It’s a fact of corporate life that Oracle EPM administrators come and go — and it often seems like they’re going more often than they come. In fact, the average tenure of an Oracle EPM admin is approximately 12–18 months nationally.
Here are some tips to help finance and IT managers minimize the negative impact when an Oracle EPM admin leaves.
The average tenure of an Oracle EPM admin is
approximately 12–18 months.
Preparing your recruiter
The Oracle EPM Suite is a complex and sophisticated platform. Not just any computer-savvy application manager or IT employee will do as an admin.
It all starts with your recruiter. Do they know what to look for in an Oracle EPM admin? Do they understand the specific challenges of the role and the technical and functional skills necessary to meet them? The faster you get your recruiter up to speed, the more time you'll save in what can be a long recruiting cycle.
Screening your candidates
Likewise, potential candidates need a firm grasp of the business, operational, and technological processes that are involved with the various Oracle EPM apps your organization runs, such as Hyperion Planning and HFM.
That means drilling into specifics like “describe your close cycle.” It’s even better if they have SQL and Visual Basic skills in addition to Oracle EPM. All of this will help you avoid hiring missteps that can cost you valuable time and money while hindering your ability to keep your Oracle EPM platform up and running efficiently.
Understanding Oracle EPM administrator compensation
We’ve said it before — Oracle EPM admins are worth their weight in gold, and there are plenty of companies willing and able to pay it.
To improve your chances of hiring the right candidate with the necessary experience, while lessening the risk of letting that person slip away, you should know the current going rate and compensation package for qualified Oracle EPM admins. Not many people have the full set of people, business, and technical skills that go into being a top-notch admin, so you’ll need to be at least competitive if you want to attract (and keep) the right employee.
Smoothing your transition
- Begin knowledge transfer immediately upon learning that you’re losing your Hyperion admin so you know how to make changes to the system and what to do if the servers go down, for starters.
- Have a current backup ready to go in case something happens. Make sure that backup is absolutely current to avoid data mishaps and gaps. While a backup may seem obvious, there are many companies that let it slide due to budget constraints, overtaxed IT resources, and any number of other reasons.
- Have a backup to your backup in the form of a trusted consultant or, even better, an experienced Oracle EPM managed services partner with the flexibility and expertise to provide whatever level of service and support you need to keep your Hyperion platform humming along and your productivity up.