You’ve just purchased a newly built home. The house is immaculate, the lawn well-manicured. It’s everything you hoped it would be. Several months after you’ve moved in, it still has the same new home feel, but over time the house needs to be maintained. The kitchen gets dirty, the grass grows, the sink gets backed up, and your child thinks the walls are a nice huge canvas for their works of art…
Similarly, a new Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) application can have that same feel. You’ve gone through the requirements, design, build, testing, data validations, training, parallels, and go-live. The consultants have left and the first few months go well, but over time the demands on your new application grow. In order to keep that application running smoothly during the course of that transition, you need to properly maintain it. Even with no changes to your HFM application, there is still preventative maintenance that you should be undertaking.
That’s why we’re bringing you a three-part blog series on maintaining your HFM application with tips and techniques you should employ:
- Prior to a month-end close
- During month-end close
- After month-end close
Pre-close Activities
Think of HFM as a department store and month-end close as Black Friday — the day of the sale is not the time to organize inventory or clean up shop. Once your organization has started the month-end close process, it’s difficult to complete these administrative tasks because performing maintenance puts stress on the system that you can’t afford. Big or small, changes can bring down the application and kick out users.
Our tips for pre-close activities are proven to save time, reduce errors, and improve performance so that your close process runs smoothly. Bear in mind that each company and application is unique; certain tips may not be feasible for your situation, but they can most likely be modified to fit your needs. There is no one right answer, but experience has shown us that these tips work.
Download the white paper: 5 Tasks to Complete Before Month-End Close.
