I’m not sure how accurate this analysis is because I have never tried other products but Oracle. But this analysis really gave a good insight on EPM/CPM products available in market. Download the file below for more detail:
Recently, there is Anaplan, a excel-like PBF solution on cloud which has just raised $100M is not mentioned in this analysis.
What You Should Know About Oracle Hyperion Planning and Budgeting in the Cloud (PBCS)
Posted on: May 2, 2014
Oracle must be in “love” with this new offering, Hyperion Planning & Budgeting in the Cloud (PBCS); After all, they did release it on Valentines Day (Feb 14th). The bigger question is, will Oracle’s customers love it? With as much as 75% of companies still performing their financial planning and budgeting mired in spreadsheets, it’s hard to believe this will not be an attractive option for many (especially small and midsized companies).
You already know the basic advantages of Hyperion Planning, if not, you should. It greatly improves the planning, budgeting, and forecasting process by automating it and allowing you to spend 80% of your time actually analyzing your data rather than 80% of your time preparing it. If you are not familiar with Hyperion Planning, stop now and go to “http://www.oracle.com/us/solutions/business-analytics/performance-management/business-planning/hyperion-planning/overview/index.html” to learn the basics and then come back and read on. Now, let’s take a look at what this solution offers (and doesn’t offer) to see if it’s right for your organization.
So what exactly is Oracle Planning and Budgeting in the Cloud? Well unlike Oracle’s Fusion ERP offerings that were built from the ground up as the next generation of applications, this offering is the tried and true Hyperion Planning application that has existed for years with some additional development done to make it suitable for use in the cloud. The application is now being hosted in Oracle’s cloud environment and can be licensed on a monthly subscription basis better known as SaaS (Software as a Service). List price is $120 per user per month with a 10 user minimum.
What makes this, and most cloud applications, so attractive is that very little IT support is needed and you can get up-and-running fast.
For one low monthly cost you get:
- The application
- Complete hardware infrastructure to run the application
- Patches and upgrades are included (although you must upgrade to them within a reasonable timeframe)
- Nightly backups performed as part of the service
- Performance is guaranteed and scaling is built in
- Support is also included
In addition to the standard benefits realized from cloud offerings, there are a number of PBCS advantages:
- Guided application demos
- Best practices
- Training videos and tutorials
- Ability to migrate on-premise planning applications to the cloud and vice versa
- Wizards for setting up processes like rolling forecasts
- Ability to choose which Oracle data center your application is hosted from
- Tight integration with Microsoft Excel and the ability to use SmartView
So what are the things you should be aware of? As I mentioned previously, PBCS is not for everyone. There are a number of factors you should know; Some that only apply to existing Hyperion Planning customers looking to move to the cloud, and others that apply to most anyone interested in this offering.
Understand the following limitations:
- Existing customers can only upgrade their planning applications to the cloud if they are on version 11.1.1.4 or above
- Only one application is supported per subscription. Each additional application requires an additional subscription
- The file system is limited to 150 GB. That is the space for your Essbase database, FR reports and any exported Life Cycle Management content
- None of the other Hyperion modules are currently supported like Workforce Planning and CAPX
- No EPMA. All planning applications must be in classic mode
- Data is loaded via flat file loads using FTP
As you can see, many larger companies or companies who are already experienced Hyperion organizations will not fit the mold for PBCS. However, midsize to small sized companies living in “Excel hell” with no automated process will love this offering. Especially given that you can get up-and-running very quickly with very little up-front costs.
If you are one of the organizations that are not yet on a sophisticated planning platform, I highly recommend you consider Oracle Hyperion Planning in the Cloud.
Change LCM import/export location to resolve “long artifact path” migration issue
Posted on: April 28, 2014
Lifecycle Management provides a consistent way for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management System products to migrate an application, a repository, or individual artefacts across product environments and operating systems it has become an integral part of EPM, for all its flaws there are many tangible benefits to getting with the program and using it.
One very annoying part on Windows is that LCM has a habit of creating files/folders that cannot be copied or moved as the file-names are to long. This especially occurs with Reporting an Analysis objects. It doesn’t help that the default location is quite deeply nested to start with
MIDDLEWARE_HOME/user_projects/epmsystem1/import_export.
Lifecycle Management uses migration properties to set the global parameters for migrations.
To modify the migration properties:
- Launch Shared Services Console. See Launching Shared Services Console.
- On the View pane, expand the Application Groups node.
- Under Application Groups, expand Foundation, and then Deployment Metadata.
- On the Artefact List tab, expand Shared Services Registry, then Foundation Services, and then Shared Services.
- Select the Properties artefact; then, right-click and select Export for Edit.
- In the File Download dialogue box, save the Properties artifact to the desired location.
- Edit the migration properties as desired.
- Return to Lifecycle Management, right-click the Properties artifact used in Step 5, and select Import after Edit.
- In the Import after Edit dialogue box, point to the file system where the edited Properties artifact is available.
- Restart Shared Services.
filesystem.artifact.path
Location of the directory where the exported applications are to be stored. This is the shared disk location if Shared Services is configured for high-availability. To customize this parameter, uncomment this line and add a path location.
Default value: This parameter is commented out and the Lifecycle Management engine uses the default file system location on the Shared Services computer; for example,
MIDDLEWARE_HOME/user_projects/epmsystem1/import_export.
Note:
On Windows 2003, if the file system path is a network-accessible location, you must use a UNC path, or a shared file system with read/write permissions for concurrent access.
If you want more information refer to the oracle documentation found here
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Just met this issue again and it took me time to search the solution again. So post here to share and to make a note as well.
Source: http://hyperionnz.tumblr.com/post/24913022330/changing-the-lcm-import-export-location
Many of you may have created Dynamic reports in FR, using the User Prompts.
I once got an opportunity to create one dynamically changing report, client had 4 Forecast scenarios and an Actual scenario.
They would like to get the report in the below given format
IF a User selects Forecast 1
Report should show Forecast 1 from Oct-Sep. (No Actual should be shown)
IF a User selects Forecast 2
Report should show Forecast 2 from Jan-Sep and Actual from Oct-Dec
IF a User selects Forecast 3
Report should show Forecast 3 from Apr-Sep and Actual from Oct-Mar
IF a User selects Forecast 4
Report should show Forecast 4 from Jul-Sep and Actual Oct-Jun
I can use a prompt to get the user input (for different forecasts), but the challenge was to show and hide Actual scenario and Forecast scenarios according to the user prompt.
I thought of making use of Advanced Suppress options and see whether that will work.
Here is the solution: http://www.orahyplabs.com/2011/04/dynamically-changing-fr-forecast-report.html#.UUAucNZJOSp
You may meet a requirement like this: In calculation interest payment for a contract funding for a project, before the project finished, the interest payment is Capex Expense. After the project finished, all the interest payment of the that contract will become Opex expense.
The problem here is:
1./ How to get current Month and Year on FIX Statement and convert them into compariable form.
2./ How to compare 1./ and the Project Finished date: Hyperion Calc and script is not good in supporting Date and Time calculation, Project’s Finished Date is stored as number (yyyymmdd, e.g: 20131215). So how to compare 20131201 with “Dec” and “FY13”?
Below is what I have done:
VAR FM; /* Finished Month of Project*/
VAR FY; /* Finished Year of Project */
VAR CM; /* Capture Current Month on FIX statments */
VAR CY; /* Capture Current Year on FIX statments*/
FIX ( @RELATIVE( “Year”, 0), @RELATIVE( “Period”, 0), @IDescendants( “Projects”)….)
FY = @ROUND( “FinishedDate”->”NA Period” / 10000, 0);
FM = @MOD( @ROUND( “FinishedDate”->”NA Period” / 100, 0), 100);
/* For FY13 return 2013… */
CY = @JgetDoubleFromString( @CONCATENATE( “20”, @SUBSTRING( @NAME( @CURRMBRRANGE( Year, Lev, 0, 0, 0)), 2))); //For some unknow reason, @CURRMBRRANGE work faster than @CURRMBR
/* Set CM value based on currrent Period On FIX statement */
IF ( @ISMBR( “Jan”))
CM = 1;
ELSEIF ( @ISMBR( “Feb”))
CM = 2;
…..
ELSEIF ( @ISMBR( “Dec”))
CM = 12;
ENDIF
IF ( CY < FY OR ( CY == FY AND CM < FM))
Do something…
ELSE
Do something…
ENDIF
ENDFIX
Source: http://www.orahyplabs.com/2011/11/show-usage-for-member-in-calc-manager.html
I once received a query where customer asked whether there is an option to find out Member usage in Calc Manager.
So let’s say that member FY10 is used in ‘n’ Calculation Manager Rules, they would like to list out all the rules that has FY10 in it.
I couldn’t find out an way to do that from front end :), so ended up querying the repository
You can get the required information by running one of TWO SQL queries given below.
As you know Calculation Manager rules gets stored under Calculation Manager repository and also under respective Planning repository. (thats the reason why we have two SQL statements 🙂 )
Please use the below given SQL if running from Planning tables
SELECT location_sub_type “Database”, (select ‘SMP_PLN’ from DUAL) “Application”, (select object_name from hsp_object where object_id = hsp_calc_mgr_rules.id) “Rule name”
FROM hsp_calc_mgr_rules WHERE dbms_lob.INSTR(BODY,’FY10′) > 0;
In this table Rule is stored as CLOB in column called BODY.
Since the query is generated from the Planning application repository, I couldn’t find a table which stores Application name. So I decided to show the application name using DUAL. (SMP_PLN should be replaced with your application name)
Please use the below given SQL if running from Calc manager tables
SELECT LOCATIONSUBTYPE “Database”, LOCATION “Application”, NAME “Rule Name” FROM calcmgrrules WHERE dbms_lob.INSTR(BODY,utl_raw.cast_to_raw(‘FY10’),1,1) > 0;
In this table Rule is stored as BLOB in column called BODY.
HTH
It's all about Enterprise Performance Management 
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