Oracle Hyperion Reviews

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.

I think that having it within Microsoft products as an add in makes it accessible around the clock. Someone could be working from home, log in, jump in see what their numbers are, see what their financials are, so it's a very good tool.

We're trying to push out a complete costing battle to the organization where it's going to impact finance, marketing, purchasing, inventory, across the board. That's the key feature that we want to start using and implement for better business decisions across the board. I don't think that we're effectively using the tool to the best of the ability yet. Right now we're good with Hyperion.

There hasn't been much down time, so that's a good thing. We can actually lock the users out easily so that when we're doing updates it's not impacting at a high level. Communication efforts are a lot easier that way, so it's a benefit.

As of today it is pretty scalable. We want to expand it out a bit so we came to the conference to get some additional information and we'll continue to use Hyperion moving forward.

The tech support end I don't directly deal with myself, we have someone else on our finance team who deals with those issues so I can't speak to that but as far as I know it's fine.

We don't know everything yet. We're happy with what we have. I think just have your requirements ready. Be as open as possible and open to new interfaces. It's a different view but it's very user friendly.

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.

We used to rely on Excel before we implemented Hyperion, and we don't have to do that anymore and rely on those spreadsheets. The tool does all our budgeting and forecasting without much manual work. It's now all automated, saving us both time and from many human errors.

We still have issues and bugs because it's a new release. I wouldn't call us guinea pigs, although we were one of the first implementors, but there are bugs that I wish they'd fix.

For example, some of the forms don't work properly and we have started a couple of SRs that they are working on it. But the timeline they've given us seems kind of slow, especially for a severity-one ticket.

We just upgraded from 11.1.2.2 to 11.1.2.4, which came with a huge change to include the ASO cube within planning itself. This was the best change for us. Previously, we had to create a separate app each time we needed an ASO cube. Now it sits within the planning cube so there are options that allow you to choose whether you want that app within or outside the planning solution. We actually implemented it as within the planning solution, so that it syncs two cubes by itself.

It's stable and we have had no issues. It's actually more stable following the upgrade.

We've had no issues scaling it for our needs.

I wouldn't say I'm 100% satisfied. The worst part I hate about it, is that when we talk about one issue, sometimes that issue just comes up and their first question is, can you reproduce the issue? That's the first thing they ask you. Sometimes it is reproducible, but not all the time. I think that's what I hate about it.

I was involved in the upgrade, and since we had 11.1.2.2, already it wasn't like we had to do everything from scratch. We had a baseline where we said, "Okay, this is what I want and from 11.1.2.4 this is what I'm expecting." It was a little tricky because it was a new feature and we had learn new stuff, but at least we didn't have to do it from scratch so it didn't make it that difficult.

I would definitely recommend Hyperion especially if they're doing it for their budgeting and forecasting tool. It's so easy compared to Excel or something similar. It's manual versus automated, and who doesn't like automated? I had times when I had to actually run the process myself at 12:00 at night, but now it's all automated.

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

In the most simplest way, the product allows the availability of data to be predefined as well as customized based on user inputs and requirements. While in the past, this was more complex leading to data integrity issues, it is now far more controlled in the new environment.

Improvements might relate to the integration of the visual aspect of the product. While this is more database reporting, integration with the BA module similar to PS would be very useful.

There is a scope for improvement in the governance of the product. Also, there is a growing need for the product to have a real time connectivity to other non-Oracle based ERP services to service the growing needs of the organization.

I've used it for around five years.

No issues to date.

No issues to date.

No issues to date.

It's good.

It's good.

No previous solution was used.

It was slightly complex owing to the initial requirement gathering and defining the schema for the business process.

We used a vendor team.

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.

In finance, if you have a central repository feeding all of your downstream systems of the metadata that you use, you reduce the number of account reconciliations and report reconciliations that you have to do. It also gives you data quality.

I think that Oracle in general is moving towards cloud technology to remove some of the costs associated with, for example, the EPM suite. The EPM suite, as its capabilities increase, requires upgrading your servers and keeping up with the technology. By going to the cloud, customers are able to avoid those costs.

Once the Oracle products are installed, they're pretty stable. A lot depends on how they're set up, and a lot depends on making sure that you adhere to best practices.

All the Hyperion products that I'm involved with scale very well. They're designed to handle large businesses. People sometimes want to do strange things. They push the tools to the limit, for example. They want to do consolidation of the product level or a customer level, and then it gets a little more complicated.

Most of the problems that we find with the products that we deal with go to Oracle for service. They have a good service organization 24/7.

Our organization has staff dedicated to the infrastructure. There are a lot of intricacies to setting up the products. It's useful to get professional people involved, especially with some of the more complex stacks features that you need to make the whole suite operate. As the products have evolved, they've merged more of the technologies together, so they're more dependent on making sure that you set the right parameters.

I would rate the product a nine out of ten. For what they're designed for, the tools are very useful.

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

We can do budgeting on time and provide an accurate forecast. You can also have budget, actual, and plan within the same report.

We usually do granular level of forecast or budget, and Oracle needs to start supporting that.

It is stable.

We have had more data to manipulate every time on promises. We have to scale a lot. It would be great if they could bring out all the cloud functionality on promises.

Most of the time it takes three months and you don’t get results. I think the Oracle support is concerned about the cloud.

If you get the product, attend boot camp training and then start getting hands on. I would rate it a 7 out of 10.

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.

I think they are going to have a better, faster, cheaper close process and BI. From a reporting standpoint, it won’t be pure BI.

There should be more effort put into integration processes. There area lot of products that work best together, but figuring out how to get them all to work together is still a challenge. Since there is a lot of overlap between the products, knowing exactly which parts of which products to use at what time is a challenge, and is where technical requirements still exist for us.

Stability is actually really good. About fifteen years ago, Hyperion implementations were sketchy. There were a lot of failed applications that never got off the ground. There are much less today. Most implementations are successful now, and Oracle has become significantly more efficient in standing them up. There are not many issues.

Scalability is great. I think that it’s one of the strongest points. I've worked as an independent for a lot of different types of companies, and I've seen Hyperion work well at large international banks and mid-size manufacturing companies.

Tech support is pretty good. There are certain issues that pop up that are critical or require patching of the application, and that can be a long, drawn-out process. If I could make any change, it would be providing a way to quickly realize where there is a true problem, so you don’t have to work through level three, then two, then one, which takes weeks of time to finally get to resolution.

Since every company does it a little bit differently, there aren’t any best practices. Larger companies have tickets and dedicated IT and technical administrators. Smaller companies have advanced super users who pretty much do everything. Some companies follow very strict processes of taking new implementations and running them through dev tests, then into prod. Other companies make changes right in production. It’s really across the board.

It's complex. Oracle is addressing that issue with the cloud services. It's surprisingly popular as well. I was surprised at how quickly companies were putting their financial data up on the cloud. A lot of that is because the implementation process is a pain point, because there are so many ways to do it. Between Windows, Linux, all the different external applications, hardware and software configurations, it's tough. If you can relieve that, then you pull the hardest and most expensive part out of the equation, from an IT perspective. A tool for that would really service the business, since all of your investment dollars are really going towards the functional implementation.

Focus on functionality and on your business. Make sure you understand what the business wants to do. No company uses more than fifty or sixty percent of the functionality of an application, so don’t get caught up on every single bell and whistle and try to implement all the features. Just implement the parts of the product that are specific to your needs. I would rate the product a solid eight out of ten.

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

It has reduced the amount of paperwork as multiple people can work on a single form, centralize formula creation window (only one person/team is responsible for creating it), It is also possible to maintain history for X number of years, and compare budgets from previous years through just one form and the process of workflow management.

• The database crashes without any warnings/reasons
• It's a technical resource hungry piece of software

• They need to make this software easy to implement and use

I've used it for one and a half years.

Yes we had major issues because of the database.

Yes we had major issues because of the database.

Yes we had major issues because of the database.

6/10.

7/10

Only Excel.

It was complex because it was a new environment.

I was the lead in implementing it.

Not very high at least for a year or two.

No other options evaluated.

Take a good look before stepping into it.

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

This product has been helping the organization to implement complex budgeting models.

In my opinion, the reporting features could be visually better, and prettier, than it is so far.

I've used Hyperion Planning for over eight years as well as Account Manager Oracle.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No, far from it.

9/10.

7/10 - The Oracle support has loads to improve on in my opinion.

Yes. I have used SAP BPC and IBM Cognos. Both of them have no scalability unlike Hyperion Planning.

Straightforward.

I always implement solutions through a management consultancy team, because of their high level of expertise.

The initial cost was around US$300K and the actual cost is just the annual support fee.

Yes, we also looked at IBM Cognos and SAP BPC.

Architect design considering solution scalability is essential for a successful implementation.