Planning and budgeting at your fingertips!
Updated January 24, 2020

Planning and budgeting at your fingertips!

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • Planning and Budgeting Cloud

Overall Satisfaction with Oracle EPM Cloud

Enterprise Planning and Budgeting Cloud is used by our finance department. It is their only tool to plan financial budgets and build their forecast. The financial reports generated out of the module are used extensively for comparing the plan vs actuals. The data from our core fusion ERP system is loaded daily into EPBCS that keep the module as current as possible to compare the performance against the budgets.
  • Smartview capability provides a flexible user interaction for those finance users familiar with Excel.
  • The built-in finance adapter makes the data extract from Fusion ERP a seamless experience and proceeds with data integration as an easy chore.
  • Webstudio or financial reporting enables actuals vs plan comparisons a cleaner validation.
  • 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.
  • Planning and budgeting have become a quick win with this tool.
  • Excel Smartview has good user experience.
  • Plan vs. actual comparison can be done in near real-time with the ease of financial adapter configuration.
Oracle Enterprise Planning Cloud has a well-defined objective for financial users with their budgeting and forecasting. We don't have another tool to do this with our core ERP cloud. Excel Smartview capability provides users with an easy user interface for doing their day to day operations in a relatively convenient manner. Forecasting is possible at the same time on the same tool with actual and plans data readily available.
The tool is well suited for financial planning and budgeting if the dimensions are clearly defined. Other modules like projects, workforce, and capital don't seem like they have the robustness as that of the financial module. This is something the product development should improve and users should be wary of. If there is extensive dimensional configuration other than the 4 out of the box dimensions then it is worth re-considering and better to go with PBCS instead of EPBCS.

Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Performance Management Feature Ratings

Long-term financial planning
9
Financial budgeting
9
Forecasting
9
Scenario modeling
9
Management reporting
9
Financial data consolidation
8
Journal entries and reports
9
Multi-currency management
7
Intercompany Eliminations
8
Minority Ownership
8
Local and consolidated reporting
8
Detailed Audit Trails
8
Financial Statement Reporting
8
Management Reporting
9
Excel-based Reporting
8
Automated board and financial reporting
9
XBRL support for regulatory filing
9
Personalized dashboards
8
Color-coded scorecards
8
KPIs
8
Cost and profitability analysis
8
Key Performance Indicator setting
8
Benchmarking with external data
8
Flat file integration
8
Excel data integration
8
Direct links to 3rd-party data sources
8
Customizable dashboards
4
Report Formatting Templates
4
Drill-down analysis
5
Formatting capabilities
5
Publish to Web
9
Publish to PDF
9
Report Versioning
9
Report Delivery Scheduling
9
Multi-User Support (named login)
7
Role-Based Security Model
7
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
7
Single Sign-On (SSO)
7

Oracle EPM Cloud Decision Factors

Adoption, and Customer Service

I didn't have many issues to take it to customer support, but whatever I logged I got answers almost the same day. The tool is pre-designed for a specific purpose and should be executed with that in mind. If we follow all the aspects of this definition then we should be able to use this tool without major issues and get it addressed internally.

Using Oracle EPM Cloud

10 - EPBCS users are high level executives. They are the finance users and users from accounting that mostly use the tool. However the reports and data generate from that tool are used extensively by our top management for SEC reporting and for their trend analysis. We do have some more users from Operations who serve as the end users of this tool as well.
2 - People supporting this tool are primarily IT and software engineers. This tool is not a maintenance overhead and beyond that it is on Cloud. The tool does require advanced skillset to troubleshoot while interacting with Oracle Support for complicated load issues and to use EPMAutomate. We are currently implementing single sign on for this environment, so we need someone with a good knowlege of security as well.
  • Accurate revenue numbers
  • trend analysis
  • token authentication failure issue when the source connection password expired and wasn't updated
  • Datawarehouse type of reporting needs like trend analysis etc that couldn't be accomplished with ERP Cloud
  • We are planning to expand the current finance only offering to Capital, Projects and Workforce
  • Leverage its data into FCCS and ARC
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.

Evaluating Oracle EPM Cloud and Competitors

  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Vendor Reputation
  • Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor
  • Analyst Reports
Our single most important factor was to realize the business need with minimum customization. This tool was initially visualized only for business users so that expectation was pretty much the only expectation by far. Next the search for a good vendor reputation. We are glad that we went with Keste, cuz the tool is pretty much functional as it is even with changing business needs
We are happy with the tool as it is. But if I had to change, I would except the tool to offer out of the box adapters to integrate Capital, Projects and Workforce modules seamlessly into EPBCS. This functionality is not available and it is still via Excel uploads. This is cumbersome.

Oracle EPM Cloud Support

ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Immediate help available
Support cares about my success
Need to explain problems multiple times
No - I don't think that should be an option at all. In order to gain good customer reputation, businesses should offer proactive customer support for the genuine issue needs of their customers. If there's an option for premium support then it should be fairly reasonable from the lifetime ofer perspective rather than just expediting the issue resolution process
Oracle customer support for EPBCS is excellent. They understand the issues pretty well and often come back with prompt resolution. Once I had an issue with SSO configuration in our pod. The actual issue was that a wrong ERP instance was already configured into our pod which removed the option to configure a new identity provider for our pod. This issue was addressed promptly by engaging the right action group.