Oracle continues to enrich the capabilities of its Hyperion suite of applications that support the finance function, but I wonder if that will be enough to sustain its market share and new generation of expectations. At the recent Oracle OpenWorld these new features were on display, and spokespeople described how the company will be transitioning its software to cloud deployment. Our 2013 Financial Performance Management Value (FPM) Index rates Oracle Hyperion a Warm vendor in my analysis, ranking eighth out of nine vendors. Our Value Index is informed by more than a decade of analysis of technology suppliers and their products and how well they satisfy specific business and IT needs. We perform a detailed evaluation of product functionality and suitability-to-task as well as the effectiveness of vendor support for the buying process and customer assurance. Our assessment reflects two disparate sets of factors. On one hand, the Hyperion FPM suite offers a broad set of software that automates, streamlines and supports a range of finance department functions. It includes sophisticated analytical applications. Used to full effect, Hyperion can eliminate many manual steps and speed execution of routine work. It also can enhance accuracy, ensure tasks are completed on a timely basis, foster coordination between Finance and the rest of the organization and generate insights into corporate performance. For this, the software gets high marks.
Oracle Hyperion Products Challenged by New Generation of Expectations
Topics: Analytics, benchmark, Budgeting, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, CFO, CIO, close, closing, Cloud Computing, compliance, Consolidation, Controller, Data, driver-based, ERP, Finance Financial Applications Financial Close, Financial Performance, Financial Performance Management, financial reporting, FPM, GAAP, Hyperion, IFRS, In-memory, Integrated Business Planning, Mobile, Modeling, Oracle, Planning, Price Optimization, Profitability, Reporting, SEC Software, Social Media, Tax, XBRL, Office of Finance, Human Capital Management, Big Data
One of the important lessons company executives should have learned over the past 15 years is that it’s dangerous not to do contingency planning, a subject that I’ve written about before. By this I mean real, think-outside-the-box contingency planning (not just extrapolating), which is especially important when doing long-range planning. The past decade or so has been punctuated by periods of elevated volatility in financial and product markets, and there’s a good probability it will occur again in predictable yet improbable ways. The dot-com boom and its resulting bust as well as the real estate bubble and collapse were in part liquidity-driven events. Many people recognized the artificiality of the rise in values during both of those boom times. There were naysayers questioning the longevity of the upturns, but as they continued unchecked and proved the skeptics wrong, most investors, analysts and advisors grew complacent and unwilling to consider truly unfavorable scenarios. By not planning for a bust, companies and individuals were not in position to react as swiftly and intelligently as they could have.
Topics: Budgeting, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Performance, contingency, currency, driver-based, Financial Performance, Financial Performance Management, Integrated Business Planning, Planning, Reporting, Office of Finance, Big Data
Why Maturity is Important for More Effective Planning and Budgeting
Ventana Research does benchmark research that assesses the maturity of organizations across four dimensions: people, process, information and technology. We examine business issues along those dimensions because we recognize the interconnected relationships among them. Especially in larger companies, data issues such as accuracy and accessibility are often a root cause of poor performance of a core function. It may be a factor in such areas as poor customer service, sales execution or operations planning, to name just three. Addressing only the people-related issues of some challenge a company faces (such as communications, training or management style) may produce positive results in the short run, but these gains are likely to fall short of their potential or prove to be transitory unless companies tackle related process, technology and information problems at the same time. Our comprehensive approach is the foundation for our research, and what makes our benchmark research different and relevant to executives and managers.
Topics: Budgeting, Business Performance, Customer & Contact Center, driver-based, Financial Performance, Financial Performance Management, Integrated Business Planning, Operational Performance, Planning, Reporting, Sales Performance, Supply Chain Performance, Workforce Performance, Office of Finance, Big Data
Adaptive Planning Helps the University of Central Florida Plan Faster and More Accurately
When they were first introduced three decades ago, electronic spreadsheets provided a major advance in corporate planning compared to the paper spreadsheet-and-adding-machine systems they replaced. However, time passes and, as our research shows, desktop spreadsheets often hamper productivity because they were designed for personal productivity, not for managing repetitive, collaborative, enterprise-wide processes such as financial planning. The finance organization at the University of Central Florida’s College of Medicine was grappling with this reality.
Topics: Budgeting, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, driver-based, Financial Performance, Financial Performance Management, Integrated Business Planning, Operational Performance, Planning, Reporting, Workforce Performance, Office of Finance, Human Capital Management, Big Data
Longview Helps 3M Shape Its Future in Business Planning
Effective planning has always been a challenge for companies, and it’s all the more so today. Even when companies deploy dedicated planning applications, they often do not or cannot use them to full advantage. I had a chance to learn more about 3M Corp. use of business planning in our recent 2012 Leadership Awards, who is the diversified global manufacturer of consumer and industrial products, several years ago acquired a dedicated planning application, but because the system could not scale to handle all of its planning contributors, it was forced to collect data from its worldwide business units using Excel templates. Desktop spreadsheets impose severe constraints in the planning process and do not readily handle the complexities of a large multinational firm, such as intracompany allocations, multiple currencies and changes in organizational structure. Modeling both product and financial elements is difficult and, for a company of 3M’s size, the processes do not scale well. The planning process was therefore prolonged, complex and could not readily adapt to change.
Topics: Budgeting, Business Performance, Customer & Contact Center, driver-based, Financial Performance, Financial Performance Management, Integrated Business Planning, Operational Performance, Planning, Reporting, Sales Performance, Supply Chain Performance, Workforce Performance, Office of Finance, Human Capital Management, Big Data
