How Oracle EPM Cloud Can Improve Productivity in Your Financial Processes
Author: David Silverstrim | 4 min read | March 18, 2021
Are you bogged down by slow, inaccurate financial close and consolidation processes? So was one of our recent clients—before Datavail stepped in to help them, that is.
Datavail’s client is a Fortune 500 company with tens of thousands of employees operating hundreds of gas stations and retail outlets across North America. The client’s primary impetus for working with Datavail was the impending deadline for Oracle Hyperion 11.1.2.4, which will reach its end of support (EOS) date in December 2021. Beyond that date, Oracle customers who keep using 11.1.2.4 will fall out of compliance, expose themselves to unpatched security flaws, and miss out on the latest features and functionality.
The Migration Process
The client decided to migrate to Oracle EPM Cloud instead of remaining on-premises. Datavail helped the client at every step of the process, first gathering requirements and building a project roadmap and timeline. Next, Datavail built and converted the client’s metadata, including their alternate hierarchies.
One roadblock: the client’s data location hierarchy was highly complex; each location needed monthly, quarterly, and annual reiteration, and a single location might be subdivided into multiple stores. To help with this issue, Datavail leveraged the Oracle Smart View feature, which is only available in the Oracle cloud, to build hierarchies more rapidly. In a few weeks, Datavail had already finished most of the project and delivered a working system in the cloud, with only data validation left to complete.
Datavail helped the client identify several inaccuracies and errors in their datasets and reports, implementing some behind-the-scenes changes to dramatically speed up the reporting process. Although the size of the client’s enterprise data was one of the largest Datavail had ever worked with (e.g. 5,000 rows of data across 50 columns simultaneously), the system maintained high performance throughout, with marked improvements upon completion of the upgrade. For example, a consolidation process that took 10 minutes on-premises now takes just 2 minutes in the cloud.
The Benefits
If you’re thinking about your own large EPM cloud migrations or Oracle EPM applications, you’re in expert hands with Datavail. Thanks to the partnership with Datavail, the client gained the following time-saving benefits:
- A fivefold speedup for their financial consolidation processes that will free up hours of time for employees in the long run, boosting productivity and efficiency.
- Dramatic changes and improvements to reporting and analytics workflows, including correcting many inefficiencies and errors
- A hybrid onshore/offshore model that could scale to fit the client’s needs, even as the scope of the project expanded.
These improvements established a solid foundation for future improvements and Oracle cloud migrations.
Want the full story? Download the complete case study Major Retailer Improves Productivity by Moving to Oracle EPM Cloud.
Read This Next
It’s the Eleventh Hour for Hyperion 11.1.2.4 — Here’s What to Do
With all the excitement of this long-awaited release, it was also the beginning of the end for Hyperion 11.1.2.4, the previous version of the software, which will reach its end of support date in December 2021. So what should you do? In this white paper, we’ll discuss how you can take action to protect your business.
