Oracle Hyperion Customers at the Tipping Point: What Path Will You Take?

Well, here we are in the Spring of 2021. The weather is getting warmer, the vaccines are rolling out and there’s hope that the pandemic has reached the tipping point and the world will turn to normal later this year. But 2021 also represents a critical tipping point for Oracle Hyperion customers who must make an important decision about their future. Will you upgrade to Hyperion 11.2? Convert to Oracle EPM Cloud? Or will you consider an alternative solution such as OneStream?

This decision point was the focus of the recent March Mania Tip-Off event that I moderated, featuring a panel of five CPM experts who discussed the pros and cons of the three options available to Oracle Hyperion customers. Then they shared success stories of former Hyperion customers who converted to OneStream’s unified platform and the advantages they are realizing. Read on to hear the highlights from the event, or watch the webinar replay to get the details.

Introducing the Dream Team

The webinar kicked off with a brief introduction to the challenges CFOs and Finance team face in today’s market, and how OneStream helps Finance teams lead at speed. Then I set up the inflection point Oracle Hyperion customers are facing and introduced our panel of experts. The panel included:

• Greg Barrett – Managing Partner, Finit
• Tony Coffman – Managing Partner, Perficient
• Arthur Forbus – Managing Director/COO, Holland Parker LLC
• Anthony Reddin – Managing Partner, CompIntelligence
• Randy Werder – President, Black Diamond Advisory

Each of the panelists has over 15 years of experience in the CPM market, having implemented Oracle Hyperion, SAP, IBM and OneStream solutions for hundreds of clients. So they are well-versed in the various solutions available in the market and how they can be leveraged to address customer challenges.

Life at the Tipping Point

To kick off the discussion, the panel discussed the pros and cons of each of the 3 options available to Oracle Hyperion customers as they fact this important tipping point in 2021. Here’s a summary of the options and some of the trade-offs:

Option 1 – Upgrade to Hyperion 11.2

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According to the panelists, this path is the lowest risk and lowest benefit option of the three. The main benefit is that by upgrading to Hyperion 11.2, customers can be assured of premier support for their on-premise Hyperion applications through 2031. The downside is that customers will see no innovation in these products going forward, and some modules have been deprecated such as EPM Architect (EPMA), Hyperion Strategic Finance, Workforce Planning, Capital Planning and Project Planning. So for customers using these modules, this option is not viable.

Option 2 – Migrate to Oracle EPM Cloud

Next, we spoke about the benefits of migrating to Oracle EPM Cloud. The panelists were in agreement that there is more value here vs. upgrading to Hyperion 11.2. Going to the cloud will remove the infrastructure requirements and make upgrades much easier. And there will be continued innovation in EPM Cloud.

However, there are downsides to this option. The biggest one is that Oracle EPM Cloud is not one product – it’s still a fragmented suite of products. There are separate applications for financial close and consolidation vs. planning, profitability management, account reconciliation and other processes. That means different data stores, different logic across processes, multiple points of data integration from GL/ERPs, and the need to synchronize data between applications.

The panelists cautioned that existing HFM and Hyperion Planning customers considering an upgrade to Oracle EPM Cloud need to evaluate whether the cloud applications (e.g., former Oracle FCCS and Oracle PBCS/EPBCS) can support their requirements, given some of the limitations that exist in the cloud solutions.  

Option 3 – Converting to OneStream

Then the panel discussed the third option – converting to an alternative solution like OneStream Software. Over 300 organizations globally have already taken this route – replacing multiple on-premise Hyperion applications, and in some cases, Oracle EPM Cloud applications. When asked what makes OneStream such an attractive option for Hyperion customers, the panelists called out the following features:

• Unified platform that replaces multiple legacy applications, so it’s much easier to use, maintain and upgrade.
• Advanced financial close, consolidation and planning and forecasting
• Built-in financial data quality, not a separate product or license.
• Extensive, built-in reporting and analysis capabilities providing a single version of the truth for actuals, budgets, plans and forecasts.
• Extensible Dimensionality® that allows customers to support corporate standards but allows business units to extend the solution to support local reporting and planning requirements.
• Relational Blending supports planning at a granular level, with cube-based reporting and analysis at a summary level.
• Analytic Blend which enables customers to load large volumes of transactional data for reporting and analysis with high performance and responsiveness to end user queries.
• The OneStream MarketPlace which allows users to extend their investment in the platform with additional capabilities, such as account reconciliations or capital planning, at no additional cost.

Each of the panelists then highlighted an example of a customer that migrated from Oracle Hyperion to OneStream and the benefits they achieved. These examples included the following:

Each of the panelists then highlighted an example of a customer that migrated from Oracle Hyperion to OneStream and the benefits they achieved. These examples included the following:

BDO – had 12 Hyperion Planning and Essbase applications that were converted to OneStream. Their prior environment had lots of infrastructure issues, time spent synchronizing data, and meta data management. Their OneStream app now has over 300 trillion intersections. BDO is merging massive amounts of financial and operational data in one system, along with a best-in-class user experience. The new solution provides better visibility into their critical business data on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

Herbalife Nutrition – was using HFM, Hyperion Planning, FDM, Essbase and EPMA. Backups would take 4 hours every day, delaying access to data and HFM lacked the depth of dimensionality needed to report on project-level detail. By converting to OneStream Herbalife now has a single application for financial consolidation, people planning and forecasting. This had led to faster, more detailed management and financial reporting. In addition to automating tasks such as intercompany eliminations and FX calculations, the application automatically calculates the transfer profit for inventory transactions between entities.

Forum Energy Technologies – had a complex HFM and FDMEE environment and felt they were being forced to upgrade to Oracle FCCS. They had minimal budgeting and forecast capabilities and a manual Excel-based solution for management reporting. By moving to OneStream’s unified platform, Forum streamlined their consolidation and reporting and aligned the forecasting process with the close to produce a timelier forecast. And the extensibility of the platform provides multi-layer reporting for management from detailed to summary results by legal entity and product line.

Shea Homes – was using HFM, Hyperion Planning, and several other systems – resulting in long consolidation times with separate applications for external and mgmt. reporting. Forecasting was time-consuming, and they were forced to create manual workarounds with Excel spreadsheets. Moving to OneStream, they created one source of truth, eliminating data movement between systems, with automated data integrations and cash flow. They also reduced consolidation times, while handing more data, and have improved visibility into key metrics and statistical data by utilizing drill downs.

Unifi – a leading provider of aviation services, was struggling to manage large volume of labor staffing and flight data. Forecasting and trend analysis was not timely, and they wanted to tie operational data into the financial forecast. With OneStream, Unifi now has a unified platform for operational/financial reporting, planning, and forecasting. Dynamic labor staffing models are now tied to flight data with daily and weekly flash reporting, integrated balance sheet and cash flow forecasting and dashboards highlighting flight data, labor, and weekly staffing information.

Key Takeaways

As we wrapped up the webinar, the panelists concluded that Hyperion customers facing the inflection point this year should make a decision that provides them innovation and not stagnation. If customers are going to go through the effort and cost of an upgrade, focus on a solution that will help improve your game, increase business agility and value. To learn more, watch the webinar replay and feel free to contact OneStream or any of our partners for a conversion assessment.