Whether it’s your first EPM project, fifth project, or even your tenth — it won’t be a walk in the park. Implementations, upgrades, and migrations of comprehensive tools like Oracle Hyperion take time and strategic planning. If you’re an EPM project veteran, you already know this, and your experience probably has you better prepared for what’s ahead. But, for all the novices out there, you might not know what to expect.
Whatever your situation — jaded veteran, wide-eyed newbie, or somewhere in between — you could undoubtedly use some resources. In this blog post, we’ll cover the five best resources for planning your next EPM project. (Added bonus: they’re free to download).
5. Editable Template: Project Milestone Map
Since EPM projects have a lot of moving parts, it helps to visualize your status. Executives don’t have time for you to explain all the parts of your project — they just need a high-level summary to quickly understand all the main parts.
With this fully editable PowerPoint template, you’re able to illustrate the main components of your project quickly and efficiently. The timeline format of this template makes the status of the project easy to understand, giving everyone a quick snapshot of your project status.
4. Checklist: Evaluating EPM Implementation Partners
Choosing the right implementation partner is almost as important as choosing the right EPM tool. If you’re in the middle of evaluating implementation partners, you need to make sure you choose a team that fits your organization’s specific implementation needs. This checklist will go through all the parameters and qualities (functional and technical) that an implementation partner should have.
3. Templates: EPM/BI Roadmap & Initiative Matrix
This Excel workbook includes 5 templates that will help you break down big topics into more specific tasks and projects:
- Initiative matrix
- Simple ranking matrix
- Complex ranking matrix
- Roadmap
- ROI calculator
The initiative matrix is a two-by-two grid that will align your business objectives with your initiatives. The roadmap will show your initiatives by major category over a specified amount of time. It’s a little different than a project plan, which is a group of activities across time to accomplish a specific objective with defined scope, resources, and assumptions — rather, your roadmap acts more like a blueprint for how you can improve.
2. EPM Strategy Checklist
Since there are so many moving parts to an EPM project, it can help to easily check things off your list. The EPM Strategy Checklist will help you completely develop your strategy, ensuring that you can get everyone on board with adopting the new processes that will inherently come after you complete your project. The checklist will help you identify your complexity gap, evaluate your data, and improve your functional processes.
1. eBook: How to Develop Your EPM Strategy
If you’re about to embark upon your first EPM project, or you’ve had a bad experience developing your strategy in the past, this is the resource for you.
The eBook goes into detail about considerations before getting started — understanding your role, knowing the players in your project, and the challenges you’ll face. You’ll also get tips on understanding the maturity of your current EPM processes, finding the EPM technology that best fits your organization, and best practices for reporting on that status of your EPM project.
Tip: Use the ebook to plan your EPM strategy step by step. Then use the checklist as a tool to execute on your strategy and chart your progress.
