5 Reasons to Rethink the Future of Your Oracle Hyperion Solution

Integrated EPM

Globally, thousands of organizations rely on integrated Oracle Hyperion EPM applications to support critical Finance processes. Those applications include HFM, Hyperion Planning, Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management, Hyperion Strategic Finance, Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management, Oracle Essbase and others.

And while these products can "do the job" on their own, many Finance teams still struggle to get the full value from their investments — and their time — when they need to bring all their data and reporting together. Why?

Despite their "integrations," using these distinct point solutions for financial data quality, financial close & consolidation, reporting and budgeting, planning & forecasting often dilutes the user experience for Finance teams at large, sophisticated organizations. The fragmented nature of these products has created extra work and costs that simply make it hard for organizations to take finance further. In fact, rather than spending time analyzing the business, many Finance teams are forced to spend time managing the following:

• Multiple points of maintenance
• Multiple points of data integration
• Time spent syncing and reconciling data across applications
• High costs of ownership and upgrades

For Finance teams using Oracle Hyperion EPM solutions, here are 5 key factors to consider for your evaluation process and value assessment of whether to continue with the system in the future given the looming end of support and Oracle's strategic focus on EPM Cloud.

Reason 1: Change Is Inevitable

Key factor number one relates to the stated support policy for Oracle Hyperion.

While the date may again be extended, the message is not a positive one: the end of life for the Hyperion product set is nearing.

What You Could Lose in an Upgrade

If you upgrade to V 11.2.x, your organization may lose some capabilities, such as:

• EPM Architect (EPMA)
• Hyperion BI+ Reporting
• Disclosure Management
• Some of the planning modules

Not to mention, Oracle's roadmap implies V 11.2.x won't be on the strategic go-forward product set. Why does this matter? Well, what will you do when you need something this tool simply can't deliver? What happens when something breaks — especially during a critical period? Such questions are critical to explore prior to deciding your way forward.

One key point is that the Oracle cloud EPM for financial close module doesn't map exactly to the capability customers were familiar with in HFM. Why not? Essentially, the Close & Consolidation cloud is delivered with more pre-defined dimensions and fewer custom dimensions than HFM. This approach was intended to standardize the consolidation process. However, organizations must ensure the approach will adequately handle any level of complexity, which may require customization and more detailed reporting.

Reason 2: Inefficient Technology

As with any new investment, you and your organization should always ensure you're making the most efficient use of technology to take finance further.

For example, did you know it's no longer required to separate EPM processes into individual tools and/or applications? What more could your team accomplish if you weren't spending time managing unnecessary integrations or constantly moving data between point solutions? Could improving the efficiency of your processes have a big impact on your organization's overall business performance and Finance Transformation?

Even if your organization moves to Oracle cloud EPM, did you know you'll still be reliant on separate products and integration points between the EPM processes? Yes, really. Even after migrating, you'll still:

• Maintain each separate product's own storage, reference data and data — all of which must be managed and updated in the same way as before.
• Need to move actual data to the planning environment.

So those time savings you were hoping for across your EPM processes following any change decision? You're not likely to see them.

Reason 3: Declining User Community

Many Oracle Hyperion EPM customers are evaluating their options. As a result, the user community is gradually shrinking along with the partner community.

Many longstanding customers have already moved to innovative EPM solutions such as OneStream. Incidentally, Oracle's cloud strategy means that legacy on-premises customers are managed by a separate team with a different level of investment and focus. In each region, the organization of some meetings/conferences with other users is reliant on the wider user groups themselves. These opportunities may also be further reduced as the numbers continue to decline.

A vibrant partner community is critical to continue supporting and extending the capabilities of the Oracle Hyperion solutions. Yet many of the Oracle Hyperion partners who existed 10 years ago have now partially or fully converted to other EPM applications.

Many experienced consultants have therefore retrained in other technologies, resulting in a reduced resource pool around the Oracle Hyperion EPM suite. Many former Oracle Hyperion customers have found it critically important in their evaluations to move to a solution at the forefront of innovation. With such solutions, the focus stays solely on EPM, and both users and the expert community will continue to grow well into the future.

Reason 4: Support Experience

EPM applications are critically important to organizations due to the nature of the Finance processes facilitated by the applications. To ensure the applications are available and consistently operate effectively requires a comprehensive and responsive support service.

Many of the public reviews of Oracle Hyperion on sites such as Gartner Peer Reviews or TrustRadius cite problems with the support service. Why? Today, Oracle increasingly relies on a portal-based, self-service model rather than immediate, personal assistance. Many organizations who have already left Oracle comment that the support experience was a major factor due to the following issues, among others:

• Long delays to get responses.
• Limited assistance with customizations and integrations.
• Feelings of being forced into unjustifiable upgrades or limited-capability cloud products.
• Annual increased costs with no change in service.

Ultimately, the support experience determines an ongoing relationship with a vendor and can greatly impact the morale of Finance teams. Fully evaluating the service you are receiving — and then effectively using that evaluation as a justification for change — is thus critically important.

Reason 5: Is the TCO Reasonable?

Finally, Finance teams must consider the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of separate legacy or cloud CPM applications. And while a point solution strategy could be focused on reducing costs, if not careful, Finance teams can actually end up increasing their TCO. How?

Disparate solutions require Finance to employ cross-application integrations and put "steel band-aids" together to develop a fully functioning system. The TCO with separate applications is known to be higher than a single, comprehensive solution due to the multiple integration points and the significant time spent continually moving data. Comparatively, a uniquely unified enterprise performance management platform delivers less risk and more efficient and more effective processes for a lower overall cost.

Here are 3 categories to consider for your TCO analysis:

Summary

When evaluating current EPM technology to improve and enhance processes, consider the evolution of both your business and the available technology. The many advancements in EPM make it critical that you take finance further and no longer customize a legacy solution to make up for its shortcomings. Doing so may make the solution more difficult to unravel in the future when the pressure of a more compelling event may force change.

• 450+

  Oracle Hyperion customers who have already moved to OneStream

For that reason and more, OneStream has become the trusted vendor of choice for more than 450 Oracle Hyperion customers across the world.

Customer Success Stories

Check out our customer testimonials:

• The Carlyle Group
• Fruit of the Loom
• Herbalife
• Saeta Yield

To learn more, view our dedicated Hyperion pages and sign up for a Live Demo Webinar to hear more from other successful OneStream customers.