510A
What You Really Should Know About Hyperion Financial Management
Presented by: Michael Fuori, LINDIN Consulting Inc.
Agenda
Reality Check: Your Reporting and Analysis
Process Today Look Beyond Your Day-to-Day PLAN, PLAN, PLAN Hyperion Financial Management Success Formula
Your Next Step Q&A
Features Design Considerations Realizing the True ROI
Reality Check: Your Reporting and Analysis Process Today
Still a disjointed, often manual process Hyperion Enterprise - Consolidations, with
help from Excel
Forecasts and much of the budget process still done manually in spreadsheet templates Some companies still doing the intercompany, cash flow and equity outside of their Hyperion Enterprise Applications
Many running GL reports cut/pasted into
Excel, others using Business Objects, Brio, VB or MicroSoft Access for their analysis Many still doing corporate reporting, hard copy reports out of Excel !!!
Reality Check: Your Reporting and Analysis Process Today
(Continued)
Centralized Administration, but many suffer
from maintaining distributed copies around the world. Others rely on a Citrix Solution to handle the access volume Maintenance becoming an increasing concern for the administrators Performance on large dynamic drill downs becoming an issue Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 putting increased strain on need to expand existing applications. Where do we expand?
Reality Check: Your Reporting and Analysis Process Today
(Continued)
Still not enough time for analysis Increased pressures to cut days from the closing
cycle The theory of the Virtual Close putting more strain on the closing process Manual processes cant get much faster Business hours communication (phone calls/emails/faxes) across the organization wasting valuable time Cumbersome reporting solutions to get simple commentary leaves less available time for analysis
Look Beyond Your Day-to-Day
Hyperion Financial Management is NOT
Hyperion Enterprise. Remember your Micro Control conversion. THIS IS NOT AN UPGRADE so dont treat it like one. This is your chance to CHANGE THE PROCESS FOR THE BETTER, eliminating a substantial portion of the effort while offering a viable, efficient reporting and analysis mechanism.
PLAN, PLAN, PLAN
POV POV POV The power of having 12 dimensions will
cause initial confusion to straight finance people if not trained well This brings some added complexity to things like the journal entry module and Excel retrieve reporting The Value dimension allows for very detailed currency translation detail and is now part of the POV Plan your design with these 12 dimensions in mind, especially while laying out your reports. (For ease-of-Use)
The Hyperion Financial Management Formula for Success PLAN + Powerful FEATURES + Design Considerations + Reporting Tools =
Less confusion Less time Shorter closes Transforms data into usable information Viable WEB delivery mechanisms
TRUE ROI
Be Aware of the Many Features
New architecture (Cube Theory) No longer have to live with only
Entities and Accounts as the primary dimensions
The 3-level subacct barrier has
been finally been broken First Pass through Submitted, Approved and finally Published
Unlimited number of levels
throughout the organization. NO NEED for special Final categories dozens of phone calls per user! E-mail addresses can be hardcoded or controlled via a lookup table
Leverage Process Management, Creates accountability
Automatic criteria-based e-mail
capability
Huge time savings, eliminating
Be Aware of the Many Features
(Continued) Intercompany a separate dimension!!
Major advantage in reporting
capabilities, but existing canned intercompany report(s) may not suite your companys needs against COA, now any dimension is valid. 100s of spreadsheets could be eliminated over associated numbers
Ability to have more complex
logic, business rules
Previously only able to build
Adding textual notes to ANY data cell intersection Aid FP&A in commentary sensitive reporting capabilities
Eliminates possible confusion New Hyperion Reports allows not
only for column annotations, but also for data sensitive full textual descriptions and graphical reporting. 256 per obj!
Be Aware of the Many Features
(Continued)
Ability to capture entity unique
account information is needed at lower level of the organization but not required from a consolidated point of view
Line-Item detail feature allows
each subsidiary to use a custom table. (i.e., debt instruments can now be tracked aiding the individual units while not affecting the corporate chart of accounts!) quality dynamic style flows can be created and delivered over the WEB, eliminating hours of PowerPoint type modifications due to last minute changes in the numbers
Leverage a well planned outline with Hyperion Analyzer
Executive ready, presentation
Be Aware of the Many Features
(Continued)
Advanced currency translation
Data anywhere in the system can
be viewed in any currency defined within the system, while still applying all the correct rules for translation, including rules for the EURO and CTA calculation
No conditional suppression in
Reports module
Can highlight these exceptions.
Can prevent numbers from appearing but not suppress the entire line; however, white numbers with white background would not display on report!
Reports are distributed over the Users cannot build reports over
WEB, 150 concurrent users per Reports server the Web. All other features are supported.
Design Considerations
Think Out-of-the-Box! Do not design the outline yourself if no prior
Essbase type experience is present in the development team. GET ALL USERS INPUT UP-FRONT!!!
All requirements gathering is vital before the
design takes place. An efficient design should properly leverage the custom dimensions, and user-defined fields without overloading one particular dimension over another. Remember its not Hyperion Enterprise. Not everything needs to be squeezed into the Entities dimension.
Design Considerations (Continued)
Dimensions should be designed for
dynamic drill through. Hence the accounts dimension P&L starts with NET INCOME, and then drills into more detail. This is the opposite of how a Hyperion Enterprise chart of accounts is built The & character is not a valid character, even in the description! The Label is shorter than Hyperion Essbase allows
Design Considerations (Continued)
Dimensions should flow properly. It should
make sense as you drill in. The hierarchies are leveraged throughout Hyperion Financial Management as well as Hyperion Reports, Hyperion Analyzer and the Excel Retrieve Pivot feature. hierarchies should account for as much of the reporting and analysis functionality as possible. This will minimize the number of hard-coded and logic driven functions needed.
Try and stick to the 80/20 rule. The outline
Design Considerations (Continued)
The generations/levels can be highly
leveraged within the delivery tools to create dynamic reporting and analysis. List all level-4 items, or all items between level-2 and level-5. This helps minimize the report maintenance. When designing your reporting objects, try to reuse reporting objects in a similar manner as Row and Column sets were imported by Hyperion Reporting.
Not to be confusing, but, Hyperion Reports
(NEW) Hyperion Report Writer (OLD).
Design Considerations (Continued)
Leveraging the custom dimensions
One is usually designed to replace the sub-
account table feature of Hyperion Enterprise. Members of the Account dimension can have an attached starting member from one of the custom dimensions. Every account could have a different starting member from CD1 (Custom Dimension1). Entity or Data Type equivalent to the basic Hyperion Enterprise substructure is commonly a second custom dimension. (Input, Adj, GL, PriorPerAdj, GAAP, etc.) Equity Partner/Minority Interest Entity Names can be defined in a custom dimension to handle what was once very complex calculations.
Design Considerations (Continued)
User Defined Fields (UDFs)
Example:
Extra grouping functionality Similar to CODES identifier in Hyperion Enterprise Three CODES instead of one Entities grouped by geographical area or
population
Define a UDF instead of Custom dimension One to three UDF per account
20 characters of information per UDF Equivalent to Essbases Attribute dimension
Informational Not functional or summary
Design Considerations (Continued)
The right tool for the job! you can
Build budgeting and forecasting functionality into Hyperion Financial Management Calculate product line profitability Create a pre-load file validation process with
Hyperion Application Link
Butmake sure the fit is right!
Planning a 3000 line item bottom up, involving
spreading and push downs budgeting processes may be easier in Hyperion Planning Storing heavy product-line detail for 200,000 book titles may be better in Hyperion Essbase Pre-processing may be simpler for the GL to handle during its extract process
Realizing the True ROI
Savings with Hyperion Financial Management
Coty: millions per year GE: elimination of nearly 1,200 spreadsheets
through the drill down capability of Hyperion Analyzer
Elimination of the effort involved in
MANUALLY creating slices of views for analysis Analysts can quickly identify potential cost over-runs possible expansion opportunities time to spare Elimination of time off the close? Money well spent
Realizing the True ROI
(Continued)
Hyperion Financial Management, Hyperion Analyzer, and Hyperion Reports together can save your organization tens if not hundreds of hours:
Clear plan Outline required functionality Take advantage of the features Together they can:
Centralize many processes Simplify analysis Help communicate the process
Your Next Step
Create a full Business Performance
Management road map even if the first phase of your Hyperion Financial Management implementation is ONLY to duplicate your Hyperion Enterprise functionality Detail additional Phases to include advanced features and functionality so maximum benefit can be realized Allocate adequate resources for testing and training due to the extreme differences between Hyperion Financial Management and Hyperion Enterprise
Questions & Answers?
Thank You for attending this mornings very early session.
For more information concerning this presentation, contact me at: 212-808-3026 MFUORI@LINDIN.COM
Please Complete Your Session Evaluation.
510A
What You Really Should Know About Hyperion Financial Management
Presented by: Michael Fuori, LINDIN Consulting Inc.
