Session Descriptions
Download the OAUG Connection Point — EPM agenda grid (PDF file).
Featured Keynote Presentations
Transforming Your Forecasting Process during Turbulent Times
CFOs at leading companies are radically rethinking the forecast process in order to gain a real competitive advantage. In uncertain times, dynamic modeling techniques and practices can add measurable value to your business decision-making by incorporating risk and flexibility into your plan and forecast process. In this practical session, Mike Cochran will describe the elements that make up an effective forecast process designed for today’s global economic environment including:
- Utilization of a rolling time horizon to ensure a consistent view of the future while matching the level of detail to predictive ability
- Accurate reflection of forecasting risks through the use of ranges, tolerances, confidence levels, scenarios and contingencies
- Impacting organizational behaviors and performance through the use of driver based methodologies that model the business through key performance factors
- Use of the latest technology tools to shorten cycle times, enhance forecast quality, and improve staff and manager productivity
- A framework for evaluating your current performance management processes against best practice benchmark to identify improvement opportunities
Smart EPM Strategies for 2010
With the economic recovery underway is your organization prepared for what lies ahead in 2010 and beyond? An effective Enterprise Performance Management strategy can help your organization leverage investments in operational systems and achieve management excellence. Find out about key market trends for 2010 and how Oracle is helping our customers become smart, agile, aligned and prepared for whatever the future holds.
Sneak Preview — What’s Coming in Oracle’s EPM Products for 2010
Customers may have heard bits and pieces of Oracle’s EPM and BI development plans at OpenWorld and other events like balance sheet planning, public sector budgeting, enhanced XBRL support, OBIEE integration, etc. Attend this session to get a big picture view of what’s new and what’s coming in Oracle’s EPM and BI products for 2010. Learn how these enhancements can benefit your organization and plan your upgrade strategy.
White Paper Sessions
Please visit this page frequently for updated session information as we are continuing to add more valuable educational offerings.
Tuesday, February 23: Registration opens 7:30 a.m. Keynote address starts promptly at 8:30 a.m. Sessions will run until 5:00 p.m.
Wednesday, February 24: Registration opens at 7:30 a.m. Keynote address starts promptly at 8:45 a.m. Sessions will run until 2:30 p.m.
Budget, Forecasting and Planning
I Know How to Spell HSF … Now What? The Hyperion Product You Never Realized You Always Needed and Probably Already Own
Sitting on your shelf, quite possibly, is a piece of valuable software, quietly collecting dust. Perhaps you know the name of the product, but it stops there. Meanwhile, you toil away each day working on tracking, checking, linking and updating disparate spreadsheets to produce your tops-down long range plan. This session will be an intro to HSF, Hyperion Strategic Finance, a financial modeling application that not only replaces these antiquated spreadsheets, it makes them look like child’s play. An hour long primer of the key features and functionality of the Hyperion product you never realized you always needed and probably already own.
- Introduction to the purpose, architecture and user community for HSF
- Overview of key features and functionality
- Use case demonstration
Amegy Bank: Driving Organizational Performance through Strategy-Focused Planning and Budgeting
Join Amegy Bank of Texas and find out how they are applying leading practices for their strategy-focused planning and budgeting system leveraging Oracle® Hyperion Planning™. The Amegy team will walk you through their strategic process evolution from Excel-to-Essbase-to-Planning and uncover best practices on how they improved their Corporate Planning Change and Roll-up Process — from eight hours to five minutes.
Learn how Amegy Bank is:
- Using their Hyperion system as “one version of the truth” across the organization
- Providing a web-based system to support more sophisticated analysis while reducing the time required for manual data entry, verification and maintenance
- Applying enhanced allocation processes to their planning and budgeting approach
- Enhancing user’s ability to prepare and manage dynamic forecasts
- Standardizing the business rules to support carried calculations, including allocations and taxes
- Reducing the cycle time for consolidating information on a monthly basis
- Providing an open-flexible architecture to allow for growth
Oracle Enterprise Performance Management at Continental Airlines
Continental Airlines celebrates its 75th year in 2009. Amid a dynamic and challenging business environment, Continental seized the opportunity to modernize and automate its performance management and reporting strategy. In this session, you will learn how Continental implemented three Oracle EPM applications (Oracle Hyperion Financial Management, Oracle Hyperion Planning, and Oracle Hyperion Strategic Finance) in a matter of months, leaving behind years of Excel models. This fully integrated Release 11 solution leverages Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management Architect, calculation manager and annotation server features, and Oracle Data Integrator.
The Evolution of Hyperion Planning at Bayer Healthcare Consumer Care Division
During this session we will exemplify how at Bayer Healthcare the Hyperion Planning application evolved from a bottom up annual Budgeting application, to a footprint in the forecasting process. What originally was designed for an annual Budget process, embedded integrations across our system landscape, from Siebel to SAP, and now plays a functioning role in all business processes offering functionality necessary for day to day business activities.
Oracle Enterprise Performance Management at Duke University Health System
Faced with a dynamic and challenging business environment, DUHS seized the opportunity to modernize and automate its performance management, reporting and planning strategy. In this session, you will learn how DUHS implemented three Oracle EPM applications (Oracle Hyperion Financial Management, Oracle Hyperion Planning, and Oracle Hyperion Essbase). You will hear how DUHS converted from legacy Hyperion Enterprise and Pillar to Oracle’s latest EPM Applications along with the implementation of the Release 11 solution which leverages Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management Architect and Oracle Data Integrator.
The initial phase of the project converted Hyperion Enterprise to Financial Management and Hyperion Pillar to Planning along with implementation of Essbase for extended analytics and management reporting. Subsequent phases included the upgrade to version 11 and the implementation EPMA to manage master data for Hyperion applications. The solution ties together consolidations, financial reporting, analytics and planning throughout DUHS. Workforce planning was leveraged extensively to build budgets by Employee by Department and to consolidate a majority of outlier calculations within Hyperion Planning versus in offline Excel Spreadsheets such as their FTE calculation. Planning also provided users the ability to immediately view Budget reports after inputs are made into planning web forms or via Smart View. This real time planning and reporting solution cut a significant amount time and expense out their budget and forecast process. The solution also included automated integration with their ERP and Payroll Systems.
A Day in the Life of a Planning Administrator
How can I make my life easier as a Planning administrator? How can I enhance the end user budgeting and planning experience (simplifying, reducing complexity, and making the overall painful process a bit easier)? We will show how to work more efficiently with your Planning implementation and administration, allowing you to spend more time on the fun projects while impressing both users and your management. We will cover automating processes, troubleshooting and empowering your user community, streamlining day-to-day administrative tasks, and building the foundation for you to lead continuous improvement in your Planning environment. You will learn how to get the most out of your Planning functionality, and learn how to optimize you current application, including application design, data loads, web form design, use of Business Rules, user provisioning, and smart lists, and much more.
Planning Integration Tactics: Sourcing from HFM
During this session, the presenters will provide insight into how Ranzal and an international trading organization brought together best practices from two deep teams and employed a best-of-breed solution that utilizes the best features of Planning while also using the best features of HFM, and minimizes maintenance. Highlights include the tactics taken on the integration and discuss the roadmap for enhancements based on new and coming product functionality.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Hyperion Planning Ownership Models
For companies planning to acquire and implement Oracle Hyperion Planning in 2010, it is important to know and understand the various models of ownership and managed services including on-premise, hosted and managed, and subscription. Titan will discuss and provide a complete overview of the options and their organizational, technical, and financial implications.
Financial Consolidations and Reporting
Converting from Hyperion Enterprise to HFM: Design Considerations and Best Practices
Learn how HFM handles the basic elements of a Hyperion Enterprise application, including multiple org structures, intercompany eliminations, sub-entity structures, sub-account tables, currency translation, and the journals module. Find out when and why to use custom dimensions, how to set up roll-forwards and USD overrides, and why you can eliminate most of your Hyperion Enterprise Chart logic. This session will also discuss project tasks and implementation work-streams.
Validating Your Financial Information Using Financial Data Quality Management (FDM)
Financial Data Quality Management (FDM) helps organizations with the process of collecting, mapping, verifying, and moving critical financial data across systems (including adapters for Hyperion Financial Management, Planning, BI+ Essbase, and Enterprise). The Web-based guided workflow user interface helps standardize financial data management processes and reduces data integration costs and complexities. Come learn how to reduce expenditures by lowering the cost of compliance while improving productivity and insight with FDM’s drill-through capabilities from EPM applications to transactional systems.
How to Effectively Utilize Hyperion Planning in the Consolidation Process
During this session we will examine lessons learned implementing a forecast consolidation process at Bayer Healthcare, and highlight how we leveraged a corporate consolidation tool to maximize our forecast accuracy. We will identify how the information is integrated, consolidated, and reported to ensure the correct information is communicated to those who most need it.
Reigning in SAP and Oracle EBS for Enterprise Consolidations and Reporting
Faced with the acquisition of Foundation Coal, Alpha Natural Resources (ANR) selected Oracle’s Hyperion Financial Management as the consolidation and financial reporting platform for what would be the combined companies. While ANR was running Oracle’s E-Business Suite, Foundation Coal was running SAP. The task of consolidating the disparate ERP Systems to produce consolidated financial statements and management reporting was put to the test with Hyperion Financial Management. With Analytic Vision’s leadership, results were delivered in sixty days. ANR has also chosen to leverage Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management (FDM) for drill through to transactional detail within Oracle’s E-Business Suite, an important new feature of FDM.
You will learn how ANR implemented two Oracle EPM applications (Oracle Hyperion Financial Management and Oracle Hyperion Essbase). You will hear how the latest Enterprise Performance Management Architect and Financial Data Quality Management functionality was used by ANR to provide tight integration with source systems. You will also learn how FDM was configured for drill through to transactional detail. While SAP will be the surviving ERP System for the combined company, Oracle’s Performance Management Platform will be the standard for Consolidation, Reporting, and Analysis.
How Hyperion Dashboards, Financial Reports and Excel Reporting Books for HFM, Enterprise, and Essbase can all be accessed with one solution. A customer case study.
As mentioned a great deal of our presentation will be showing a live demo of a Customer CXO-Cockpit environment. We will demonstrate how the management team of our customer receives their periodic Hyperion data in a high performance web-based reporting environment. We will also show the audience how to built new Hyperion based Dashboards, Reports and Excel Booklets from scratch in the CXO-Cockpit Reporting Suite.
Complex Rules associated with Cash Flow, Segment Allocations and Constant Currency
Requirements for Cash Flow reporting, Allocation and Constant Currency requires a solid understanding of the overall FM architecture and VB capabilities. In this Tips and Tricks Session we will explore design consideration and rules techniques surrounding the options associated with Cash Flow reporting, Allocation and constant Currency requirement.
Business Intelligence and Analytics
OBIEE and Essbase — The Truth about Integration
This session will give attendees a look at what the current level of integration is between Oracle’s Hyperion Essbase and Oracle’s Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. The session will be based on implementation experiences and demonstrate to users how the integration works and discuss future integration functionality.
Using Hyperion Essbase to Manage Risk and Maintain Compliance in an Energy Trading Business
For more than 50 years, Tri-State Generation and Transmission has operated, as a non-profit, wholesale electric power supplier owned by the electric cooperatives that it serves. Tri-State supplies energy to people in small towns and rural communities in the West by generating and transmitting electricity to its member systems throughout a 250,000 square-mile territory across Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico and Wyoming. As part of its business, Tri-State maintains an energy trading operation, which has a number of constraints defined by the company’s Risk Assessment Committee (RAC). These constraints, involving volume and cost variances and cost exposures, must be tracked and reviewed in order to maintain internal audit compliance. The company’s current combination of Oracle Financials and a Ventyx Schedule Management system does not provide a seamless or integrated solution to these type of Energy Trading and Risk Management (ETRM) activities, particularly related to the management and tracking of current energy trading activities and trading exposure against the RAC constraints. This paper and presentation will explain how Hyperion Essbase was used to quickly create an interim solution — in less than 90 days — that automates both the process of loading system data from several enterprise applications, as well as the process of tracking and reporting the current energy trading activities and exposure against the RAC constraints using a dynamic time horizon to report on the future week’s potential exposure.
Enterprise-Wide Sales Analytics with OBIEE at Eaton Vance
This session demonstrates how asset management firm Eaton Vance partnered with Performance Architects to provide sales analytics using Oracle Business Intelligence (OBIEE) throughout the organization, enabling one version of the truth. This enterprise-level sales flow reporting and analytics application manages the demands of different end-user groups who have different comfort levels with business intelligence and technology, and was Eaton Vance’s first application built using the OBIEE technology. The case study includes an overview of the business opportunity, outlines the requirements process, the technical architecture, change management concerns and associated design impacts. The presentation will conclude with an overview of Eaton Vance’s future plans for leveraging OBIEE as the sole enterprise-wide reporting and analytics tool in the organization, integrating both sales and assets under management (AUM) metrics and metadata.
Leveraging Oracle’s Latest Integration Tools to Meet Your EPM Data Integration Needs
Oracle provides several data integration options for meeting EPM integration needs. With HAL no longer a supported tool, many clients need to reassess their data integration requirements and determine which of the many DI tools will meet their needs. This session will discuss the various tool options, including FDM, ODI, Essbase Studio and EPMA, along with leveraging the strengths of your often neglected relational environments. This session will focus on EPM System 11 technologies.
Data Relationship Management (DRM): Achieving Agility through Alignment
Most enterprises today have multiple entities — each with their own set of accounts, structures and systems for financial reporting. Mergers, acquisitions and reorganizations inject constant change into the process. Imagine if your company had visibility into all financial reporting structures? Attend this session and find out how your company can accurately support changing reporting requirements and guarantee consistent financial results — all within an accurate and time efficient process. This session will include case studies from organizations leveraging Oracle’s Data Relationship Management (DRM) including Alcoa Corporation, Quest Diagnostics and Remy International.
Essbase — Taking Center Stage in Oracle’s EPM/BI Strategy
Essbase is the industry-leading OLAP (online analytical processing) server and Oracle’s commitment to this transformational technology places it center stage in their EPM and BI strategy. This session will provide a comprehensive overview of where Essbase is being utilized within Oracle’s EPM/BI suite and where this technology can be leveraged across your enterprise. For those who already use products from the EPM/BI suite, learn how Essbase can enhance those products. And, for those just getting started, you will gain insight into the strategic role of Essbase within Oracle’s EPM/BI suite. Overall, you will gain a better understanding of how these technologies unite data from disparate operational systems in a seamless, cost-effective fashion, enabling them to extend the life of existing business systems, reduce development costs and lower operational costs through improved process efficiencies.
The Office of the CFO
Achieving a Common Goal: Creating an Oracle EPM Center of Excellence
At most companies, there is Hyperion products spread throughout various departments. Finance may control Hyperion Financial Management, the budgeting department owns Hyperion Planning, and IT controls Essbase. In many cases, several different departments all have expertise in the same product (Essbase, commonly). Wouldn’t it be better to bring all of these groups together under one common umbrella that can share best practices, dimensions, data, and most importantly, experience?
An Oracle EPM (or Hyperion) Center of Excellence is within your reach, and in this one hour presentation, you will learn the steps to begin creating one. What areas should come together first? Do I hire new people or bring my existing ones under own common group? How do I span excellence around the globe? Can I take different Hyperion applications and cubes and give them common hierarchies? Are there recommended ways to share data between all of my products? Who should lead this group?
Once you’ve implemented an Oracle EPM, BI, or Hyperion center, you’ll find that your administrative costs go down, maintenance is simplified, your users are happier, you’re consulting costs decrease, and your time to roll out new Hyperion projects is dramatically reduced. Don’t miss this important session to learn how Pearson Education achieved excellence in performance management.
Strategic Forecasting in Unpredictable Economies — Why Spreadsheets Just Don’t Cut It
Learn how Giant Eagle, a multi-billion dollar grocery chain and largest food retailer in the Pittsburgh area, leverages Hyperion Strategic Finance for their modeling and forecasting needs. Topics will include developing a standard modeling platform, performing scenario analysis on key business drivers, and optimizing strategic analysis.
Improving Enterprise Performance in the Challenging Economic Climate
In today’s economic climate, it is more important than ever to explore ways to cut costs, increase profits and create a more efficient organization. Defining a strategy to improve operational and financial planning, shorten the financial close cycle and expand operational and financial reporting to more company constituents can pave the way to excellence even in challenging economic times. This presentation will focus on best business practices for driving pervasive intelligence across the enterprise by linking strategic, financial and operational management processes, and the role of technology in helping to do so. Attendees will learn about: What is EPM? What does the acronym stand for? Why is it important? What are the benefits of EPM and what does an EPM solution look like?
- Financial Consolidations, Reporting, Process Management and Compliance
- Budgeting and Planning
- Enterprise-Wide Business Intelligence and its role in delivering timely and accurate insights into critical business operations and finances
- New operational efficiencies delivering faster and more effective responses
Project Management Best Practices Collide with Six Sigma fundamentals. Delivering Higher Quality and sustainable Project Results by Leveraging Proven Project Management Leading Practices and Six Sigma Management Techniques.
This presentation will begin with an overview of “The Top 10 Reasons why Oracle technology projects fail.” Then the presentation will provide an overview of many Project Management best practices and Six Sigma management methods. The Six Sigma overview will cover Six Sigma as a Metric, a Methodology and a Management system.
Essentially, Six Sigma is all three at the same time.
Six Sigma as a Metric: The term “Sigma” is often used as a scale for levels of “goodness” or quality. Using this scale, “Six Sigma” equates to 3.4 defects per one million opportunities (DPMO). Therefore, Six Sigma started as a defect reduction effort in Project Management and can be applied to other business processes for the dramatic improvement.
Controlling Operating Expenses During the Economic Downtown and Positioning Yourself for the Recovery to Follow
This session will address today’s business climate followed by a demonstration of Revenue and Expense modeling utilizing Hyperion Essbase and Planning. We will focus on how Hyperion Essbase and Planning can help you:
- Understanding your true leading indicators
- Deploy trigger point planning to predefine actions/investments that automatically kick in to take advantage of market turns
- Provide quicker forecast update frequencies and longer/rolling horizons
- Evaluate the right/best investments to make to win in the market
Project Sponsorship — It’s not a Spectator Sport, Top 10 Secrets of Successful Project Sponsors
Sponsoring an EPM project means more than simply putting your name on the business case and showing up at the occasional status meeting. The Executive Sponsor plays a critical role in the eventual success or failure of the project. Many sponsors make the mistake of believing that they don’t need to get involved; that the project shouldn’t take up too much of their time. In fact, the most successful projects have sponsors that understand the importance of their involvement. This session will cover the secrets of the best project sponsors and how they ensure the successful completion of their EPM projects.
EPM and BI/Product Roadmap
Upgrading HFM to Fusion 11.x — Introduction to New Functionality and Upgrade Considerations
In this session, you’ll learn key new functionality and upgrade considerations to give you the information you need to plan for your HFM Fusion 11.x upgrade in the short or long-term. The session will give an introduction and overview on the new functionality and enhancements available in HFM Fusion 11.x. In addition, the presenter will go through upgrade considerations and project tasks to help assist with your internal project planning.
Under the Covers: An Architectural Breakdown of System 11
Oracle ACE Director Eric Helmer will break down the internals of the latest Oracle EPM version 11. This Session will be geared for IT professionals who are considering implementing or upgrading to Oracle EPM version 11 and want more information on its inner workings. Learn the different components of the EPM suite including foundational software and Shared Services. This session will also cover architecture and data flow, as well as required system administration activities, and upgrade considerations.
Finding Profitability in 8 Weeks or Less: An Introduction to Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management
Come learn how Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management software focuses on using your current investments to give you a clear and definitive look into your business health. Oracle’s newest EPM application sits entirely on top of Essbase, has a single graphical view, and allows users to get an inside look at the drivers of costs as they “audit” the profitability of their organization. Learn how HPCM can help you allocate expenses and get a better understanding of profit and costs at any level in your organization.
Financial Transformation via OBIEE, Essbase and HSF
In this section we will showcase a Financial Transformation Project using a real world case study. The technology components involved are Essbase, OBIEE — Financial Analytics, Data Integration Manager (DIM) and Hyperion Strategic Finance (HSF). We will look at Financial and Management reporting and planning process with integrations for the different components involved.
Be “Productive Day One” With Oracle User Productivity Kit and Oracle Tutor
Effective users are key to the success of your Enterprise Performance Management software implementation or upgrade project, and to attaining a solid return on investment from your applications investment over time. Learn how to create an informed user community that can be fully productive the day you go-live with your new or upgraded applications. See how the business process and system documentation required to drive your project can be leveraged for end-user training when created using Oracle Tutor and Oracle User Productivity Kit.
Achieving World-Class Finance through Enterprise Performance Management
In today’s market, it is vital to be smart, agile, and aligned. Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) is a key area that helps organizations deal with the current economic climate. Attend this session for an in-depth discussion on an approach to achieving world-class finance with EPM. This session will bring together the three pillars of EPM and discuss how they integrate to drive tangible results through the following key functional areas:
- Enterprise Planning and Forecasting
- Consolidations and Financial Reporting
- Management Reporting and Business Intelligence
Oracle Financial Close Solutions — What’s New, What’s Coming
As market leaders in financial close software solutions we have been delivering the most advanced and functionally rich applications for over 25 years. 2010 will be a major landmark with the release of new products and major enhancements to existing products that will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your financial close process. The presentation will include:
- Best practices in the financial close
- New products for financial close and disclosure management that will help you to streamline the entire close process from sub-ledger close to published final accounts and help you to manage statutory filings including support for XBRL
- Important enhancements to Oracle Hyperion Financial Management, Oracle Hyperion Financial Reporting, Oracle Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management and Hyperion Enterprise