By Joe Francis, Performance Architects
A core tool within Oracle’s EPM (Hyperion) product suite, Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) focuses on the key business practice of the financial close. HFM allows users to cost-effectively expedite the process of consolidating, closing, and reporting results. In addition, the product enables organizations to satisfy the ever-growing list of global regulatory requirements. But perhaps the tool’s greatest benefit is its auditability of data which helps deliver confidence in the numbers. There is a laundry-list of reasons to consider an HFM implementation, but here are the five we at Performance Architects think are most important:
- Manual consolidation is too risky. Excel workbooks with layers upon layers of macros and formulas are confusing, break easily, and only a few key people really understand them. Auditing, versioning, tracking and disaster recovery are also difficult – if not impossible – using spreadsheets. HFM assists organizations in automating and managing the close process. Built-in functionality combined with customized business rules will allow users to translate foreign currencies; perform top-down allocations; eliminate intercompany activities; and consolidate data all under the watch of a tightly controlled review and approval process called “Process Management.”
- HFM can grow as your business grows. HFM is essentially a well-designed relational database. Your organization’s complex and growing structure featuring legal entities, departments, products, and currencies can peacefully co-exist and can be integrated into an HFM application. In addition, the tool is web-based, providing for an easy roll out to new users.
- HFM meets external reporting needs. Globalization has opened new markets and led to ever-changing reporting standards. In addition, economic uncertainty and fraud have brought greater scrutiny of financial statements. HFM supports International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and – if needed – can “““““`do both at the same time.
- HFM is part of the Oracle Hyperion Financial Close Suite. HFM is fully integrated with ancillary tools to support governance, visibility, and transparency into the financial close process. There are several tools within this suite, but three highlights include:
- Oracle Hyperion Financial Close Management allows the finance team to manage and automate tasks and activities of the financial close.
- Oracle Financial Management Analytics provides executives with visibility into the close processing status and financial results using pre-built dashboards.
- Oracle Hyperion Disclosure Management provides users with the ability to produce and validate required XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) documents from consolidated results.
- HFM is now available on Exalytics! Previously HFM was only available on traditional Windows platforms. Beginning with the 11.1.2.4 release, the tool can also be used using Oracle’s Exalytics (using Linux). This new architecture provides for greatly enhanced performance.