You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'FDM' category.
Most everyone that uses or has seen a demo of Oracle Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management (“FDM”) knows the basic functionality that FDM provides – mapping, data loading, data validation and financial statement certification. But FDM is so much more than the basics.
FDM is a very open architecture product readily supporting advanced customization. As I highlighted in my last blog post, the workflow process (Import Validate Export Check) can be fully automated and executed on a scheduled basis using either FDM’s internal scheduling component or any Windows batch based scheduling tool that an organization prefers. But that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
Any organization that has recently experienced a Hyperion product upgrade – for example, System 9 to Fusion or Enterprise to HFM – knows the pain of revalidating years of financial data. This exercise can easily take weeks. Not only is this process time consuming, it’s tedious and often prone to error. More importantly, data validation can be one of the biggest risks to a project. The need to improve seems obvious.
To address this opportunity, we developed a custom solution that leverages HFM and FDM’s advanced features, custom scripts and batch loading. The benefits are substantial – literally tens of thousands of data points can be validated (and re-validated) in minutes – with 100% data accuracy. This process is easily extendable not only to other Oracle/Hyperion products like Planning & Essbase but potentially to other data stores.
The benefits of this process may be obvious but let’s take a moment to think about them:
- 100% Data Accuracy – How valuable is this to your organization in the current economic and financial market climate? The cost of restated financials is far too great to fathom – potential for government fines, reduced shareholder equity and even loss of one’s job.
- Shorten Implementation Timelines – How nice would it be for your project to come in on time or early? Using this solution, you can realistically trim weeks if not months out of a project timeline.
- Reduced Implementation Costs – let’s face it, in this economy, every dollar needs to pay dividends. Whether you choice to leverage a consultant, temp, intern or internal resource to validate your data, there is a cost associated with it. Reducing the time associated with this activity will reduce your project cost.
I invite you to check back often as I’ll continue to discuss “outside the box” solutions that can add significant ROI to your FDM investment.
Contributed by:
Tony Scalese, FDM Design Lead
Hyperion Certified Consultant – HFM
Ranzal & Associates
ascalese@ranzal.com
Business Intelligence Technology Environment or BITE is my own little tag line and acronym (maybe I should copyright it) to express the host of solutions available in the Business Intelligence application world today. (It could also be used as a verb to describe the plethora of poorly designed solutions… ahh but that is another story.)
My current blog series will be Oracle EPM/BI+ solution centric while remaining Oracle EPM/BI+ application agnostic (now dictionary.com is paying off). I hope that you will enjoy this real life approach to the process of decision making on software solutions interspersed with some genuine tips and tricks of the trade — some that you have seen before and some you have never imagined.
In other words, I hope that you will not find this blog to be represented by my newly coined acronym — BITE.
Rules of conduct while at the Buffet
First we need a definition. Yes a definition! Don’t be afraid, definitions are a good thing, they keep us grounded, they set limits and finally they determine if we are true to our mission. I define BITE as processes, software and goals needed to precisely solution the business data critical to the legal, accounting and business decision needs of a specific entity.
Inventive techno junkies, single tool consultants and one track sales people – CLOSE YOUR EYES / SHEILD YOUR COMPUTERS for this next statement else you might go blind. “Precisely Solution” in the definition of BITE includes the moral imperative of not misusing software for intent other than its design and picking software that fits the current business life cycle of a company. (Those of you with Software Misuse problems, I will be posting a number you can call to get help. Remember the first step is admitting you have a problem.)
The application stack for EPM / BI+; HFM, Essbase (with all its add-on modules), Smart View, OBIE, OBAW, FDM, DRM, ODI and a few products you might not have heard about or you’ve heard about but never assessed for your purposes. NO, NO, No, no folks this is not a software sales blog, it’s a solutions blog and in our solutions toolbox we need to do more than use a single hammer creatively to remain competitive from an efficiency and business life cycle standpoint.
The Personalities in the Buffet Line
Now that we have some parameters (and I know it was painful for you left brainers) by which we can solution, we need some realistic company situations to solution. Let’s start with four companies each different in their business life cycle, staff sizes and demands for a BITE at success. You can email me if you will absolutely die without a very specific company example however, I cannot boil the ocean here in this blog (small ponds are all that will be possible).
Our four companies need to be different to see solutions in the work. Let’s pick a manufacturer, a technology company, a retailer and a commodity group. In my next addition we will outline the companies, their mission, their needs and their resources.
Not well!!
Does this resemble your IT person managing your financial master data?
Traditionally, financial data marts and operation data stores are built and managed by IT. So how does the business user view and manage the hierarchies and metadata attributes without IT getting in the way? Coming from the IT side of the house, I have had the opinion that the business might “know the business”, but given the opportunity to manage a technical system they will take shortcuts and ultimately bring the IT solution back to a level they are comfortable with…and thanks to Bill Gates, Microsoft Excel ends up trumping the investment in technology.
I have found that there needs to be a bridge between IT and business users. By the nature of a bridge, there is a span that straddles an open gap with the potential if not built correctly the plunge can be a long and ‘fatal’ fall.
There are many companies offering workflow tools to bridge the gap by helping the communication between business and IT. Alone these solutions still leave opportunity for failure as IT is managing systems it does not have an intimate ownership in. Nor does IT have the knowledge to determine if the business is going to request a change that will impact the system. IT presumes that if the software allows the change than there is no reason why not to do it. As we all have experience one time or another, this is a bad assumption.
Of the many tools I have worked with, currently the Oracle Data Relationship Management (DRM) tool (formally Hyperion MDM / Razza Dimension Server) fills the gap between business and IT. Using a tool such as this gives a strong user interface that the business can use and buy into while allowing IT to be involved by building edit checks and integrity checks into DRM. Additionally it provides IT the vested ownership while keeping the business from impacting their own “business rules”. Not to mention IT’s data governance policies are enforced which keeps IT happy.
A win, win for everyone… right?
Thomas Friedman first talked about how globalization impacts business life in The World is Flat. In this book, he describes the ‘flattening of the world’ as the idea that workers from around the globe could collaborate and work across systems and wide spans of geography. One specific part of this flattening is a change he refers to as the “quiet revolution in software, transmission protocols” that he calls “the ‘workflow revolution’ because of how it made everyone’s computer and software interoperable.”
I see this amazing transformation offered within financial software today, but many companies don’t completely understand the value or the concepts to implement this approach.
New financial systems today allow for the immediate submission of data. The best practice applications of these systems allow for the validation, translation and commentary of this submission to be owned by the end users.
When I discuss the applied concept with clients, I speak of this ‘changing conversation.’ Before this workflow revolution, legal entities in remote parts of the globe would prepare financials and fax them, or teletype them, to a corporate office. A process that was manual, slow and disconnected.
The end users owning the process changes the communication of the business. The old typical conversation before might have been a submission of some financial data followed by a response that the data is incorrect or incomplete, and then a resubmission – all taking days to complete. The process was also flawed in that it relied completely on the receiving member being proactive, and finding the errors. Surprisingly, many companies still use this approach.
The technology exists to solve this problem and provide two major benefits. First, products today make the validation systematic, hence reliable. The end user knows immediately if the data is wrong, and can resolve the issues. The system provide consistency and reliability that cannot be accomplished with people. Second, the end users can be made aware of potential problems and begin researching proactively. This proactive approach cuts days from the process and improves data quality.
Within my next blog posting, I will discuss many of the controls I am seeing in these systems like SAP’s BPC and Oracle’s HFM products, and how they improve data quality and speed of reporting.
How many varieties of gold fish do you have?
With many of our clients, Oracle / Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management (FDM) is the preferred data loading mechanism for Hyperion Enterprise and Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) owing largely to its intuitive end-user interface. We find that FDM users will often refer to their progress in terms of how many gold fish they have. And no, these aren’t the Pepperidge Farm variety.
While the data load process is very straight forward, it does require a user to extract a trial balance from the general ledger, import the file into the FDM repository, fix any mapping issues and then export the data to Hyperion Enterprise/HFM. This means that a close cycle is only as timely as your least efficient business unit.
We have worked with clients to leverage the capabilities of FDM to provide an elegant solution that is intended to drive out efficiencies in your company’s close cycle. FDM is configured to extract trial balance data directly from a general ledger, load into FDM’s repository, map unmapped members to a suspense account/entity and then load & consolidate Enterprise/HFM.Leveraging Ranzal & Associates’ expertise with FDM, this solution can help your close cycle become more streamlined and managed by exception – potentially resulting in days being removed from your existing close cycle.
Contributed by:
Tony Scalese, FDM Design Lead
Hyperion Certified Consultant – HFM
Ranzal & Associates
ascalese@ranzal.com
