Hyperion Planning is an Oracle analytical tool that requires frequent maintenance from an experienced administrator. These activities are necessary to reporting accurate financial information for actuals, budgets, and forecasts. Let’s review some of the most common activities in supporting a Planning application that are recurring and ideal for a Hyperion managed services team to both support and optimize for you.
Hierarchy maintenance
As your business changes and grows, your Planning hierarchy will need to reflect your business and reporting needs. Your metadata updates — whether adding new accounts, creating alternate hierarchies, or updating member formulas — not only need to be in sync with your ever-changing business needs but also allow you the flexibility of reporting in a variety of roll ups.
Data load
Whether loading into your supporting Essbase cube through load rules or Excel, directly into Planning web forms, or via a data sync, you will more than likely encounter a data load problem at some point. When this occurs, your managed services partner will troubleshoot the issue and get your data loaded so you can move on to more high-value activities.
Business rules
Companies are constantly looking for more efficient ways to operate. Planning business rules provide you with functionality to clear data, copy data, and calculate your database, to name a few. If you find your calculations are taking too long and need to optimized, or you need to create additional business rules, your managed services team can help.
Security
As new Planning users are hired, existing users leave the company, and roles change that require an update to provisioning, you will need an experienced Hyperion managed services team that understands your security needs and how to implement them fast. Your partner should be comfortable with updating user groups for new and departed users, accurately provisioning for various roles, and applying security filters.
Data validation
Once you have loaded Planning, you need the assurance that the load job ran successfully and your data is accurate. A managed services provider can put processes in place to ensure not only that a data load completed successfully but that the data is what you expected. This proactive measure provides your users with the confidence that they are analyzing and reporting accurate data. In the event there was an issue with the data load, you will be notified of the source of the problem as well as the course of action required for correction.
Identifying the most common administrative maintenance activities will assist you in selecting a provider with the skill set to accommodate your needs. That said, product knowledge is only one of several requirements — check out these tips on choosing the right Hyperion managed services provider.