Hyperion Financial Management - Consolidation Methods

 Namaste!

Here's a video I have put together to explain the consolidation methods and calculation status codes.

primarily I have explained the significance of  below calculations status codes:

"OK"

"OK SC"

"OK ND"

"CH" and other codes.

In case of consolidation methods, I have explained following with examples:

"Consolidate"

"Consolidate All"

"Consolidate All with Data"

Happy Learning!

Padmaja

Oracle HFM 11.2 - Concepts of Intercompany Eliminations

 Namaste!

Today, I would like to share a video that I have prepared on fundamentals of Intercompany eliminations in Hyperion Financial Management.

• In this video, I have discussed on:
• Intercompany Accounts
• Intercompany Entities
• Plug accounts
• Intercompany Transactions
• Intercompany Balances
• Elimination of Intercompany Balances at common parent level

Happy Learning!

https://courses.trnghub.com/courses/oracle-epm-11-2-6-hyperion-financial-management-advanced-course

Oracle EPM Planning Cloud (EPBCS) - Design Considerations - Part 2

Namaste!

Let's continue with the discussion on "Oracle EPM Planning Cloud (EPBCS) - Design Considerations" that we have started a week back.

Before we jump into the topic, I would like to show you a quick poll on "Oracle EPM Planning Cloud (EPBCS) out of box modules usability", I have conducted on LinkedIn.

The sample size is small, so it may not reflect the larger population opinion. But it certainly give a glance of what folks are thinking about the Product from their experience stand point.

If you are wondering., this poll has been conducted in "Hyperion" centric group, so I would think., this reflects credible view of the ground reality.

Overall, close to 60% of respondents prefer to use all out of box modules., at least Financials, Workforce and Capex. That's a good sign. 

However, 30% of them chose not to use the out of box functionality at all. They certainly have their fair share of agony not to go with the out of box., I could totally understand that., been there, done that!!

Only 13% of them chose only Workforce and Capex., but not Financials. Sure, you might be wondering why that option was there in the first place to be able to select. Biased., may be yes! Will reveal the surprise at the end!!

Now I am going to analyze the above responses with my experience and background on this tool suite.

Again., it would be just my thought process., for sure., you might have different story to tell and I respect that and keen to learn if you are willing to share.

I will start with "No out of box modules" which won 30% votes., I was under the same impression about "Out of box modules", 4 years back when I did my first EPBCS Implementation., mainly due to:

• Lack of documentation
• Unexplained Bugs
• Client specific customization requirements
• Overall Integration Issues among all the out of box modules

Then, in later years, EPBCS gotten better by addressing many of the above challenges, but one thing remained open and that is:

• Client specific customization requirements

I am sure., above challenge would be there forever., In fact that kept most of us in Jobs. LOL!! 😊

Anyway., I would be happy to assist and advise on projects where one would think., it would be impossible to replace current Hyperion Planning Application with EPBCS out of box functionality.

It may not accommodate 100% of flexibility that you would get with on-premise Application., but you could consider other design alternatives!!

Design Consideration 1:  Easy to use EPM Planning Cloud (EPBCS) out-of-box module "FINANCIALS"

It all depends on how complex the business model., For example., Hospitality or Hotel Industry uses fairly simple revenue and expense planning processes.,

Below are sample list of Revenue lines of the Hotel Industry:

• Rooms
• Food
• Beverage
• Telephone
• Parking
• Retail Store
• Food Court
• Recreation

and here is the sample list of cost center budgets:

• IT
• Sales & Marketing
• Property Operations and Maintenance
• Utilities
• Tax
• Managements Fees
• Laundry
• Cafeteria
• Payroll

Here are few formulas how it would derive the revenue:

Total Rooms Revenue = Number of rooms * Average daily rate (ADR)

Total Rooms Cost = Number of rooms * Cost per occupied room (COPR)

Food-Breakfast-Capture Ratio =  Number of Food covers / Available Guests

Food-Breakfast-Average Check = Total Food Sales / Total Guests

The above calculations could very well achieved by driver and trend based based formulas of FINANCIALS out of box functionality. It is just matter of adding more driver members and write your own formula.

Still, you may be wondering., why I may have to use the out of box module? Anyhow I was supposed to create my own drivers and write custom formulas.. What is the fun of using the out of box "FINANCIALS" module., I am with you. Please hang in there with me till end.,

As I said this is just brain-storming session., so my perspective would be influenced by my experiences!!

So, above functionality is fairly easy to achieve with out of box FINANCIALS module for the above type of Industries.,

Design Consideration 2: Difficult to use EPM Planning Cloud (EPBCS) out-of-box module "FINANCIALS"

Now, let's talk about where we have hard time when we enable the out of box "FINANCIALS" module.,

For example., planning models of Insurance and Banking Industries are complex in nature and they have many moving parts.

Let's take Insurance industry., it may have many lines of businesses., some of them are.,

• Financial Lines Insurance
• Group Medical Insurance
• Group Life Insurance
• Corporate Liability Insurance
• Property Insurance
• Corporate Travel Insurance

For example., to calculate the Gross premium written (GPW) and Acquisition Cost., below components need to be calculated and fed into the forms:

• Renewal%
• Renewal Business GPW
• New Business GPW
• Renewal Acquisition Cost %
• Renewal Business Acquisition Cost
• New Business Acquisition Cost %
• New Business Acquisition Cost

For example "Renewal%" driver which is crucial to calculate many KPI's, sometimes available at lowest levels. such as "branch" and if it is not available ., these drivers would have to automatically to be taken from "region" level etc. If nothing available., system should be able to get the value from "corporate" level.

In nutshell., you would end up writing your own custom business rule and achieve the functionality.

This can't be achieved simply by modifying or creating a custom formulae since it has many conditions (Technically it would be possible but not efficient)

Similarly.,

Calculating the UPR, DAC and Unearned Commissions by using regulatory percentages for different line of businesses is another scenario., where you end up writing your own business rules since it has complex logic.

**Unearned Premium reserve (UPR)

**Deferred acquisition costs (DAC) 

Same thing with the Allocation of Shared Services Cost across different entities and departments with crazy customization requirements demands from clients would absolutely blow your mind away., if you want to squeeze-in everything in out-of-box FINANCIAL's module. 

(Again, technically it would be possible but be cautious about what features you enable., since you may end up with all unnecessary built-in metadata, forms, rules etc., which you wouldn't be using)

In this case., I would be glad, not to enable the FINANCIAL's module., instead., create custom cube within EPBCS application and design the functionality.

So, In this case., What I am going to loose by not enabling the out-of-box module., but create a custom cube?

The major disadvantage are:

• No out-of-box Maps for data push functionality from other modules (Workforce, Capital and Projects)
• No out-of-box balance sheet and cash flow functionality
• No out-of-box dashboards with built in forms, Graphs and KPI's

The work around for the built-in data push functionality is., we could define our own maps between Workforce, Capital and Projects to custom cube., and write the data push business rules in each of those modules using XREF and XWRITE functionality.

Alright, that's it for today!

We will continue discussing other ideas in future blogs..

Happy Learning!

I am excited to announce that I have published the much awaited course "Oracle EPM Cloud Planning (EPBCS)". Use the Coupon code "EPBCSADV001"

Oracle Cloud EPM Planning (EPBCS) Advanced Course (trnghub.com)

Announcement of Oracle EPM Cloud Planning (EPBCS) Advanced Course

Namaste!

I am excited to announce that I have published the much awaited course "Oracle EPM Cloud Planning (EPBCS)", today!

I know that you have been asking me to release this course for past one year and now I am happy to deliver and hope it would meet your expectations!

Please note that, I will keep adding more content as we progress, so please feel free to send me any feedback you might have to improve the course!

As a complimentary, I am happy to offer discount on this premier course to my current Udemy students. This coupon is valid for 15 days only.

https://www.udemy.com/course/oracle-cloud-epbcs/?couponCode=EPBCSADV001

Happy Learning!

Padmaja Vemireddy

Oracle EPM Planning Cloud (EPBCS) - Design Considerations - Part 1

Namaste!

It has been a pleasure sharing my thoughts as always.

In this blog series, I wanted to discus my experience with Oracle EPM Planning cloud (Oracle stopped using EPBCS term as marketing Jargon).

So, I would refer EPM Planning Cloud and EPBCS inter-changeably., going forward., hope that would be okay to you!

Let me give some background of my journey from Hyperion On-premise to Cloud equivalent.

After working for more than 15 years in On-premise Hyperion suite, I got a chance to work on PBCS, FCCS and EPRCS in and around year 2016.

Like many of you., I straight away used PBCS (planning and budgeting cloud service) just as a Hyperion hosted platform and start building out whatever that is required to meet client requirements!

Well, PBCS was meant that way when it was released., meaning there was no out of box functionality (except few bells and whistles) to use in planning application development., No regrets so far!

Now I got a chance to work on a project in 2017 where Oracle sold EPBCS (Enterprise planning and budgeting cloud service) to client.

Looks like, Oracle sales reps told client that there is no development or customization required at all., simply buy subscriptions, configure, and use them :)

In fact, from Oracle side, it has been a progressive thinking to make Hyperion equivalent cloud offerings as much configurable modules as possible.

Oracle succeeded well with Oracle ERP Cloud offerings in this line!

So, going back to 2017., when I had to use Oracle EPBCS to build Budgeting, Forecasting and Reporting application for a client.,

I had no clue how to map client requirements with Out of box functionality that came with EPBCS., I am sure many of you might have gone through this phase like me :)

My first impression was it was a overkill to use all modules that comes with EPBCS., since client's requirement was just revenue and expense planning.

Next thing., out of box functionality such as Direct entry, driver based, and trend-based assumptions were not passed in fit-gap analysis of the requirements workshop.

Now, I end up with EPBCS instance that I had no clue how to make it work to meet client's requirement.

Should I go back to client and tell them you could have purchased PBCS instead of EPBCS., topic for another day., I leave that part here.

Anyways., I end up not using any out of the box functionality for that client., instead build all custom functionality to meet client's very specific requirements of budgeting models.

Let's not judge and conclude here with just single instance of project experience!

I am fortunate enough to work with other clients., where they had a requirement to use the Workforce, Capex along with Financial Planning.

Here EPBCS., now EPM Planning cloud scores big points., especially with Workforce and Capital modules.

Just to give a background on typical Workforce requirements of clients., it is complex module with many moving parts around., here are some typical workforce features:

 

• Salary Defaults and Workforce Assumptions
• Benefits and car allowances
• Add New Hire Requisition
• Social Security Tax
• Federal Tax
• Bonus Pay
• Existing Employees details
• Change Hiring Requisition
• Transfer Employee between entities and departments
• Partial Payment Factors
• Merit Based Planning
• Calculate Merit Details
• Hire Contractor

 

I remember spending count less hours on design and development of the web forms, business rules, menus, and validation rules to achieve the above features and functionality in On-premise Hyperion Planning implementations!!

Now, EPBCS workforce module comes to rescue us with all the above functionality available out-of-box.

We would simply have to know how to configure the "Workforce" module., no need to spend time to develop such complex functionality by ourselves!!

How about rest of the modules., like "Capital" and "Projects" and finally all integrated into "Financials"?

Here are some interesting scenarios pops up!

Let's discus those pros and cons which will eventually help us to generate design alternatives!

Let's continue to discus them in next blog.

Meanwhile., please share your side of the story with EPM Planning cloud from design perspective.

It would certainly help us all.

Happy thinking and learning!

I am excited to announce that I have published the much awaited course "Oracle EPM Cloud Planning (EPBCS)"

https://www.udemy.com/course/oracle-cloud-epbcs/?couponCode=EPBCSADV001

Oracle Hyperion 11.2.6 Courses on Thinkific Learning Platform

Oracle EPM 11.2.6 - Financial Reporting Book

 Namaste!

I would like to discus what a financial reporting (FR) book is and how it could be generated!

As the name suggests FR Book is a collection of financial reports. Why it is needed?

The main purpose of the book is to put together all the required reports of interest for 

single or multiple entities for easy access. Then a book could be scheduled and bursted to reach the

desired destination like email or printer etc.

Here is a short video that has been put together on how to create a FR book.

Happy Learning!

I have published an Advanced courses on Hyperion Essbase, Planning and HFM on Thinkific Learning Platform. Please apply the coupon codes found on the site to avail the discounts on the courses. Please check it out if you are interested. 

https://courses.trnghub.com/