The Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) suite is a powerful, comprehensive, enterprise-level IT ecosystem for managing and monitoring organizations’ business planning, financial management and reporting, and business intelligence. As an industry-leading EPM product that’s been around for many years, Hyperion has well-established best practices regarding what works and what doesn’t for implementation and support.
Tips for Supporting Your Hyperion Implementation
Get everyone on board.
This is key. All stakeholders need to be involved in the planning and use of this EPM solution. And not just C-level people — you need to involve teams out in the field who use the various Hyperion apps as part of their daily, monthly, or even quarterly responsibilities. Do not let implementation and support be an IT-only project. IT is just the beginning — crucial, of course, for installation and periodic “dial turning” to keep performance optimized — but the functional users can help drive enhancements and identify gaps and weaknesses.
Define your vision for performance management.
Go big. Outline your needs and goals for strategic modeling and planning, budgeting and forecasting, as well as statutory reporting requirements and performance analytics. Remember, Hyperion Financial Close Management (FCM) is not just a replacement for Excel spreadsheets for your period-end close and consolidation process. Create a roadmap and then rethink your consolidation process as well as account reconciliations and MD&A activities so you can utilize built-in automation and workflows. Planning cycles may include special-purpose applications such as Workforce Planning or Capital Asset Planning that can dovetail into your organization’s overall summary planning structure.
Determine your requirements.
With Hyperion humming along, take some time to determine future requirements so you can plan efficiently. Use Value Stream Mapping (VSM) to document and understand current key processes and then look for weaknesses so you can plan fixes and future processes. Look outside your own organization to others that are similar and see what they’re doing that might work for your company.
Document your requirements and be sure to include what’s needed for technical design, implementation and training costs, and a rollout strategy.
Your checklist for the best Hyperion support practices:
- Clear and reasonable performance management vision
- Comprehensive C-suite and field employees’ buy-in and support for all things Hyperion related
- Optimized data flow for improved analytics
- Consistent data models
- Streamlined closings and improved reporting
Proactive support of your Hyperion suite is vital for keeping its performance optimized as well as for minimizing the risk and cost of unplanned downtime, which increases over time between regular, planned maintenance and upgrades. However, properly managing and maintaining Oracle Hyperion is not for the faint of heart. It requires both expertise and experience of one or more Hyperion administrators, especially for publicly traded global companies with more complex financial regulatory compliance requirements.
If you’re a CIO, IT manager, or current Hyperion admin wrestling with how to keep up with daily and monthly Hyperion support, it may be time to consider outsourcing to a Hyperion managed services provider (MSP). Partnering with an MSP specializing in Hyperion solutions can improve performance and productivity as well as save you time and money.
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