In Inc Magazine's annual ranking of the fastest growing 500 private companies in the United States, Finit is excited to have achieved the rank of #367. This was accomplished by attaining 770% growth for the previous 3 years. As the only Hyperion consulting partner on the list, and the 42nd fastest growing IT Services Company, this is a huge testament to the trust our clients have placed in us over the years and the commitment of our employees to ensure each of our clients is excited about the value they receive from us!

Finit’s strategy of providing Finance and IT expertise focused on Oracle / Hyperion products, as well as our dedication to customer service, has enabled our clients to build and deploy world class Financial Consolidation & Reporting and Data Integration solutions. Finit was Upstream Software’s “go to” partner for the most complex and high profile engagements. Now, Finit enjoys a win-win partnership with Hyperion / Oracle, continuing to provide the same high quality results. HFM and Enterprise clients have leveraged our Accounting, Finance, and IT expertise to help them with upgrades, conversions, and system redesigns over the past 5 years. Between Sarbanes Oxley compliance and the opportunity to leverage advances in the Hyperion / Oracle software applications, the need for Finit's high value, high quality expertise has contributed to this record setting growth.

Thanks to all of our clients for having us help you achieve your goals, and helping us to achieve ours in the process!

Click on the following link to view our Inc 500 profile and read more about this year’s Inc 500 list:

http://www.inc.com/inc5000/2007/company-profile.html?id=200703670

In April 2007, Finit Solutions had the opportunity to meet hundreds of Hyperion FDM, HFM, and Enterprise clients at the annual Hyperion Solutions Conference in Orlando, FL. Finit demonstrated a number of customized FDM solutions at our booth, including automated metadata loading into Essbase, adaptors into TaxStream tax software, and customized reports and scripts not available in “off-the-shelf” FDM. We also spoke with a number of Hyperion users about the design considerations and challenges in migrating from Hyperion Enterprise to System 9 HFM as well as speaking with Hyperion Enterprise users about best practice tips and tricks and the new functionality available in release 6.4.

Finit participated in the first annual FDM roundtable discussion with FDM developers and users. As the world-wide leader in FDM implementations, Finit shared some of their more common application enhancements and custom solutions with the FDM customers in attendance. In addition, Finit joined in discussions on the product road map and the direction for future releases.

Finit led three breakout sessions for conference attendees already using or planning to use FDM:

• How United Technologies Linked 500+ Source Systems to Hyperion System 9 Financial Management using Hyperion System 9 Financial Data Quality Management.
• Leveraging Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management’s ability to handle complex data submission processes at Pfizer
• Convert with Confidence – Leveraging FDM to Convert from Enterprise to HFM

These sessions are available for download at www.finitsolutions.com/solutions2007.html

Back in 2000, Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management (FDM, formerly UpStream WebLink) arrived on the finance and accounting scene with a novel and powerful approach to loading data from disparate data sources into Hyperion Enterprise (HE). This solution was embraced quickly by many, especially those who were tasked with providing increased transparency into the financial results that they were reporting. The high rate of user acceptance and satisfaction was heavily impacted by Sarbanes Oxley internal control requirements, which were quickly and elegantly met with this solution. In 2002, Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) was released as the successor to HE, and FDM was once again front and center, providing clients with an out of the box approach to obtain verifiable data and transparent processes.

Although FDM is still widely used for both HFM and HE around the globe, its usage has continued to evolve to provide additional value to clients who are in need of getting their arms around their data movement processes in additional areas of their organizations.

Several areas where FDM is being used beyond Financial Consolidations are profiled here.

Hyperion Essbase Data
With the adaptor for Essbase, clients can load data from any source into Essbase, while providing their end users with the same interface and process as they use to load their other applications. One client who leveraged this solution uses both FDM and Essbase to streamline their MFD (monthly financial data) process. They put this solution in place to improve their audit trails, reduce their manual processes, and reduce the likelihood of erroneous data being reported to stakeholders. Several additional Finit clients use similar processes in FDM to load their source detail into Hyperion Essbase.

Hyperion Essbase Metadata
By leveraging the ability for FDM to kick off Essbase load rules, ESSCMD and scripts, users now have the ability to update members in an Essbase outline on the fly through FDM. This can be done in an automated fashion, or managed manually by the end user. FDM notifies end users if they are trying to load values to members that don’t exist in the Essbase cube and then can automatically load those members if the hierarchy structure exists in the source file, or request an input from the end user to update the new members. This feature provides users with immediate and complete visibility to help them expedite the load process. This solution can be designed to include the appropriate controls necessary for specific environmental requirements such as limiting the ability to load metadata to certain dimensions.

Hyperion Planning
Data flows between the various Hyperion Products can vary greatly, as some clients move actual results into their Planning application, or maybe they need to move summary level budget information into their Consolidations System. Regardless of the flow or the mapping required, FDM can deliver automation, process consistency and audit trails for this data flow as well. There are many clients currently using FDM to move data between HFM and Planning / Essbase, Hyperion Enterprise and Planning / Essbase and vice versa.

Custom Data Warehouses
Once data has been collected by FDM and the data is of a verifiable quality, there may be target systems other than the consolidation system in which this data can be useful. For example, one of our Fortune 100 clients is leveraging FDM to collect data for HFM and is including additional data whose ultimate target is a custom Oracle Data Warehouse. The data that is exclusively for Oracle is simply stored in an additional dimension inside FDM. After the data has been loaded, Informatica (an ETL tool) is used to pull this data from the FDM Relational Repository to load into the custom warehouse.

3rd Party Tax Software Solutions
With all the complexity inherent in tax calculations, adjustments and reporting, it’s no wonder that material control weaknesses in the tax area happen to be one of the more frequently reported Sarbanes-Oxley disclosures. For this reason Hyperion has teamed up with TaxStream to offer an integrated and automated solution for tax tracking and reporting as part of the periodic GAAP consolidation and reporting process managed by HFM. The Hyperion Tax Solution automates financial consolidation and reporting, including tax calculations, provisioning, adjustments, and filings through pulling FDM and HFM data through the Hyperion FDM Tax Extract Adaptor, which can then be loaded to TaxStream. Additionally, many other Finit clients that are using HFM, Hyperion Enterprise or other sources for their tax reporting have used FDM to collect and load Microsoft Excel based tax schedules.

If you are asking yourself this question, then you are no doubt already aware that Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) looks and feels much different than Hyperion Enterprise (HE.) The good news is that HFM, like HE, was built to be a consolidation tool and, as such, has the same inherent financial consolidation intelligence that HE has. In fact, the dimensionality and capabilities of HFM have greatly enhanced what is currently possible in HE. From an application administrator or power user perspective, here are some of the ways in which your current HE application will change in HFM:

Did you know that since FDM 9.2.0 you can modify, create, and delete FDM reports without needing an external reporting tool? Now all of the report maintenance can be done from within the WorkBench using a report tool called Active Reports. Companies can take their existing FDM reporting to the next level by creating or using some advanced reports. Finit has created dozens of custom reports to allow companies to identify trends and drill into their data more effectively. Below are some simple tips you can use to help make FDM reports work for you.

Quick Tips – Maintaining & Customizing Reports
(Must be in WorkBench on the Reports tab)

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Changing Sequence of Reports Within Report Groups

For example, you may want to move the most popular Trial Balance report for your organization to the top of the list.


Right-click on the report title, choose Report Properties, specify a new sequence number, then click OK.



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Changing Security Level of Reports

For example, Journal Reports are limited to Power users only by default, but you can change that. Keep in mind that reports are secured at the Report Group level, so if you find that you need different levels of access for different reports in a report group, simply break out the reports into different groups (see below for how to do that).


Right-click on the report group, choose Properties, choose a different Security Level, and click OK.



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Creating Custom Groups

For example, you may want a separate report group for your custom reports or even a separate report group for some of the most popular reports. It is highly recommended that you flag any custom groups that you create as “custom” so that they can easily be identified.


Right-click on any report group, choose Add Report Group, enter the details for the new Report Group, specify a Report Group ID greater than 5000, check the Custom Group checkbox, then click OK.



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Moving Reports Between Groups

For example, you may have a custom report group into which you want to move reports. There is not a “move” option, so you need to first copy it, then delete it from the original location.


Right-click on the report title, choose Copy Report, right-click on the new report group, choose Paste Report, right click on the report in the original location and choose Delete.



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Change Sort Order

(NOTE: with Active Reports, the sorting is entirely controlled by the SQL statement)


Right-click on the report title, choose Report Definition Properties, click on the SQL statement tab, change/add the ORDER BY clause, which will be after the WHERE clause, then click OK




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Add a Report Parameter (Filter)


Create new: Right-click on the report title, choose Add Parameter, enter the details for the new Parameter, then click OK

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Copy an existing: Right-click on an existing, similar parameter, choose Copy Parameter, right-click on the target report, choose Paste Parameter, then update if necessary. NOTE: To have a report parameter filter the data, you also need to update the WHERE clause in the SQL statement. To reference the new parameter in the SQL statement, place a “~” before and after the parameter name (e.g. ~StartDate~).




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Limiting an “all location” report to only those locations to which a user has access


Right-click on the report title, choose Report Definition Properties, click on the SQL statement tab, change/add the WHERE clause, to reference a built-in function called |PartitionKeyListForUser| (e.g. WHERE vData.PartitionKey |PartitionKeyListForUser|)




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Finit Advanced FDM Reports
Finit has created some of the following reports for customers:

Filtered System Activity Reports – Show the activity log data filtered by a date range and/or a location. The standard System Activity Log reports display data for all locations and all possible dates that have been logged by FDM.

Format Enhanced Check Reports – Several clients have added custom formatting features to their check report such as Account Group headers (labels without a value), conditional bold/underline formatting, etc.

Location Listing With User Detail – Shows all locations and for each one, it will list the users that have access to the location, their email address, the Default Location indicator, and the All Locations indicator.

User Listing With Detail – Shows all users and for each one, it will list their email address, the All Locations indicator, and their application security level. It then lists each location that the user has access to and identifies whether the location is the Default Location and the location security level.

Location Listing With Reviewers And Submitters – Shows all locations with their section(s), reviewer, reviewer email, reviewer proxy, reviewer proxy email, approver, approver email, approver proxy, and approver proxy email. This is an excellent report for managing your Financial Controls submission.

Excel Pull Reports – These reports are Excel-based and populate one of your organization’s own Excel templates by pulling in data from your target system (HE, HFM, Essbase) and/or FDM.

Process Monitor Reports with Check Flags, Errors & SOX red flags – Variations of the standard Process Monitor reports, with the addition of the count of check report rules that passed, failed, or generated warnings, as well as the number of SOX questions that generated red flags.

Maping Efficiency Reports – These reports are used to analyze your maps, especially when you may be having slow map processing speeds. They will show the percentage of maps used, broken down by map type, or list the individual maps rules not used.

Threshold Variance Reports – Variance reports that allow the user to specify a threshhold level, which then display only those accounts that exceed the threshold. These reports can apply the threshhold to the source or target level accounts.