Oracle announced this week a new release of its Oracle Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) System Release 11.1.2. The release introduces three new performance management applications – Oracle Hyperion Disclosure Management, Oracle Hyperion Financial Close Management, and Oracle Hyperion Public Sector Planning and Budgeting – as well as major enhancements to existing Hyperion performance management applications, and enhanced integrations with Oracle Applications.
The company says that Oracle EPM System Release 11.1.2 represents a milestone in the product lifecycle of Oracle’s flagship Hyperion Planning application designed to deliver significant capabilities for end users and application administrators to streamline their planning and forecasting processes. Key highlights of the new offering include, “Intelligent approval workflows” that are data-driven, user-configured and scenario-specific, to address matrix organization structures; “Zero-code Web forms” that deliver substantial improvements in flexibility and business user productivity; and delivery of all the planning, workflow and task management capabilities to business users through familiar Microsoft Excel and Outlook interfaces, to assist deployment of planning applications across the enterprise.
For public sector organizations seeking better control over their budgeting processes, the new Oracle Hyperion Public Sector Planning and Budgeting module delivers a purpose-built solution for budget management and planning. It is applicable to U.S. federal agencies, and central, state and local governments around the world, as well as higher education and healthcare organizations.
There are also important enhancements to Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management, a fast-growing EPM application (activity based costing and activity based management) that helps organizations gain insights into profitability at the customer and product levels. In addition to significant performance improvements, this release delivers new features including expanded cost and revenue driver functions designed to support complex allocations and profitability calculations.
The new Oracle Hyperion Financial Close Management application centralises task management and delivers a Web-based management dashboard for the end-to-end financial close process that typically spans ERP, BI and EPM systems as well as manual tasks, which the company says will deliver improved visibility and predictability.
Another new application, Oracle Hyperion Disclosure Management, helps organizations ensure the completeness and accuracy of external and statutory financial reports, and their transformation into statutory filings using eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL).
Available in 15 languages, the new release aligns management and operational processes through integration with Oracle Applications, including the Oracle E-Business Suite and PeopleSoft Enterprise so that organizations relying on a combination of Oracle’s EPM system and ERP applications can accelerate implementations as well as improve reporting, analysis and planning cycles.
Significant enhancements to Oracle Hyperion Data Relationship Management will further enable organizations to better manage the consistency, integrity and accuracy of financial and analytical data.
Product updates include a new browser-based user-interface, role-based access and improved navigation. The new release also introduces support for Unicode encoding.
Oracle’s EPM applications are now available individually and packaged as suites that address the full spectrum of customer needs in two key domains: 1) Enterprise Planning and 2) Financial Close and Reporting.
The suites allow customers to take advantage of pre-built integration across the products and simplify the licensing process. Oracle’s Enterprise Planning Suite includes application modules to support strategic, financial and operational planning as well as profitability and cost management.
Oracle’s Financial Close Suite includes application modules to address financial data quality, financial consolidation, financial and management reporting, and the two new applications for financial close and disclosure management.
“Oracle EPM System Release 11.1.2 represents a major leap forward in expanding our category-leading EPM applications with the introduction of new applications and continued integration with Oracle Applications and Oracle Fusion Middleware," said Robert Gersten, senior vice president, Oracle Development. “The new applications, enhancements and key integrations introduced in this release will help organizations significantly improve their planning, financial close, and statutory and internal reporting processes whether using the Oracle EPM System with Oracle Applications or non-Oracle ERP solutions.”
“As a customer who’s deployed a number of Oracle Hyperion applications we are excited about the new applications,” said Russ Bostick, EVP of Technology and Operations, Conseco. “The new financial close management application will enable us to better coordinate our closing process across different departments, transactional systems and EPM applications. We also like the new financial disclosure management application which leverages Oracle’s existing EPM applications and is designed to support a broad range of reporting and filing requirements. Overall, we are impressed with Oracle’s approach and we look forward to evaluating the new products.”
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