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.

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.

I work in a consulting role but I believe that by implementing it a lot of organizations’ manual processes have been automated.

FDM has become redundant and is being replaced by FDMEE. FDM will not be supported in the near future anymore and no further development/improvements are done on this product.

It is a manual setup of the type of data that you want to load. To build the application you have to setup and create various locations, maps, categories, etc. You also need to define your input data structure to a certain extent. There is allot of manual work when it comes to creating an application but once the application is created there shouldn’t be any issues when it comes to loading data.

I've been using Oracle Hyperion Financial Quality Data Manager for four years.

There were no issues with the deployment.

We've experienced no issues with performance.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

99% of the time we do our own troubleshooting.

I started with this product.

The initial setup was rather complex but I knew what I needed to do to achieve the end result. There are also allot of reading material on these products if you get stuck.

We used an in-house team. My advice would be to know what you want to achieve with the tool because it is very flexible.

I would not recommend implementing FDM as it is falling away and will not be supported in the near future.

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.

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.

It empowers users to perform ad hoc analyses themselves rather than having to go to IT or somewhere else. That makes it much more efficient for our users to do their jobs because they have access to data analysis in front of them instead of having to find that information elsewhere.

Oracle should have provided better documentation, and should update it more often. Right now, the documentation is not easy to understand and makes Hyperion that much less user-friendly.

We've had no issues with deploying it.

I think that Hyperion is, traditionally, very complex. It always seems to be buggy to a degree. We're always finding something that doesn't work quite the way we want and expect. But in terms of overall stability, it's very stable.

There are definitely certain limits. I'd say that it's not very scalable.

The initial setup wasn't not very straightforward. Installing Hyperion products requires a lot of effort and a lot of technical knowledge.

We implemented it with our in-house team.

The product itself, right now, especially on the Hyperion planning side, is the industry leading software for what it does. Although it's buggy, I think that's as far as you can get on the enterprise solutions. This is way better than anything else out there.

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.

• 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.

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

The partitioning option between databases allows for users to enter data one time, versus copying data lots of times from one cube to another. This has saved hours of maintenance and eliminates data integrity issues between the cubes.

The product could be improved with a better front end and user experience.

The solution has been in place for 12 years.  

We currently use the product for Financial Reporting, and from a functionality perspective, I would rate the product an 8/10 (once you understand it). As an intuitive, user friendly, GUI application, I would rate it a 4/10.

We have encountered no issues to date with deployment.

At one point, a data package had corrupted, causing our cube refreshes to fail. Having to restore from the backup but losing all the data inputs caused some business issues, but we were able to overcome them.

The Essbase engine does not start up automatically when the server reboots, causing users to log connection complaints.

To date, we have had no issues with an increase in data by date, or as we get newer version.

The initial set up was complex, as we were actually migrating from version 9 to version 11. The upgrade version path was not clear, and it was easier to recreate it.

We implemented it in-house.

We have a corporate global licensing agreement.

Finding highly qualified technical consultants for this application is difficult. There are other products with a larger community available for support and development.