The Finit Minute: Q2 2009

Welcome

Welcome to the Q2 2009 Finit Minute!

As always, The Finit Minute’s objective is to provide you with relevant, timely, actionable Oracle Hyperion information to help maximize your Oracle Hyperion software investment. We provide you with information about user conferences, descriptions of new product functionality, our understanding of product direction and roadmaps, and client success stories. Of course, this is the “Finit Perspective” and is not an official Oracle Hyperion communication.

Efficiently managing the performance of your organization is more important now than it ever has been. Having the right tools and the right processes in place to gain better insight into your business will help drive the smartest, most effective decisions, and that is what the Enterprise Performance Management market is all about. For the past 7 years Finit has enjoyed developing solutions for our clients, and we’re particularly excited to be assisting clients at this time, when getting relevant, accurate, timely information to make the right decisions for your organization is more critical than ever.

In this issue we’ll cover several relevant topics related to Oracle Hyperion products, anticipated accounting regulations, and recent and upcoming Oracle and Finit events. We strive to make this publication something that is valuable to you, and we welcome your feedback and guidance to help us ensure that we’re hitting the mark. Let us know what you’d like to see more of, less of, and how you and your organization may have benefitted from something we’ve covered by emailing us at Insights@finitsolutions.com.

Thanks for your interest and your feedback!

The Finit Solutions Team.

Event Update: What’s Coming Up with Oracle and Finit?

The Finit Solutions Series

Finit Solutions offers a webcast series in which we present relevant, actionable tips for improving and broadening the functionality in your Oracle Hyperion tools. The goal of our webcasts is to show you how to enhance your Oracle Hyperion applications right now with quick, easy-to-implement solutions. The Finit Solutions webcast series will cover a range of products including Hyperion Enterprise, HFM, Hyperion Planning and Hyperion FDM (representing the first webcasts on FDM by any Oracle partner beyond an FDM overview).

On June 17, Finit Solutions will host:

• FDM Reports: Getting the Most Out of FDM

COLLABORATE09

This year’s COLLABORATE conference was held in Orlando from May 3rd – 7th. COLLABORATE is the annual conference put on by the OAUG (Oracle Application Users Group). There were approximately 50 Hyperion sessions presented by clients, Oracle partners, and Oracle employees. The conference began on Sunday May 3rd with the Hyperion User Group Meeting. The OAUG Hyperion SIG discussed the progress that’s been made over the past 2 years and then enjoyed a presentation about EPM for Troubled Times from Michael Schrader of Oracle. The SIG wrapped up with six presentations by the domain leads on the products they represent (including Rob Cybulski of Finit Solutions who gave updates on HFM, FDM, and Enterprise.) Ed DeLise, who founded the Hyperion SIG group in 2007, was awarded a plaque from the other board members in appreciation for his service for the past 2 years. He is “retiring” from his role as President this May.

Finit was pleased to contribute 4 sessions to the COLLABORATE conference this year as well as co-presenting with Mike Malwitz, Director, Product Strategy at Oracle, on a fifth session. Click on any of the links below to view or download Finit’s COLLABORATE presentations.

• Converting a Hyperion Enterprise Application to a Hyperion Financial Management Application: Design Considerations and Best Practices
• Convert With Confidence: Leveraging Oracle Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management to Convert from Hyperion Enterprise to Oracle Hyperion Financial Management
• Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management (FDM): It's Not Just For Financial Data Any More
• System9 HFM and FDM Implementation at SPX Corporation
• Introduction to HFM (co-presentation with Oracle)

OpenWorld 2009

The annual Oracle User Conference, OpenWorld 2009, will take place in San Francisco from October 11th to the 15th. The attendance over the past few years was just over 40,000 people. It’s a great event for overall Oracle information, and it includes Hyperion content as well, however the volume of Hyperion content is not as high as the Hyperion Solutions conference was in the past. In our Q3 Newsletter we hope to have more specifics about what to expect in the way of Hyperion content, and we’ll share that with you at that time.

Registration information can be found here: http://www.oracle.com/us/openworld/index.htm

Additional Hyperion Events

Mid Atlantic Oracle Applications User Group Conference

Friday, June 19th, 8:30 am- 5:30 pm
ASTM
100 Barr Harbor Drive
Conshohocken, PA
REGISTER TODAY
Please include name, company and phone number in registration inquiry.
Space is Limited - Registration Closes June 15, 2009

Oracle Development Tools User Group Kaleidoscope

Sunday – Thursday, June 21 – 25th
Hyatt Regency Monterey Resort & Spa on Del Monte Golf Course
1 Old Golf Course Road
Monterey, California
http://www.odtugkaleidoscope.com/

IFRS and Financial Consolidation Systems: What You Can Do to Prepare

Although the exact timetable for US adoption of IFRS remains uncertain, most agree that it is inevitable that IFRS will eventually become a reality for US-based companies. The SEC has proposed that US companies should begin adoption in 2014 with three years of comparative reporting (2011 forward.) This proposal was open to a comment period that ended in April 2009, and the SEC is now reviewing that information. Almost all major economies worldwide have already or will soon adopt IFRS. Shareholders’ and investors’ desire for comparability across markets will continue to increase, thus increasing the pressure on US-based companies to adopt IFRS or, at the very least, to continue the convergence of US GAAP with IFRS. Although many US-based companies are taking a ‘wait and see’ approach, it is important to contemplate the impact that IFRS adoption will have on your financial systems.

Why not just wait and see?

If you have participated in a financial system implementation or redesign, then you are well aware of the careful planning and commitment required to undertake a major system change. The adoption of IFRS may have a very large impact on your financial consolidation system and could require a redesign and rebuild of items such as the chart of accounts, mappings from source data systems, and reports. In addition, it will be necessary to restate a minimum of 3 years of historical data into IFRS for comparability. The application changes, data integration, and historical data adjustments could end up consuming more of your time and resources than you anticipate if you do not give those items the appropriate consideration ahead of time.

What questions should I ask now?

Your company may already have formed an IFRS team to address the gap analysis between current US GAAP and IFRS, the number of subsidiaries already reporting in their own countries under IFRS, and the anticipated changes in accounting policy that would impact your organization the most significantly. A few of the questions that you should raise now within your organization so that you can plan appropriately for the impact of IFRS adoption on your financial consolidation system include:

• Is the impact of IFRS on the organization’s systems being addressed? Organizations may be spending significant time and resources addressing the accounting implications of IFRS, but they may not yet have devoted adequate resources to investigating what system modifications will need to be made to accommodate those accounting changes. It is important for Finance and IT to collaboratively prepare for the impact of IFRS, and IT must be given ample time to change systems per the new requirements.
• Where will IFRS-related system changes be made and when will they be expected (at the transactional level only, the consolidation level only, or some hybrid of both?)
  • If system changes will be made within the general ledgers, there will likely be an impact on the mapping from those source systems into the consolidation system. The changes should be identified as early as possible, so that the mapping and data integration systems that link the general ledgers to the consolidation system can be modified accordingly.
  • If system changes will be made at the consolidation system level, it is important to start planning for those changes as soon as they have been identified. Depending on the scope of changes required, it may be necessary to modify your consolidation application by adding a custom dimension to capture GAAP / IFRS adjustments, re-organizing the accounts dimension (and possibly other dimensions), or even building a new application specifically for IFRS.
• At what point will the subsidiary companies be trained on IFRS? The answer to this question will have implications for the end-users of the consolidation system. If the current submitters of data will also be required to submit local GAAP to IFRS adjustments, then it may be necessary to:
  • Change security access for those users to allow them to make local GAAP to IFRS adjustments. It may be necessary to control the types of adjustments end users can make by applying security to specific accounts and custom dimension members.
  • Train the users not only on the nature of the local GAAP to IFRS adjustments, but also on the process for making those adjustments within the consolidation system. Many options exist for making GAAP / IFRS adjustments ranging from FDM excel journal templates to HFM data forms or HFM journal entries. Once your organization has focused on the method for making those types of changes, end users will need to understand how to follow the process.
  • Add additional data integrity checks within the system to ensure that the IFRS adjustments are valid and complete.
  • Add additional FDM certification questions and HFM process management layers for management sign-off on IFRS adjustments.
• How will historical data be handled?
  • Most organizations will restate three years of historical data into IFRS. For your organization, will data be restated into IFRS only for quarters, or for interim months as well?
  • At what levels of detail within the entity hierarchy and chart of accounts will historical data be adjusted? Will all base entities report under IFRS or will IFRS reporting just be performed at a consolidated level?
  • Will your organization temporarily report in parallel under US GAAP and IFRS?
• How will we arrive at IFRS results? Will sites make adjustments from Local GAAP to IFRS or will they go from Local GAAP to US GAAP to IFRS? Many companies are currently collecting local GAAP to US GAAP adjustments in their Hyperion systems. As a result, the determination will need to be made on whether it will be best to get to IFRS by first reaching US GAAP or by going directly from Local GAAP. This decision has an impact on the consolidation and data integration process:
  • If the organization will go directly from Local GAAP to IFRS, the organization may need to have duplicate rollups in their consolidation system to also report US GAAP during the parallel period.
  • If the organization will go from Local GAAP to US GAAP to IFRS, multiple adjustments will need to be entered and set up as a part of the process.
  • When evaluating these alternatives, an organization should also determine whether the adjustments to IFRS need to be consolidated and reported globally. If it is a requirement to consolidate and report total IFRS adjustments for the organization, the consolidation tool must have a way to collect and aggregate that information. Companies can also choose to store only IFRS in their consolidation systems and then store the adjustments to IFRS in a data integration tool such as Hyperion FDM. This will allow for the capability to only see adjustments on an entity by entity basis.

What changes might I have to make to my financial consolidation application?

Some of the ways in which conversion to IFRS may impact your organization’s consolidation system include:

• Chart of Accounts Redesign: Financial statement presentation and the level of detail required within the chart of accounts will change from US GAAP to IFRS. At a minimum, you will need to re-organize the members of the accounts dimension within your application. You may also have to change the set-up of Cash Flow reporting to conform to the Direct method and may have to further expand Fixed Asset reporting to capture component depreciation.
• Addition of a Custom Dimension: Historical adjustments may be easiest to handle within a custom dimension, so that history can be viewed on a consolidated basis for pre and post IFRS adjustments.
• Reports Redesign: All external reports will have to be modified to accommodate the IFRS financial statement presentation guidelines.
• Security Changes: Security may need to be modified to give end-users the ability to make IFRS adjustments within the consolidation system until their individual general ledgers can be modified to accommodate the accounting changes.
• Modification of Process Management: Since IFRS will be new to the end users, your organization may wish to apply additional levels of management signoff on IFRS adjustments to ensure that the new accounting guidelines are being applied correctly.
• Data Integration Changes: As IFRS changes are applied within the general ledger systems, the mappings and data integration process from the source ledgers to the consolidation system will need to be updated accordingly. Additionally, if the adjustments to IFRS are made in the data integration tool, FDM excel templates will need to be set up.
• Development of a New IFRS Application: It is worth considering whether your organization should build a separate consolidation application in conjunction with the conversion to IFRS. Some of the changes listed above (e.g. chart of accounts redesign, reports redesign) will make it difficult to report in both US GAAP and IFRS within the same application. The reorganization of the chart of accounts makes this prospect especially challenging, because while most financial consolidation systems allow for the entity hierarchy to change month-to-month, it is generally not possible for the order and hierarchy of the chart of accounts to change from one month to the next.

Although conversion to IFRS is by no means a certainty at this time, it appears more and more likely that an eventual conversion will occur. The system changes that will be necessary as a result of IFRS will be significant, and it is therefore critical to anticipate and plan accordingly. It is worthwhile to begin to understand the impact to your Hyperion consolidation and reporting and data integration tools to make sure you are prepared.

The most recent information and timetables for IFRS adoption can be found at the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) website: www.iasb.org

FDM Reports: Maintaining and Customizing to Best Suit Your Company’s Needs

Did you know that since FDM 9.3.0 you can modify, create, move, and delete FDM reports without the need for an external reporting tool? Prior to this release, FDM reports were based entirely on Crystal Reports, and that tool was required to be able to create or modify any of the FDM reports. FDM Reports are now developed as a combination of two main components:

• Active Reports - allows you to customize the format, look, and feel of your reports.
• SQL - creates the data parameters for the data type, data values, and order of the data being pulled into the reports.

All of the report maintenance for Active reports can be done from within the FDM WorkBench client tool, because the Report Module allows you to access both of these components. Companies can also take their existing FDM reporting to the next level by creating or utilizing advanced reports. Finit has created over 100 custom FDM reports to allow companies to identify trends and drill into their data more effectively.

On June 17, Finit Solutions will host:

FDM Reports: Getting the Most out of FDM

In this webinar, Greg Barrett of Finit Solutions will review 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 will show some of the highly customized reports that FDM clients have tailored to their specific FDM reporting requirements.

In the meantime, here are some simple tips you can use right now to tailor FDM reports to your company’s needs:

Quick Tips – Maintaining & Customizing Reports

*Note – You must be in FDM WorkBench on the Reports tab to make these modifications.

1. Changing the Sequence of Reports within Report Folders (Groups)

• Example: You may want to move the most popular Trial Balance report for your organization to the top of the list so that it appears first.
• Action: Right-click on the report title, choose Report Properties, specify a new sequence number, then click OK.
  Example

2. Changing Security Level of Reports

• Example: Journal Reports are limited to Power Users by default, but you can change their security. Reports are secured at the Report Folder Level, so if you find that you need different levels of access for different reports within a single report folder, simply break out the reports into separate folders (see #3 and #4.)
• Action: Right-click on the report folder, choose Properties, choose a different Security Level, and click OK.
  Example

3. Creating Custom Folders (Groups)

• Example: You may want a separate report folder for your custom reports or even a separate report folder for some of the most popular reports. It is highly recommended that you flag any custom folders that you create as “custom” so that they can easily be identified.
• Action: Right-click on any report folder, 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.
  Example

4. Moving Reports between Folders (Groups)

• Example: You may have a custom report folder 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.
• Action: Right-click on the report title, choose Copy Report, right-click on the new report folder, choose Paste Report, right click on the report in the original location and choose Delete.
  Example

Finit’s Advanced FDM Reports

Finit has created some of the following reports for our clients to help meet their unique needs and to get the most out of their investment in FDM:

• Filtered System Activity Reports: These 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 without the option to filter out the information you don’t need.
  Example
• Format Enhanced Check Reports: Several clients have added custom formatting features to their check report such as Account Headers (labels without a value), conditional bold/underline formatting, etc. to make them easier to read.
  Example
• Location Listing With User Detail: These reports show all locations and, for each location, list the users that have access to the location, their email address, the Default Location indicator, and the All Locations indicator.
  Example
• User Listing With Detail: These reports show all users and, for each user, their email address, the All Locations indicator, and their application security level. The reports then list each location to which the user has access, indicates whether the location is the Default Location and shows the location security level.
  Example
• Location Listing With Reviewers and Submitters: These reports show 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.
  Example
• Excel Pull Reports: These Excel-based reports, which are accessed via FDM, allow users to populate your organization’s own Excel templates with real time data from your target system (HE, HFM, Essbase.) They are a great way to allow users to view target system data strictly from FDM. This is especially helpful for those clients whose data loaders don’t have much interaction with the target system other than loading data to it. These reports can also be customized to have the data flow right into an FDM Journal. For example, Roll-Forward Balanced could be pulled out of Hyperion directly into the FDM Journal File so that a user has those items to reference before creating the journal entries.
  Example
• Process Monitor Reports with Check Flags, Errors and SOX red flags: These are variations of the standard Process Monitor reports, with the addition of the following:
  • Counts of the check report rules that passed, failed, or generated warnings
  • Counts of the SOX questions that generated red flags.
    Example
• Mapping Efficiency Reports: These reports are used to analyze your maps, and are most useful when experiencing slow map processing speeds. They show the percentage of maps used, broken down by map type, or list the individual maps rules not used.
  Example
• Threshold Variance Reports: These variance reports allow the user to specify a threshold level and then display only those accounts that exceed the threshold. These reports can apply the threshold to the source or target level accounts. This allows the focus to stay on the outliers instead of having to sift through all accounts to find the ones that need to be focused upon.
  Example

Hyperion Planning Fusion Edition – New Features and Enhancements

Most recent major release:
Oracle Hyperion Planning Fusion Edition Release 11.1.1.1.0
Release Date: July 2008

Latest Update: May 2009: v11.1.1.2.0
Premier Support Ends: July 2013

Oracle Planning 9.2: Premier Support Ends in Jun 2010
Oracle Planning 9.3: Premier Support Ends in Jan 2012

Oracle’s lifetime support policy for Hyperion applications can be found here:
http://www.oracle.com/support/library/brochure/lifetime-support-applications.pdf

The new release of Hyperion Planning, Fusion Edition v11.1.1, is focused on providing stronger capabilities in Microsoft Office for Smart View as well as introducing some new features and enhancements in Planning. New features and functionality include:

For Planning Web Forms:

• Hide / Show “No Data” on the row or column allows users to suppress row / column on the web form with no data or zero by right-clicking on the web form.
• Display Member Formula allows users to view the member formula on a web form (member on the grid, pages, or POV). The display option must be set by the administrator.
• Display Member Properties allows the administrator to view the member properties when right-clicking the member on the web form and then opens the member on the Planning Dimension outline.
• Attach Document can attach a document (any document in Workspace) or Web Site at the cell level on the web form. You can open and view the document with detailed information about the data. This is similar to some of the functionality available related to documentation in HFM.
• Display Date in Data Cell allows users to select the date from a pop-up calendar on the web form.
• Display Text in Data Cell allows users to input a text value in a data cell.
• Drill-back to FDM enables users to drill through into detailed line items in the FDM source file using a link in the Planning Web form cell. When the user launches this, it will take the user to a new screen that will show the source amounts that make up the balance in Planning.
• Open Excel Smart View from Planning Web Form opens the current web form in Excel Smart View with the current Planning connection.
• Custom Message for No data on Form is a new feature for indicating if there is no data on the form and data suppression is set. A custom message can be display to the user instead of the default message “There are no valid rows of data for this data form.”
• Web Form Folder Level Security allows you to assign security access at the web form folder level. The web forms can inherit the access of their folders; however, the web form security takes precedence over the folder access if different security is specified at the web form level.

For Smart View with Planning:

• Ad-hoc analysis enables Planning users to drag-and-drop and zoom in and out on the web forms in Smart View Excel with full write-back capability.
• Smart Slice allows a web form to be taken into Smart View to create a Smart Slice for analysis and write-back capabilities with the proper privileges. Smart Slices are created by the Administrator. The user can perform ad hoc analysis within the restricted set of dimension members and can create queries on the entire Smart Slice or subqueries from a subset of Smart Slice data. The queries or subqueries can be stored in a Microsoft Office document (Excel, Word, or PowerPoint) on the local machine.
• Query Designer enables advanced users to create queries and report layouts in Smart View Office based on the Smart Slice. The Smart View interface allows users to insert a query or subquery from the Data Source Manager and create reports based on the Smart Slice, which can then be displayed on an Excel spreadsheet, Word document and PowerPoint slide.
• Extended Support in MS Office extends Planning content to be presented in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint with refresh capabilities.

For Calculation Manager (EPMA) / Life Cycle Management / Data Integration:

• Calculation Manager in EPMA is web-based interface in which you can create calculations for EPMA Planning applications with graphical process flows. You can also share rules between applications with a centralized repository for all calculation objects. This feature is also available for HFM in release 11 and as mentioned below, the same rule can be created in Calculation Manager and then used in both HFM and Planning.
• Lifecycle Management (LCM) is a utility provided in Shared Services to perform migration for applications and artifacts across product environments (development, test or production) with reporting capability (Status and Audit.) The LCM provides a user interface wizard to guide you through the process, can be run by LCM utility command line and can be used with a third-party scheduler. This feature is also available for HFM.
• Oracle Data Integrator Adapter (ODI) for Planning is a new metadata and data load adapter for ODI, which is a member of Oracle’s Hyperion data integration product suite.

Other new features in Planning:

• Clear Cell Detail is a new option that clears the cell details like “Account Annotation”, “Cell Text”, “Supporting Details” and “Cell Attached Document” using a user interface in Planning.
• Job Console allows the user to check and review the status of jobs (Business Rules, Sequences, Rules sets, Clear Cell Details and Copy Data) and to view / filter by criteria (Type, Statue, Time and Job.)
• Manage Data Source allows you to manage and create the data sources for Classic Planning applications in one place (without going through the configuration like in previous releases of Planning.) The data sources can be edited and deleted without going to the relational repository.
• Run-Time-Prompt Validation Interface shows if the member is not validated before launching the business rule.
• Planning Attribute Dimension type allows the administrator to create Text, Date, and Boolean member attributes in Planning.
• Classic Planning Utility allows the administrator to load metadata and data for all dimensions with a CSV file format using a command line interface.
• Planning Password Encryption allows you to suppress and pass the password as part of the parameter when running the Planning Load Utility.
• A New Audit Option includes the ability to audit changes in Clear Cell Details, Copy Data and Task Lists. For Clear Cell Details, it tracks what is cleared in Supporting Detail, Cell Text and Account Annotation. For Copy Data, it tracks where the data is copied from the Source Dimension to the Destination Dimension. For the Task Lists, it tracks the action of the Task List when it’s Created, Copied, Saved, Moved and Deleted.
• Member Alias Display displays the member alias when selecting the members in Mass Allocation and Copy Versions.