The Promise of EPM Systems
Oracle EPM and OneStream are systems that require a level of support that is often underestimated.
These solutions are designed to modernize the finance function, and teams tend to get starry-eyed by what's to come: no more time-consuming manual methods, better integration of data between systems, improved data integrity, getting the team on the same page, using the same processes, being able to visualize large amounts of data... and, most importantly, getting home from the office at 5 pm.
Expectations do not line up with reality. Yes, things will be far better than the days of manual methods and inconsistent data — but there are still tedious, time-consuming tasks.
The Reality
System administrators are tasked with a slew of responsibilities. Depending on the applications you have, tasks include managing metadata, maintaining business rules, supporting data loads, and, of course, responding to users when things break.
When those things break, users experience slowdowns that can affect everyone from the bottom up. So, what do the user, admin, and leader have in common? They have to stay late. So much for leaving by 5 pm every day.
What Tasks Can I Offload?
Hyperion Support Services
When you hear about Hyperion Support, you usually hear about opening tickets, technical help, and the expertise of the team. But you rarely hear about exactly what tasks are being taken off your plate. A good support services provider will resolve your tickets quickly, but a great support services provider will provide you with a combination of reactive and proactive support. This comes in the form of scheduled and unscheduled tasks.
Your Hyperion systems require periodic maintenance and updates to keep your business running smoothly. These scheduled tasks might be weekly, monthly, quarterly, or even daily. These are the tasks that you establish with your Support Services team — ensuring that these tedious to-dos are complete so that you don't have to think about it.
Hyperion Planning and Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) are the most commonly supported Oracle EPM tools. To give you a better idea of the tasks you can offload, we've compiled a sample of commonly supported items:
Hyperion Planning Tasks
✅ Scheduled seeding and maintaining annual forecast scenarios
✅ Scheduled quarterly environment assessments
✅ Scheduled executing metadata and data loads
✅ Unscheduled preparation for next budget season
✅ Unscheduled account and hierarchy changes
Hyperion Financial Management Tasks
✅ Scheduled open/close period
✅ Scheduled quarterly environment assessments
✅ Scheduled metadata updates
✅ Unscheduled preparing for the next budget season
✅ Unscheduled adding locations and hierarchy changes
✅ Unscheduled year-end PBC audit support tasks
OneStream XF Support Services
Your application requires periodic maintenance and updating — recurring activities that need to be completed on a scheduled basis, whether daily, weekly, or monthly. Your support services team can work with you to schedule the frequency and dates of completion for these tasks and perform them for you.
Once you get set up with a support services ticket portal, you can also open tickets as unanticipated issues arise. Having a support services team in place provides peace of mind with experts on call who will jump in to resolve anything you're struggling with.
Below is a sampling of duties performed by our dedicated team for clients who have implemented Consolidations and clients who have implemented Planning.
Consolidation Tasks
✅ Scheduled opening period and close period tasks
✅ Scheduled quarterly environment assessment
✅ Unscheduled preparing for next budget season
✅ Unscheduled adding Locations & Hierarchy Changes
✅ Unscheduled year-end PBC audit support tasks
Planning Tasks
✅ Scheduled seed and maintain annual forecast scenarios
✅ Scheduled quarterly environment assessment
✅ Scheduled provide metadata and data load support
✅ Unscheduled preparing for next budget season
✅ Unscheduled dimensionality changes
