Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Reviews

Our planning is on-premise but we are moving towards the cloud.

Beneficial analysis and easy to do management adjustments.

Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud could improve. There are times when the forms are slow in saving and calculating.

I have used Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud within the past 12 months.

I rate Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud an eight out of ten.

The most valuable features are the Planning forums, the ability to do all sorts of translation, and the ability to move data about with relative ease if the coding isn't too difficult.

I would like to see instant dynamic calculations and more out of the box functionality within Planning. I would also like to see a feature with HFM and Planning to move data more frequently and easily. The tuning of the Hyperion Planning applications is not intuitive or well-documented, and that has been a major drawback that was addressed in HFM, but not yet in Planning to my knowledge.

FDM, however, is really clunky, difficult to use and slower than it should be. When you map data, you have to manually tell the system what to clear or it will take forever. For large scalability applications, FDM is really lacking.

We have been using Planning for five years.

Stability didn't exist on level 120, but on level 122 we're very stable. There are no issues.

We are hoping that the hybrid that is being created will fit meet our company’s needs going forward. The limitation right now is in the ability to do dynamic calculations instantaneously.

The support at Oracle is just terrible. When you call, it takes a couple days to get a response, and the answers and questions you get back are not well thought-out. In fact, they are often just nonsense. If you have all the components, support should be able to pull them up. They had a few good people that we used to work with, but they left.

In level 122, creating a new cube is very difficult. I'm hoping that in level 124 it will be much easier. It should be more straightforward for the end users. As is, it’s a little too geared towards IT professionals.

While it’s definitely the market leader for HFM, I’m not sure I would say the same for Planning because the architecture could be more advanced. I would look at the competitors, but I do like Planning, and I would rate it a seven out of ten.

I think the biggest value of the Oracle Planning & Budget Cloud Service is to accelerate a client to bring up their planning and budgeting solution online, because it is a cloud deployment option. Therefore, IT departments don't have to ramp up on strategies as they relate to infrastructure, training, and skills.

For an organization considering an EPM planning solution, they'll want a quick cloud deployment of P&BCS and run with it. They'll need an implementation partner if they don't have the skills to onboard that type of system. The quickness of the implementation is really where the value is.

The biggest improvement for us is that it's defined our processes. It provides us with out-of-the-box cloud for P&BCS that's a clean slate we can work on to build our business. It also allows us to not have to invest in unnecessary IT and infrastructure footprint. It provides analytics and enterprise performance management as well.

Any new issues we have are really built up over time. With what we have, P&BCS caters to most of our requirements and our on-premise software. But there are some limitations. For example, the Attributes feature doesn't do cross-tab reporting baed on KPI. I believe that future versions will have it, so you have to be mindful as you design and build around it.

We haven't had any issues with deployment.

We haven't had any issues with stability.

We haven't had any issues with scalability.

Tickets are easily resolved, especially when they come from a client of the subscriber. I'm an implementer, but the subscriber who's paying subscription fees logs the tickets. The SLAs require support to be very prompt. Also, because this is a cloud product, Oracle wants to be very successful, so they've been making efforts to have a high level of technical support.

If you have an already existing on-premise planning application, it's quick because you just move it to the cloud. Considering that all the construct capabilities available in the P&BCS deployment option meet your planning requirements, it's a pretty straightforward setup.

But when there's a new client, the first out-of-the-gate benefit is your IT infrastructure and you're not engaged on that level. You don't have to do upgrades because the cloud will do it for you. We take the spreadsheets and their planning cycle and we built it.

We segregate the deployment into three phases. The first, laying the foundation, is the biggest, which takes three months. Next, is a one-month period of enhancements to functionality and build-out. Finally, we automate everything so that we just push a button and everything works.

Sometimes we've had to get Oracle's help. Otherwise, it's very straightforward and easy.

If you're a net new client, talk to your peers who are in the same industry. Have they deployed the Hyperion solution? What kind of deployment option was there? Was it an on-premise, or was it cloud? Talk to them, and then get in touch with your vendors. Get in touch with your Oracle representative. Work with them. They will help you, because they in turn are trying to help ourselves. We all are.

It makes it easy for users to get through and see what they have to do next. There are caveats though, and it’s not all positive. Things happen behind the scenes with the input forms that are riddled with negatives.

They could change the current web forms. You can’t stroll seamless down them because they jump. You can’t control F anymore to find something on a large form as well. I don’t like the way they changed the POV and header too. The drop down options to click are gray, as if you aren’t supposed to touch them, but the top bar that you actually are not supposed to touch is black. The hierarchy of going through a task list and forms also has issues; if you click the little right arrow, it opens, but then the items on the lowest levels still have those arrows. When you click them, nothing happens, because there is nothing beneath them, but the arrows are still there. They are like file cabinets and folders but the cabinet is inside the folder rather than the folder being inside the cabinet. It doesn’t make sense. When you click something in a task, sometimes a different one opens up and expands instead.

I’ve used Planning for four years.

It is more stable than the last product I used.

I don’t like this version, but it might get better. I think our company should have gone with an Excel based tool. I would rate it a five out of ten.

We have labor queues and workforce planning as well as our complete budget and focus for different business areas in the company. It is adding so much value.

It could be more friendly with Excel. We have big forms with a few thousand rows and columns, which can sometimes cause performance issues. Users sometimes complain when they find that it can take up to a minute to open a big file. That’s the only issue.

We have been using SPS and Planning for ten years.

It is really stable. We have a really big environment with a lot of people working on infrastructure and development, and in the last three years, we haven’t had any time when the system was completely down and a user was not able to access an application. We really enjoy the stability of the system. If the data is there, users are able to find it.

It is very scalable.

They are really good. Oracle is really aggressive in solving issues.

We have a government plan, so we don’t completely blindly upgrade the system. We need infrastructure for patching and we have to wait to get approval from the client. If we have issues we talk to tech support.

I have used ASP as well, and Hyperion is much more stable. It also has better features, especially for budget forecast. I think it's a great product.

This is the best product I have ever used in my life and I would rate it a ten out of ten.

I've used Oracle Panning and Budgeting on-prem and in the cloud. The parliament has actually considered this for budgeting. I suggested they use Oracle Budgeting Cloud. It's a very unique solution. 

Once you do the budget in Oracle ERP, you can upload it, but it's easier to create and manage budgets in the Oracle budgeting tool itself. For example, if you have a shortfall in the budget, it's easier to manage that and the forms, too, especially if you also have Oracle Forms Management. You can get the forms from somewhere and then transform those forms into budget heads.

One mistake in the budget, then you are done for, especially if you're doing project management and you don't do the proper budgeting. If your project manager does not forecast the budget correctly for the coming year, it will be a disaster. 

I rate Oracle Budgeting and Planning Cloud 11 out of 10. I recommend it. It's a nice and robust tool.

We find it valuable that all the features are combined into one system.

We've been able to move from a centralized planning approach to a decentralized planning approach, with the possibility of putting planning responsibility on the shoulders of the middle management.

It would be nice to have better performance. However there are substantial improvements during the past months.

We've used it for half a year.

No issues encountered.

There are rarely problems.

No issues encountered.

It's OK.

We switched from Excel to enable a collaborative planning approach.

It is easy to use.

We did it in-house.

We expect it to take two and a half years.

No other options were evaluated.

Think thoroughly the future planning process before implementing the product.

From a standardized input perspective, we’re very happy with it.

We are not that happy with how you get information out of the system. I wish we could delete years out of the Planning cube so that we didn't have to keep growing. Also, we would like to see the ability to build dimensions more dynamically.

It's been operational for 6 years.

Planning takes some hand holding since processes have not been automated. Updating dimensions is more manual, so if we could automate that, it would be great.

Since we can’t delete years out of the Planning cube, the growth is eventually going to create a performance issue.

Support from Oracle depends on who you get on the phone. There is one person that I work with on a regular basis, and she does a wonderful job. If we need an update, she will go ask the development what's going on. If they're not moving, she gives them a push. Typically when we talk to people overseas, though, they just let the issue sit. In my opinion, we should bring support back to the states.

Upgrades and patching are a pain in the butt. There are just too many pieces that have to be implemented in the right sequence.

I would give Planning a seven out of ten. We have used other Planning applications, and this one is the best. However, it’s not quite the level I need.