The Oracle Hyperion Financial Close Suite — as a full-service accounting suite for financial consolidations, account reconciliations, workflow and reporting applications — provides corporate financial managers with the ability to more efficiently consolidate and report financial results, meet domestic and global regulatory requirements, reduce the cost of compliance, and produce consistent and reliable numbers in a timely manner. Cornerstones of this suite include Oracle Hyperion Financial Close Management (FCM) and Oracle Hyperion Financial Management (HFM).
Here are best practices in four key areas to help HFM administrators establish and maintain a high level of performance, particularly around the fundamental period-end financial close and consolidation process, as they begin working with a newly implemented HFM solution:
1. Reporting
General ledger-based approaches to reporting make it difficult to pull data from various transactional systems (in local currencies if it is a global organization) without heavy IT involvement. HFM enables you to create a single view of consolidated financial and operational results with speed and consistency. Start by determining your reporting elements and the report audience throughout the organization. This will help determine the structure of the data and how to normalize it across the enterprise, as well as how to use that data to produce the necessary reports for the audience that will be reviewing and analyzing them. Turn those reporting requirements into a set of reporting standards and use them consistently.
2. Consolidation
HFM provides intercompany eliminations, multicurrency translations, and minority interest calculations to help speed up the financial consolidation process. To make it as efficient as possible, evaluate your consolidation process and make sure all relevant elimination points, consolidation methods, and FX processes are integrated and consistently used across the enterprise.
3.Data management
Strong data management is crucial for managing and maintaining the financial consolidation and reporting process. Both data and metadata must be closely controlled throughout the HFM environment so that tasks such as entity, account, and cost center creation can be implemented and managed effectively and efficiently across your organization, including proper approvals and change controls.
4. Performance requirements
HFM can help shorten consolidation and reporting cycles through automation, eliminating unnecessary and time-consuming entry and double-checking of actual results. To take full advantage of these features, consider the overall close-calendar cycle you’d like to implement and then run through a couple of test cycles to ensure that you can meet all the requirements and reporting standards.
With proper implementation and management of HFM — assisted by these best practices — your organization can improve its consolidation process and reporting as well as reduce inconsistent data and regulatory compliance risk. To help support and maintain this and other vital Hyperion applications while freeing up valuable finance and IT employee resources, consider partnering with a managed services provider with HFM experts on staff and experience throughout the entire Hyperion EPM suite.
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