Oracle Cloud EPM vs. OneStream: Evaluating the EPM Landscape

By Fletcher Cox and Alex Cadet, EPMI

When evaluating and comparing EPM solutions, what should you consider? Oracle Cloud EPM and OneStream both seem to offer a solution that addresses more comprehensive needs across accounting and finance, so let’s take a closer look at what differentiates the two solutions.

Cloud competitors

When looking at the EPM SaaS marketplace, there are two categories of products to consider: discrete, single line-of-business solutions, and broader solutions. Vendors like Blackline, Anaplan, Workday Adaptive Planning, and OneStream can potentially deliver value in either financial close or FP&A. Vendors such as Oracle offer a platform that addresses any degree of simple or comprehensive enterprise EPM needs. EPMI chooses to work with Oracle Cloud EPM because of the breadth, depth, and ability it provides across both actuals and forecast-related business processes.

Oracle Cloud EPM vs. competitor solutions

As an organization scales, maintaining consistent data integrations is critical to glean insights from your transactions. Oracle Cloud EPM provides a central source of truth, with your consolidated financials forming the baseline to forecast various what-if scenarios. Oracle Cloud EPM can integrate data from any source system and normalize those hierarchies into a standardized format to feed predictive analytics. In today’s dynamic M&A landscape, automating data integration from subsidiary ERPs eliminates much of the manual effort required in close, reporting, and forecasting.

UT Arlington used Oracle Cloud EPM Planning to reduce the steps for budget input by 50%. Read the case study.

Outside of core finance and accounting functionality, Oracle Cloud EPM also includes a data hierarchy management system, Oracle Enterprise Data Management (EDM). Oracle EDM helps your business maintain consistent data hierarchies across all enterprise applications (ERP, HR, sales, etc.) as the company evolves over time. For example, if you acquire a new company, reconciling a newly-merged product structure or workforce hierarchy can be a tedious task. Oracle EDM supports self-service data hierarchy management to help you avoid duplicate, redundant, and incorrect data.

Oracle Cloud vs OneStream: Implementation efforts

With cloud, implementation timelines have been drastically reduced vs. on-premise systems. In the case of EPM, it’s largely due to Oracle’s investment in preconfigured templates that leverage decades of best practices dating back to the original Hyperion days. For Cloud EPM, most of the projects we see fall between 12-24 weeks, while OneStream, for example, is typically 9 months or longer. Oracle’s emphasis on configuration over customization means that our consulting teams can focus on business user requirements and preferences.

Oracle Cloud vs OneStream: Software upgrades

OneStream still has an implementation model similar to Hyperion on-premises. OneStream is hosted on Microsoft Azure, and the customer’s IT team is still largely involved in maintaining, patching, and upgrading the application. On the other hand, Oracle hosts its own software in its own data centers and delivers it via the cloud; it offloads the complexity of installing hardware and servers, letting you focus on your business. Oracle also updates Cloud EPM every month,  so your team can focus on operating the faucet, and not managing the pipes.

“Our close process will be much more automated with the implementation of Oracle Cloud EPM. It will save us a lot of time each month.” — Wade Bitter, Chief Accounting Officer, NCS Multistage. Read the case study

Organizations upgrading from Hyperion

For Hyperion customers migrating to Cloud EPM, Oracle’s ownership of Essbase technology offers the simplest path forward. The best practice frameworks included in Cloud EPM have been intentionally designed to migrate common customizations from Hyperion. For legacy Hyperion users, the same multi-dimensional functionality exists today—both in Cloud EPM and in the storied Smart View plugin. At EPMI, we like to say Cloud EPM is “flexible in the right places.” The software gives finance and accounting teams the ability to report their consolidated financials and forecast data in alternate data hierarchies.

In the most recent Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud Financial Planning and Analysis Solutions (Greg Leiter, Robert Anderson, John Van Decker, 6 October 2020), Oracle is positioned highest for “Ability to execute” and furthest for “Completeness of vision.”

Oracle Cloud EPM vs competitor solutions

As an organization scales, maintaining consistent data integrations is critical to glean insights from your transactions. Oracle Cloud EPM provides a central source of truth, with your consolidated financials forming the baseline to forecast various what-if scenarios. Oracle Cloud EPM can integrate data from any source system and normalize those hierarchies into a standardized format to feed predictive analytics. In today’s dynamic M&A landscape, automating data integration from subsidiary ERPs eliminates much of the manual effort required in close, reporting, and forecasting.

UT Arlington used Oracle Cloud EPM Planning to reduce the steps for budget input by 50%. Read the case study.

Outside of core finance and accounting functionality, Oracle Cloud EPM also includes a data hierarchy management system, Oracle Enterprise Data Management (EDM). Oracle EDM helps your business maintain consistent data hierarchies across all enterprise applications (ERP, HR, sales, etc.) as the company evolves over time. For example, if you acquire a new company, reconciling a newly-merged product structure or workforce hierarchy can be a tedious task. Oracle EDM supports self-service data hierarchy management to help you avoid duplicate, redundant, and incorrect data.

Oracle Cloud vs OneStream: Implementation efforts

With cloud, implementation timelines have been drastically reduced vs. on-premise systems. In the case of EPM, it’s largely due to Oracle’s investment in preconfigured templates that leverage decades of best practices dating back to the original Hyperion days. For Cloud EPM, most of the projects we see fall between 12-24 weeks, while OneStream, for example, is typically 9 months or longer. Oracle’s emphasis on configuration over customization means that our consulting teams can focus on business user requirements and preferences.

Oracle Cloud vs OneStream: Software upgrades

OneStream still has an implementation model similar to Hyperion on-premises. OneStream is hosted on Microsoft Azure, and the customer’s IT team is still largely involved in maintaining, patching, and upgrading the application. On the other hand, Oracle hosts its own software in its own data centers and delivers it via the cloud; it offloads the complexity of installing hardware and servers, letting you focus on your business. Oracle also updates Cloud EPM every month,  so your team can focus on operating the faucet, and not managing the pipes.

“Our close process will be much more automated with the implementation of Oracle Cloud EPM. It will save us a lot of time each month.” — Wade Bitter, Chief Accounting Officer, NCS Multistage. Read the case study

Organizations upgrading from Hyperion

For Hyperion customers migrating to Cloud EPM, Oracle’s ownership of Essbase technology offers the simplest path forward. The best practice frameworks included in Cloud EPM have been intentionally designed to migrate common customizations from Hyperion. For legacy Hyperion users, the same multi-dimensional functionality exists today—both in Cloud EPM and in the storied Smart View plugin. At EPMI, we like to say Cloud EPM is “flexible in the right places.” The software gives finance and accounting teams the ability to report their consolidated financials and forecast data in alternate data hierarchies.

Source: Oracle’s Value of EPM Survey

Customer community and user feedback

The Oracle user community is the most active group of finance and accounting professionals of any SaaS vendor in the market today. With over 220,000 members on Cloud Customer Connect, the public brain trust available to all Oracle users dwarfs the rest of the players in the space. The product management team at Oracle regularly reviews user feedback to drive product direction. Additionally, all of Oracle’s technical documentation is public facing, so, with Oracle Cloud EPM, “you can just google it.”

Conclusion

For customers deciding between Oracle Cloud EPM and OneStream, there are key considerations. Oracle Cloud EPM’s time to value is much shorter due to its faster implementation time. Additionally, Oracle’s platform upgrades and feature releases are iterative, frequent, and user-focused, giving organizations more flexibility. For current Hyperion customers, Oracle forges the easiest path forward to upgrading to the cloud.  From Oracle’s data hierarchy management system to its user community, Oracle Cloud EPM is the premier solution in the EPM marketplace. Across all industries, Oracle’s impact on the office of the CFO dominates the competition’s niche EPM offerings.

Learn more about Oracle Cloud EPM.