It is easy to use. It is very intuitive. Even though there is a lot of functionality that comes out of the box, you can customize the solutions to meet your needs. You have the ability to have business rules that produce all kinds of calculations. We're international, and we do all our FX conversions through that.

It is very easy to upload the data from ERP to HFM. We actually go from the ERP to HFM, and then from HFM, we load those actuals into our planning application.

Oracle Hyperion is fairly user-friendly and not too complicated. The forecasting, it's really good. It's sometimes slow when there are a lot of users using it and we can have up to approximately 300 users using it. However, you can do it in Excel because there's an Excel add-in. This is a benefit because a lot of people do this way instead of having to go into the planning application itself.

Hyperion has always been a top financial solution, but it had the reputation of being complex and not-so-easy to use. As with any complex & powerful program,  with the right training, users could really do some amazing things. In the early days, implementing Hyperion was complex, but implementing any enterprise software in the early days was complex. Experience was the key - if you had great consultants and a top FP&A team, it was a dream. If not, nightmare stories were the result. Today, with modern cloud-based systems everything is easier, not easy, but easier to implement. 

There's also been significant development around Hyperion. We've had clients look at Hyperion in ERP evaluations circa 2016 - and there were new cloud versions, but the functionality just wasn't there. One of the things we school our clients on is the rush to convert to the cloud has many software products with a two or three-year cloud history that initially look great, but later just don't have the breadth and depth of features. They'll look great in initial demos but later you find key requirements that it just won't handle. This can be a real problem - so we make sure our clients dig a little deeper. 

Fast forward to 2020-ish and all of the sudden we saw NetSuite clients choosing Hyperion, or at least seriously considering it. Technically, Oracle had launched a version called SuiteSuccess Planning & Budgeting and it was all based on the Hyperion Planning code. 

NetSuite has always had good base financials and really handy features like saved searches for repeated reporting. But when it comes to advanced financials, historically, most NetSuite resellers presented Adaptive Planning, which was so tightly integrated it appeared as just another module on the NetSuite home page. 

We also had Advanced Financials clients evaluating Host Analytics, Anaplan which started to emerge, Workiva, as well as BI tools like QlikView and Tableau.  One of the joys of cloud-based NetSuite was how tightly we could integrate with almost any other cloud-based tool. 

When Oracle brought NetSuite back into the fold via a $9B acquisition, of course, Larry Ellison was an early seed investor in NetSuite, but the merger brought NetSuite's cloud expertise and cloud market share and factored Oracle's massive development efforts to rapidly expand NetSuite's offerings in several ways. 

They launched that cloud version of Hyperion with the goal of becoming nearly plug-and-play integration with what NetSuite was doing. That's when our NetSuite client base began to really take another look. Plus some of the firms that had selected Adaptive back when it was sold as NetSuite Advanced Financials, those companies had really grown and what had fit well with a $400m company was hindering a $900m company. 

The calculation power is the most valuable feature.

The tool is very scalable and powerful. It helps us with financial reporting and performance reporting. It is a very good tool for consolidation and budgeting. We are dependent on it for reporting. 

The solution has good integrations, but they could still be improved.

Functionality-wise, it is what they say it is. It is the best in class, but it all ties back to your users. If your users are completely enamored with Excel spreadsheets, then breaking those habits is hard. What you really get is data governance and control. We haven't gone to the cloud service yet, so I really can't comment on that, but at the end of the day, depending on your users, the ability to forecast long-term is a great feature. We're in the process of putting that in, and some of the stakeholders are really excited about that functionality, but it's all about data governance. A company that was trying to do this on the cheap using an Oracle Essbase cloud service got data corruption in one month because they didn't have the necessary security, and people were overriding other people's plans.

The roll-up potential of the product is very good, meaning we have detailed information and we want it to be summarized, based on geography, different product lines, or different charts of accounts in the general ledger. It rolls up the information in a very concise way. This makes it easy to understand the overall performance for its forecasting aspects, either quarterly reporting, year-to-year, or month-to-month reporting.

This solution provides a more structured methodology for doing analysis than a tool like Excel. It creates a central database that keeps all information in one place. 200 spreadsheets can be replaced by one repository, multidimensional database. 

Hyperion Planning provides pre-made forms, that make data input easy and shows users step-by-step what needs to be done for the forecast.

One of the best features that we use in Oracle Hyperion is the data integration. You can slice and dice data, and you can innovate, which is something you can't do in other ERP systems. This solution offers so many possibilities.

Workforce planning is also a valuable feature in this solution that gives you the option to bring in your HR data.

Hyperion has made our budgeting process and forecast analysis easy and robust, and it is a reliable tool. Primarily, we are using Hyperion for our budgeting analysis and to complete our whole budget cycle within the EPM application. We take the HR data from our legacy system, which is Cyborg, and then load it into Hyperion. We have a very specific type of planning application (PSPB) which is meant for public-sector planning and budgeting for governments, and it has most of the built-in, out-of-the-box calculations for us that we used to do in traditional Excel before and there was always a chance of human error. Security was an issue because we did a lot of emailing back and forth with the sensitive HR data.

It's very easy to use and the functionality is quite complete. And it's easy even if you're not very familiar with BI technology. Most notably very easy and intuitive transformation from relational schema to multi dimensional schema. Complete tabular data presentation with full drilling process and statistical functions. Corresponding charting data presentation with full drilling functions. Full interactive reporting including tables and charts. Join unlimited queries into different databases.

Hyperion is helpful for all our budget processes.

It's a very good program and it's useful for consolidation.

Hyperion allows us to update information and shows us reports, our balance, and P&L.

The most valuable features are those associated with modules and SP, IT in this space, planning, HFM, and PME.

They are in the process of completing their development. They're releasing new versions and developing new components.

The interface is good.

It is a multi user web based system, which is easier for us to deploy since we have a global presence. That was our most important goal at the time we purchased the solution. The forecasting and the fact that all the users can have input are valuable as well.

The reporting is the most valuable feature for us. If, for example, finance wants to know their P&Ls for their various channels, they can get that data. The fact that Hyperion is a consistent system without any big issues is huge for our users to make decisions based on financial results.

It's not complex, at least our set up isn't complex. There are lots of tools and we have our core services. We don't have a lot of strategic finance data in it, so our footprint is fairly small, making it easy to manage.

It's basically the same as the other budgeting solutions. There's nothing different, no bells and whistles that are different. At the end of the day, it gets to the same solution.

The initial setup wasn't overly difficult.

The most valuable aspect is that the time to market is very fast. You're able to finish your budgeting cycle in a very quick and fast way with a more detailed analysis.

The solution is reliable.

The scalability is good.

Hyperion is one of the best tools in the world. We can do planning and forecasting and store large amounts of data. We can draw a large amount of data and multiple combinations.

We can integrate with any system and pull data from SAP or SQL Server. We can also design our own role files to establish how we pull the file data and store it in our database. 

Hyperion provides excellent security. We can control all the users with filters and access levels and set permissions for who can control the system or input and process data. 

This solution reduces the time required for EPM tasks.

The accuracy of data gathering and consolidation is very good.

The latest cloud version is more efficient for financial implementations.

The financial model is quite a good tool.

As a developer, I would say that the repository itself is the most valuable feature since I can easily get information and change the behavior of Planning and Essbase.

For businesses, the ability to create forecasts in a fraction of time it took before the implementation is the most valuable feature. Also, the easy manipulation of data for hypothesis tests is very useful.

We used another product that was Excel based previously, but Planning is more on the web and lightweight, so you don’t have to worry about the Excel versions. It’s also centrally managed.

Since it is an enterprise-capable solution, people are not worried about security, giving data, the ability to manage complex consolidation, and its ability to modify reporting. So, these are some of the features of the solution.

The Hyperion product is designed for performance management, enterprise performance management, and it is applications. It has got write-back and it's got workflow. It's got built-in best practices for taking care of the management procedures, for example, budgeting, planning, and forecasting. It can also be used for financial consolidation - the whole process, including disclosure management, tax reporting, et cetera. It offers a lot of business process features.

In contrast, BI is for anybody that wants to use a lot of information, interrogate it and look at it from various perspectives, but don't want to use it for a business process. We use BI for information purposes and analytic purposes only. It does not have write-back capabilities. It is not something where you can say, "Okay, I can see that I've sold 10 products. Let me see what is going to happen if I sell 16 products in the next five months." You can't do that with BI. You can with Hyperion.

Their latest trend and the most modern approach is to combine BI with Enterprise Performance Management. After the process that you've completed, you want to have BI type of reporting. This will give you the best of both worlds, if the trend continues. You want a data model that makes provisions for that type of analysis and reporting that you want to do. 

For instance, financial consolidation. You can take all the information from the various businesses that you have (even different types of businesses or geographical areas). You can consolidate that, and apply accounting rules to it and do some analysis on it once you start your financial consolidation. That is where the BI comes in.

However, in saying that, the commonality that you have is the nature of the data. The way that the data is structured is common across enterprise performance, management, and business intelligence.

The solution is quite mature.

One can see that it's a mature product because it addresses all the requirements that you must have for financial consolidation and for budgeting and planning. It's really easy to use.

The most valuable feature in our experience is the user interface. We've found it really useful as an add-on for the financial part of Excel because it's functionality is geared towards finance users. Our finance users tend to like anything that can make their work inside Excel easier and more efficient.

This is a customizable product. Our implementation was designed to fit our needs.

The ability to lock and send data as well as the flexibility of user security are two very important aspects of the product.

Oracle Hyperion is an engine allowing you to build whatever you want on it.

We like the reporting and tracking of financials.

The fact that you can handle and process a lot of data in a very short time is the most valuable feature.

The entire ETL function is of great value and no feature on its own will function alone. So in my eyes there is not one feature that really stands out on its own.

• Flexibility
• Quick to add enhancements and adapt the tool to business requirements
• Little involvement from the IT department

Everyone was looking at the same numbers. As data was entered during the budget process from lower management, upper management had the live consolidated budgets.

Oracle has an integrated solution for Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) and Hyperion. It keeps the two platforms opened up to each other.

Speed of data is the biggest key for our users. The smart view application within Hyperion is very user friendly. Quick changes can be made on the fly and users getting the data that they need to make decisions.

In Hyperion, we use the Public Sector Planning and Budgeting module. The most valuable feature for us is that it's a tool that supports the entire planning and budgeting forecast for the whole company. We don't need to go outside of the product in order to perform our planning and budgeting.

Simplistic manner of availability, provided the input is source corrected.

Hyperion tools are very useful in finance. For example, the data relationship management is good for anything that you need to store hierarchical information about, and can be used for data enhancement and modeling. It has a lot of features that assist other parts of the organization as well, but the tools evolved around financial organizations.

For me, Smart View has been the most valuable feature, because you can use most of the Excel points.

The ease of use and the integration with our business are the most valuable features. We require less IT support, so the business and functional people can do more and more of the work they want to do.

• Formula and form creation
• Data migration from the source system
• Approval stages

The Essbase cube size scalability and also the calculation scrip functions.

We use mostly S-space planning, and have HFM and FDM as well. We're able to support fifteen to twenty countries globally from Cincinnati, and they can do all their consolidation on our one HFM application.