The Finit Minute: Q3 2009

Welcome to the Finit Minute – Fall 2009

Getting the most out of your Hyperion investment requires keeping a close ear to what’s new and continuously considering improvements to what you have today. Finit Solutions strives to bring you the most useful Hyperion information each quarter to help you take advantage of the solutions you already own and to consider enhancements to resolve the important issues you face. Whether it’s eliminating an inefficient process or providing management and analysts with better information, making continuous improvements is the key to progress.

In this quarter’s edition, you will find a summary of the topics we are covering this year in The Finit Solutions Series, our monthly series of webinars. We are also providing information about Oracle’s latest EPM release, Fusion 11.1.1.3, which includes a new and important data integration component called ERP Integrator (ERPi). You will also find information regarding Oracle’s Support Policy, including a schedule for products that will be removed from Oracle’s Premier Support tier in 2010. Finally, we are providing an overview of the various Data Integration Solutions currently offered by Oracle, including Financial Data Quality Management (FDM), Oracle Data Integrator (ODI), Data Integration Manager (DIM), Data Relationship Manager (DRM), and Enterprise Performance Management Architect (EPMA).

We value your feedback and will tailor our correspondence with you accordingly. Please let us know what you think of the quarterly newsletter and monthly webinar content. We hope you can make some meaningful changes as you participate in these sessions.

Getting The Most out of your Oracle Hyperion Investment - The Finit Solutions Series

During the years that we have been developing Hyperion software solutions for clients, we’ve noticed that there are many opportunities for clients to make improvements in their systems and get more out of their investments. However, due to time constraints, it may be difficult for a client to prioritize opportunities for improvements, attend necessary training courses, and implement tangible changes. To help streamline the improvement process, we are delivering relevant and actionable Hyperion content each month through a group of scheduled webinars known as The Finit Solution Series.

The participation we’ve had this year has been fantastic. We are especially pleased to have so many of our clients forward the e-mail invitations on to their peers at other companies. This has created a ‘learning community’ for Oracle Hyperion customers. The objectives of our webinars are to increase your awareness of specific product functionality, to provide tips and tricks, and to share ideas on how to better leverage your systems.

In 2009 we have provided the following sessions:

Getting the Most out of FDM: FDM Reports

Current FDM users are aware that FDM comes with a useful set of reports to help you gain further insight into the data that you've collected. In this webinar, Greg Barrett of Finit Solutions reviews all the reports in the standard FDM set of reports. You will learn how to make your own modifications to those standard FDM reports and how to move a report from one folder to another. In addition, you will see how to change security access to individual reports and to folders of reports. Greg shows some of the highly customized reports that FDM clients have tailored to their specific FDM reporting requirements.

Getting the Most out of FDM: FDM Application Settings

Users of FDM may or may not realize that there are a number of FDM application settings that allow you to control how FDM interacts with your target data systems.

In this webinar, Deborah Newborn of Finit Solutions reviews how to change those settings to customize the application. You will learn the basic application and configuration settings in FDM. You will see a demonstration of the various user and web settings that modify FDM’s appearance as well as the wording on various FDM menus. Additionally, Deborah discusses specific integration settings in the context of Hyperion Enterprise and Hyperion Financial Management (HFM). A review of the latest settings available in FDM 11.1.1.2 is also provided.

Hyperion Enterprise to Hyperion Financial Management: Design Considerations and Best Practices
(2-Part Series)

The decisions that you make regarding the design of your HFM application and the conversion process itself will have a huge impact on the value you will ultimately get from HFM. A hasty design and conversion can burden you with costly application problems that can persist for years, whereas a carefully thought-out and executed implementation will provide you with tremendous gains in efficiency and functionality.

In this two-part series, Rob Cybulski covers best practices, design considerations, and project planning tips for converting from Hyperion Enterprise to HFM. In the first session, Rob demonstrates the basic differences between the two products and offers recommendations for utilizing the enhanced functionality in HFM. In the second session, you gain insight into planning and managing a conversion to HFM, including pre-project architecture considerations, implementation resource commitment, and end-user training plans.

To request a link to any of these past webinars, please email us at insights@finitsolutions.com.

Upcoming webinars from The Finit Solutions Series include:

Getting the Most out of HFM: Intercompany Matching and Eliminations

If you are using HFM for consolidations, then you already know that it is a powerful and complex tool that can vastly improve the analysis and reporting capabilities in your monthly consolidation process. However, one element of HFM that companies often do not use to its full potential is the intercompany matching and elimination functionality. In many cases, companies simply have not had the opportunity to develop a full understanding of all the intercompany features, and have therefore opted not to use them.

On September 16, you will learn about the metadata and security features that can enable you to take full advantage of HFM’s intercompany matching and elimination functionality. We will discuss how the intercompany dimension, the value dimension, and the account and entity dimensions interact to perform intercompany matching and eliminations at the appropriate levels within your entity structures. You will learn how to analyze intercompany eliminations using data grids, BI+ Financial Reporting, and system intercompany matching reports.

By fully utilizing HFM’s intercompany features, you will not only make your consolidation process much more efficient, but you will also provide valuable, detailed intercompany information to both end-users and management. The availability of that intercompany detail can drive critical management decisions and can greatly increase the value of your HFM applications within your organization.

Getting the Most out of FDM: FDM Logging

FDM is a great solution to help you standardize your processes and ensure the quality of your data. One of FDM’s best features is the outstanding audit trail it provides. However, many users only take advantage of a few of FDM’s logs and are unaware of some of the best logging features that FDM provides for tracing data and user activities.

On October 21, you will learn about the different types of logging features in FDM that can be used to track the full data audit trail and the full detail around all activities performed in the application. We will review logs and reports that provide insight into the data and end-user processes at various stages of the data integration process (i.e. Import, Validate, Export, and Check). You will also see how to track other end-user and administrator activities such as map changes, security changes, and script execution. This webinar will provide you with the tools to better leverage the FDM logging capabilities and to place tighter controls on your data and FDM application.

Getting the Most out of HFM: Financial Reporting Tips & Tricks

The quality of your Financial Reporting reports is a large part of your organization’s perception of the HFM product because many users (especially those in high-level management positions) only work with the reports. Therefore, it is critical to make sure that the Financial Reporting reports are clean, accurate, and intuitive.

On November 18, you will learn tips and tricks for taking full advantage of Financial Reporting’s features and functionality. We will demonstrate many of the more complex and less known features including:

• Formatting options
• Advanced formulas
• Cell text display
• Creating reports that are more dynamic
• Simplifying maintenance of reports
• Reports security, including how Financial Reporting object security interacts with Shared Services user provisioning

By applying best practices to your Financial Reporting reports, you can significantly improve the end-users’ experience with HFM while also reducing the maintenance workload on your corporate consolidations team.

The webinars take place from 12:00 PM EST to 1:00 PM EST on the dates specified. We will send out invitations for each webinar one month beforehand. If you aren’t currently receiving invitations, please send an e-mail to Ed DeLise and he will be glad to add you to the distribution list.

If you have any suggestions for topics that you’d like to see, please let us know and we’ll be glad to consider adding those sessions. If you have any success stories that you’d like to share about something you accomplished after watching a webinar, we’d love to hear those as well.

Thank you for participating and providing valued feedback on the Finit Solution Series.

Oracle Hyperion EPM Fusion Edition – New Features and Enhancements in HFM, FDM, and Planning

Most recent release: Oracle Hyperion EPM Fusion Edition Release 11.1.1.3

Release Date: July 2009
Premier Support Ends: July 2013

Oracle EPM 9.2: Premier Support Ends in June 2010
Oracle EPM 9.3: Premier Support Ends in January 2012

The latest release of Oracle Hyperion EPM Fusion Edition, release 11.1.1.3, is heavily focused on providing even tighter integration between source ERP systems, Oracle Hyperion FDM, and the other products within the EPM suite, such as HFM and Planning. The introduction of the FDM ERP Integrator (ERPi) and the addition of drill-through functionality from SmartView and Financial Reporting provide tremendous gains in streamlining the integration of source data and metadata to target consolidation, reporting, and planning systems. We are jointly listing some of the new features in 11.1.1.2 and 11.1.1.3 since we have not covered new features in either of those versions in our previous newsletters.

Overview of ERPi

The FDM ERP Integrator (ERPi) is a component of FDM that provides two major functionalities:

• ERPi streamlines the integration of metadata and data from select ERP systems (e.g. PeopleSoft, Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS)) into target Oracle EPM systems such as HFM and Planning.
• ERPi provides drill-through capabilities from HFM and Planning into select ERP systems such as PeopleSoft, Oracle EBS.

ERPi is an add-on to FDM that utilizes Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) to tighten the integration of data and metadata between the source transaction systems (PeopleSoft, Oracle EBS), the metadata and data conversion tools (ODI, FDM), and the consolidation and planning systems (HFM, Planning). This ability to follow a single trail for metadata and data all the way from the final target system back to the source of the transaction provides a much more streamlined and simplified process for financial analysts. Future releases of ERPi are expected to include integration functionality for additional ERP systems, including JD Edwards and SAP.

Drill Through from SmartView and Financial Reporting

Most HFM and Planning users are already aware of the ability to drill back from an HFM or Planning data grid into the supporting FDM detail. Release 11.1.1.3 also provides this functionality from both SmartView and Financial Reporting, thus further tightening the integration of HFM and Planning with FDM. The ability to drill back directly from SmartView and Financial Reporting makes data analysis much more simple and straightforward, because users will no longer need to re-create their analysis in a data grid to perform drill-back.

Other New Features in FDM

The latest releases of FDM also include the following new features:

SAP Source Adapter: An FDM adapter is now available for pulling data from SAP Financials into FDM and loading to HFM, Planning, or another EPM tool. The adapter also allows for drill-back into SAP and supports versions R/3 4.6c and ECC 6.0.

User Provisioning Migration Utility: Since release 11.1.1.1, user provisioning for FDM can be performed within Shared Services; however, FDM-specific security (e.g. location security, object security) is still managed within FDM. The latest releases include a utility for migrating FDM users into Shared Services provisioning.

64-bit Support with HFM: FDM can now run in 32-bit emulation mode on 64-bit operating systems. This is used to support clients using HFM with 64-bit processing.

Other New Features in HFM

The latest releases of HFM also include the following new features:

Rules Migration Tool for Calculation Manager: Release 11.1.1.3 includes a utility for converting VB script rules files (*.rle files) into graphical objects for Calculation Manager. This enables those who are upgrading and building from a VB Script rules file that was created in a previous version of HFM to use Calculation Manager without having to manually convert the rules file.

Other Calculation Manager Enhancements: In addition to the migration tool for Calculation Manager, release 11.1.1.3 also includes enhancements for Calculation Manager templates, printing enhancements, better zoom-mode functionality, and more flexibility for saving variables.

EPMA: There are several new features in EPMA release 11.1.1.3; the most significant one is the new Batch Client, which allows EPMA tasks to be scripted and run via ‘lights-out’ processing. Tasks that can be scheduled include Copy / Validate Application, Copy / Include / Remove / Detach / Share Dimension, Copy / Insert / Exclude / Rename / Move Member, and Create / Delete Association.

Users on System: Release 11.1.1.2 includes improved functionality related to identifying and performing actions for the users on the system. Now when an administrator logs a user off, the logged out user is notified immediately when they attempt to perform their first action subsequent to the logout.

Other New Features in Planning

The latest release of Planning also includes the following new features:

Calculation Manager Enhancements: Release 11.1.1.3 also includes enhancements for Calculation Manager templates, printing enhancements, better zoom-mode functionality, and more flexibility for saving variables.

EPMA: There are several new features in EPMA release 11.1.1.3; the most significant is the new Batch Client, which allows EPMA tasks to be scripted and run via ‘lights-out’ processing. Tasks that can be scheduled include Copy / Validate Application, Copy / Include / Remove / Detach / Share Dimension, Copy / Insert / Exclude / Rename / Move Member, and Create / Delete Association.

Localized Releases: This release is localized into a large number of languages, including French, German, Japanese, Spanish, and Chinese.

Support for Oracle Hyperion Products:
What Expires in 2010?

Premier Support for a number of Oracle Hyperion releases will expire in 2009 or 2010. This article provides an overview of the products that will experience a shift in support tiers as well as an explanation of Oracle’s three tiers of support.

Pre-System 9

Extended Premier Support was available for some pre-System 9 Hyperion products, including HFM 4.0.2, HFM 4.0.5, Essbase 7.1.6, Planning 4.0.2, Planning 4.0.5, Reports 7.2.1, Reports 7.2.5, Analyzer 7.2.1, and Analyzer 7.2.5. This Extended Support ends in September 2009.

System 9.2

The most significant change in 2010 for Oracle Hyperion customers is that the products in the System 9.2 release will shift in June 2010 from Premier Support to Sustaining Support. Many of Finit’s clients have identified this shift to Sustaining Support as an internal risk and have therefore decided to upgrade from System 9.2 to the most recent release, EPM Fusion Edition 11. Finit encourages any clients who are currently running production applications in a System 9.2 environment to consider the differences between Premier and Sustaining Support (defined below) and to obtain agreement between Finance and IT stakeholders regarding the right course of action for your company.

• More information about the new features and functionality in HFM and FDM 11.1 can be found in the Q1 2009 Finit Minute as well as in the Oracle EPM Fusion Edition article in this newsletter.
• More information about the new features and functionality in Planning 11.1 can be found in the Q2 2009 Finit Minute as well as in the Oracle EPM Fusion Edition article in this newsletter.

Hyperion Application Link (HAL)

Another significant shift in support that will occur in June 2010 is that Hyperion Application Link (HAL) will no longer be supported under Premier, Extended, or Sustaining Support. With no support being offered on HAL, customers continuing to run that application will not have any technical help desk or troubleshooting options. Clients who are currently using HAL as a data integration tool should consider migrating to another one of Oracle’s data integration tools such FDM or ODI. More information about Oracle’s data integration tools can be found in the Data Integration Overview article in this newsletter.

Hyperion Enterprise 6.4

Hyperion Enterprise 6.4 will shift in August 2010 from Premier to Sustaining Support. Clients currently utilizing Hyperion Enterprise 6.4 should consider upgrading to Hyperion Enterprise 6.5 or converting to HFM.

More information about the new features and functionality in Hyperion Enterprise 6.5 can be found in the Q1 2009 Finit Minute.

The following products / releases will experience a change in the support level offered in 2010:

	Premier Support End	Extended Support End	Sustaining Support End
Financial Management (HFM) 9.2	June 2010	not available	Indefinite
Financial Management(HFM) 4.0.2	already ended	Sept 2009	Indefinite
Financial Management(HFM) 4.0.5	already ended	Sept 2009	Indefinite
Financial Data Quality Management (FDM) 9.2	June 2010	not available	Indefinite
Enterprise FDM 7.2	August 2010	not available	Indefinite
Essbase 9.2	June 2010	not available	Indefinite
Essbase 7.1.6	already ended	Sept 2009	Indefinite
Planning 9.2	June 2010	not available	Indefinite
Planning 4.0.2	already ended	Sept 2009	Indefinite
Planning 4.0.5	already ended	Sept 2009	Indefinite
BI+ 9.2	June 2010	not available	Indefinite
Reports 7.2.1	already ended	Sept 2009	Indefinite
Reports 7.2.5	already ended	Sept 2009	Indefinite
Analyzer 7.2.1	already ended	Sept 2009	Indefinite
Analyzer 7.2.5	already ended	Sept 2009	Indefinite
Enterprise 6.4	August 2010	not available	Indefinite
Application Link (HAL) 9.0	already ended	not available	June 2010
Application Link (HAL) 9.2	June 2009	not available	June 2010
Application Link (HAL) 7	already ended	Sept 2009	June 2010

Oracle’s Support Tiers

Premier Support applies for 5 years from the release’s general availability date and provides the following:

• Major product and technology releases
• Technical support
• Updates, fixes, security alerts, data fixes, and critical patch updates
• Tax, legal, and regulatory updates
• Upgrade scripts
• Certification with most new third-party products/versions (e.g. new releases of Microsoft Office or new operating systems)
• Certification with most new Oracle products

Extended Support is an extension of Premier Support for an additional 3 years for an additional fee. Extended Support is not available for most Oracle Hyperion product releases; however, it was provided for some pre-System 9 releases. Extended Support for those releases expires in September 2009.

Sustaining Support is available indefinitely, as long as you license your Oracle Hyperion products, and provides the following:

• Major product and technology releases
• Technical support
• Updates, fixes, and critical patch updates that were created during the Premier Support stage
• Upgrade scripts that were created during the Premier Support stage

Sustaining Support does not include:

• New updates, fixes, security alerts, data fixes, and critical patch updates
• New tax, legal, and regulatory updates
• New upgrade scripts
• Certification with new third-party products/versions (e.g. new releases of Microsoft Office or new operating systems)
• Certification with new Oracle products

Data Integration Overview

Oracle provides a number of different tools for data integration that cover everything from data movement to data quality to data audit trail. These options apply to many different business use cases from metadata management and metadata loading to financial data mapping and target system loading. The thoroughness and flexibility of Oracle’s data integration options provides customers a range of choices to find the one that fits their specific requirements. However, along with all those choices can come some confusion in terms of the functions each tool performs and the appropriate tool to use per business use case.

Many clients that previously used Hyperion Application Link (HAL) are currently reviewing the functionality of these different tools as possible replacements for HAL. Oracle will no longer support HAL after June 2010, so if your company is still using HAL for metadata or data loads, it will be important for you to consider other replacement tools.

The following is an overview of Oracle’s Hyperion data integration options and an explanation of the differences in features, functionality, and use.

Financial Data Quality Management (FDM)

Overview: FDM is a data mapping and loading tool typically used by companies to load financial data into their EPM systems such as HFM, Planning and Essbase. FDM is most often used to load financial data and to provide data integrity management. It can also be used for non-financial data as well. FDM is primarily geared towards end-user driven data processing, when different end-users are responsible for mapping, loading, and validating their financial data into their target Hyperion system. Its pre-built functionality and workflow make it effective for companies that have many different source systems to allow end-users to map and load their data into a consolidated chart of accounts. Users can drill back from target systems such as HFM and Planning into the supporting detail from FDM to understand how their source accounts were mapped and loaded into the Hyperion target system. While end-user driven activities are the primary use case of FDM, FDM can also be set up to perform multi-period data loads, batch processing, and ‘lights-out’ processing.

Best Features: FDM’s best features are its audit trail, mapping table maintenance, and data integrity management, which is native functionality in the product. For example, assume a company has ten general ledger cash accounts but only one cash account in HFM. FDM’s audit trail provides the ability to see how those ten accounts are mapping into the consolidated chart of accounts. FDM records and archives a tremendous amount of information, including the source document that was used to import the financial data as well as all mapping changes. Its built-in ability to provide a detailed audit trail is something that requires customization in all of Oracle’s other data integration products. In addition, FDM provides the ability to apply strict data validation checks and signoffs so that the end-user takes responsibility for the quality of the data loaded.

Limitations: FDM is focused on managing the quality of data, and it is not possible to load metadata via FDM. For this reason, many companies use a combination of ODI and FDM; ODI loads the metadata while FDM loads the data. This was one of the main reasons that Oracle developed the new ERPi module in order to be able to fully combine and manage all data requirements.

Previously Known As: FDM was previously known as UpStream WebLink before the tool was purchased by Hyperion.

Oracle Data Integrator (ODI)

Overview: ODI is a financial data and metadata integration tool that is typically used to load large volumes of data and metadata. It is an ‘E-L-T’ tool (as opposed to the typical E-T-L tool) because it extracts data from the source system, loads the tables onto the destination server, and then transforms the data into the format required by the target system. This results in faster processing because there is no middle-tier proprietary transformation database for ODI (unlike a typical E-T-L tool), and the data only moves across the network once. Similar to FDM, ODI has Hyperion target adapters that allow it to connect to the Oracle Hyperion EPM systems. ODI is geared towards the business case of IT controlled data processing or automated data processing. It is not typically geared towards end-users loading their own data and managing their mapping tables as it does not have a pre-built interface for that. As a result, it is generally used in cases where there is minimal mapping or a small group of users maintaining the mapping.

Best Features: ODI excels at processing extremely large volumes of metadata data and data; its purpose is to get the data transformed and loaded to the target as quickly as possible. A typical use of ODI would be to refresh an Essbase cube or HFM application nightly. The strength of ODI is to streamline high-performance movement and transformation of data, and this can be done via batch-processing and direct connections between systems to provide true ‘lights-out’ processing.

Limitations: Since ODI’s focus is on speed and quantity, it does not ‘slow down’ to build an audit trail. If an audit trail or error logging is needed, it needs to be custom built into the ODI routine. In addition, ODI does not provide a lot of visibility to the data since it is being moved and transformed ‘behind the scenes’. It is for these reasons that many companies use a combination of ODI and FDM; ODI loads the metadata while FDM loads the data. For companies that have fewer source systems and a Hyperion application chart of accounts that is designed off of the source systems, FDM may not be needed as little to no mapping would take place.

Previously Known As: ODI was previously known as Synopsis before the tool was purchased by Oracle. ODI was not acquired with the Hyperion acquisition.

Data Integration Management (DIM)

Overview: Similar to ODI, DIM is used to load large volumes of data and metadata. DIM is a classic E-T-L (Extract, Transform, Load) tool that is built for processing very large volumes of data and metadata very quickly. DIM runs on Informatica PowerCenter and has Hyperion target adapters that allow it to connect to the different EPM products whereas ODI uses its own adapters and ‘engine’. DIM is most often used by clients that have made an investment in both Hyperion and Informatica technologies. DIM allows them to continue to use their existing investment in Informatica PowerCenter, while using the Hyperion adapters to load to their Hyperion applications.

Best Features: Like ODI, DIM’s purpose is to get the data transformed and loaded to the target as quickly as possible. It is used to extract and move large volumes of metadata and data from transactional systems and data warehouses into EPM systems.

Limitations: Similar to ODI, DIM is focused on batch processing and is not natively designed for a lot of end-user processing, mapping table maintenance, or audit trail capabilities. Therefore, companies using DIM for processing metadata often use FDM to manage the mapping, loading, and audit trail of the financial data. As mentioned with ODI, for companies that have fewer source systems and a Hyperion application chart of accounts that is designed off of the source systems, FDM may not be needed as little to no mapping would take place.

Previously Known As: DIM was developed by Hyperion and runs on Informatica PowerCenter.

Data Relationship Management (DRM)

Overview: DRM allows you to manage and synchronize your ‘master data’ among various Hyperion applications and even source systems such as an ERP or a data warehouse. For example, you could use DRM to manage your entity hierarchies and all the various entity attributes in DRM for HFM, Planning, a separate Essbase cube, and PeopleSoft. You could publish your changes to the various tools and applications as needed. DRM is the only Oracle Hyperion integration tool that allows you to both manage and load metadata changes to Hyperion and source systems. ODI and DIM only allow for metadata loading, not management. EPMA (described below) only supports metadata management and loading to Hyperion target systems, not source systems.

Best Features: DRM can be extremely useful for companies that have a lot of different tools and applications to manage, especially when there is a high level of consistency among all the systems. The idea is to prevent redundant work, for example, building an entity hierarchy in HFM metadata manager and then again as a separate exercise in Planning. DRM’s versioning capability also makes it easy to understand changes between versions.

Limitations: DRM is focused on metadata management and loading. It does not have any capability to load or map financial data to Hyperion target systems.

Previously Known As: DRM was previously known as Hyperion Master Data Management (MDM) before Hyperion was purchased by Oracle. Before Hyperion acquired it and labeled it as MDM, the tool was known as Razza.

Enterprise Performance Management Architect (EPMA)

Overview: EPMA was introduced by Hyperion with the System 9.3 release. EPMA is somewhat similar to the role that DRM plays but has some important differences. EPMA provides an ability to manage and synchronize your ‘master data’ among Hyperion applications. EPMA does have some financial data loading functionality geared towards moving financial data between Hyperion applications.

Best Features: EPMA simplifies the management of metadata among Hyperion applications and often sits between several Hyperion tools and/or applications. For example, metadata for multiple HFM and Planning applications could be managed within EPMA and then pushed out to the applicable HFM and Planning applications. EPMA significantly simplifies the effort of managing metadata among multiple Hyperion systems.

Limitations: EPMA does not currently provide support for integrating the metadata hierarchies into source systems. Currently, it is designed only to support metadata management and synchronization in Hyperion applications. EPMA also has limited data mapping and loading capabilities. It does not currently provide any mechanism for dynamic mapping rules such as ranges and wildcard-based mapping.

Previously Known As: EPMA was originally introduced as BPMA (Business Performance Management Architect) before being re-labeled as EPMA.