Last week there was a press briefing in Asia. What was special is that we did a live video stream to 16 cities, while we were interacting through group chat with all the reportors. Everyone could see everything. I presented the basics of our management excellence story, and took questions. Unfortunately there was not enough time for all questions, so I am taking the opportunity here to answer some of the remaining ones.
a??There are trends on that companies adopt new KPIs to measure their corporate performance i.e. compliance, Green IT (carbon dioxide footprints). What are Oracle EPM enhancements to these?" [K. Tanikawa, Japan]
We are doing many, many things in this field. We have established a Green Customer Council, have partnered with several large customers like Gaz de France to promote their success, etc. I would leave it to my colleagues in the business applications space to go deeper into for instance compliance, supply chain management and Green IT, but will respond specifically to EPM, with regards to sustainability reporting. I truly believe that sustainability reporting should not be a separate application, most organizations have the right technology in-house already. I think the right technology is Hyperion Financial Management, the financial consolidation system. Sustainability reporting is like any style of external reporting. Whatever you report externally should be reliable, complete, correct, auditable, traceable and all other qualities you would expect from an external report, even if there is no legal obligation. Sustainability reporting is all about trust, and reporting through a spreadsheet or any other informal system is simply not good enough.Having said that, there are of course specific key performance indicators involved, according to standards such as GRI (Oracle is a GRI member). One of Oraclea??s partners, 2Future, has used Hyperion Financial Management to build all these standard performance indicators and standard reports, specific for sustainability reporting.
a??Oracle's EPM/BI has been all about operational excellence. How are you going to differentiate this new EPM/BI solution against the previous one? And please tell me the differences between the new and previous versions.a?? [Korea]
a??What are the unique value propositions of Oraclea??s new EPM/BI vision in comparison with competitors? Is smart, agile and aligned a real differentiator?a?? [Korea]
I dona??t think Oraclea??s EPM/BI has ever been specifically about operational excellence. Instead, the field of performance management in general has been focusing on internal financial management control. In our thought leadership we would like to establish an understanding of management processes that is less focused on finance alone, and expands towards operational management processes and strategic management processes. Our work on extending operational excellence with management excellence has led to identifying the competitive factors for the future: being smart, agile and aligned. This should not be seen as something a system delivers out-of-the-box, it should be seen as something organizations need to achieve for themselves. A system can be an enabler. Our thought leadership aims to help people getting more out of the software they already own, or get more out of the software they are buying. Still, the software has a very strong value proposition, compared to the rest of the market. If you study the management processes we have identified, you see they rely heavily on techniques such as simulation, scenario analysis, multidimensional analysis, operational and financial integration and master data management. Next to Oracle Business Intelligence, Hyperion Financial Management, Hyperion Performance Scorecard and Hyperion Planning, products such as Crystal Ball, Hyperion Strategic Finance, Hyperion Strategic Operational Planning, Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management, Essbase and Data Relationship Management really make the difference.Some more proof points:
a?? We have a 2 year lead on our closest competitors in terms of integration. Integration of EPM with Operational Systems, integration of core financial management solutions, integration with middleware technology, integration of a BI Foundation
a?? Unlike others, we are open and committed to standards (e.g. XBRL, XMLA, etca?|)
a?? Most complete EPM system in the market. In addition to our industry-specific analytic applications, Oracle offers over 26 functional BI applications with over 5,000 metrics and dozens of role-based dashboards. Also from a completeness point of view, only Oracle offers a pervasive information delivery layer that spans all delivery channels.
a??Regarding Analysis, EPM vendors are saying that data analysis has to expand from one department to enterprise level. Can Oracle's new solution help enterprises to expand analysis to enterprise level?a?? [AK Toh, Bloter.net, Korea]
Absolutely. There are various factors that make it possible for Oracle to do so. Technology should be scalable and functional to start with, but standard content is also important. Oraclea??s BI Apps provide a wide range of standards performance indicators, alerts, analyses, data models and connectors across all kinds of industries and functional domains. Correct me if I am wrong, I think there are over 5000 over them. Equally important is having a common enterprise information model, containing all metadata across all BI technologies and EPM applications. Lastly, master data management is really important to make data coming from a variety of domains comparable. It is the combination of these things that does the trick.
a??Most customers should have some kind of business measures or IT tools that help them manage cost and profitability. How can Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management help them promote both operational and management excellence?a?? [Taiwan]
We are currently working on a white paper that actually describes just that. In short, the following things are important: Business User Driven Profitability Modeling, Flexible Allocation Platform, Business Rules Engine, Traceability Maps, Model Validation Reporting, Hierarchy and Dimension Management, Multidimensional Calculations, Powerful Analysis and Reporting and Integration with Other Performance Management Applications. The key to profitability and cost management is that it is part of an overall management system. Profitability Modeling, Planning, Analysis and Reporting go hand in hand.
"If an enterprise has hard-coded or custom-built their own EPM business models, would they still need Oracle's EPM solutions and how would Oracle's solutions help them?a?? [Shirley Tsai, DigiTimes, Taiwan]
I have nothing against custom built applications. In fact, I think they are often very strategic of nature, reflecting a certain unique viewpoint or insight an organization has. Every organization striving for management excellence will have unique custom-built things. However, there are a few things in performance management that are so standardized, it is a waste of time and money to reinvent the wheel. I see no added value in a custom built financial consolidation tool or budgeting application. I also see no added value in your own definition of standard performance indicators such as days-sales-outstanding or absenteeism. I do see value in an organization building its own very specific performance indicators reflecting the organizationa??s strategy and value proposition, or a system that produces a very specific simulation model. What Oraclea??s EPM Solution offers is to be able to do both in a single environment, making use of the same data and metadata.
