is a top 3 product in its class. Having used EPM the most I would rate it the highest. Also used PBCS very successfully. This was selected as the path of least resistance. The upgrade was from HFM to EPM Cloud using JDE as the GL.

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Put your head in the clouds with EPM Cloud excellence!

Modules Used

Overall Satisfaction with Oracle EPM Cloud