Successful strategy flows from accurate, timely and collaborative knowledge.
Hyperion Financial Consolidation 3 In today’s globally complex, rapidly changing, Internet-linked business environment, the
processes associated with financial consolidation are becoming increasingly challenging.
To get a handle on business performance, it is essential to consolidate financial data quickly and use that information to examine past performance and understand future opportunities. Every company now faces this challenge, yet few implement comprehen- sive solutions that satisfy the needs of the entire enterprise. For example, few companies are prepared for transitions associated with the euro, much less positioned to take advantage of euro-related opportunities. Many are still struggling with disparate ERP systems that fail to integrate data effectively. Global accounting requirements and frequent restructuring also present serious hurdles for large and small companies alike.
Financial Consolidation and Reporting Challenges
As businesses and competitive environments continue to rapidly evolve, operations and finance have to keep pace. Financial departments are providing more and more decision support capabilities, and organizational structures are continually adapting to change. In addition, management is demanding more detailed and qualitative analysis of business results.
Globalization complicates consolidation processes. Companies must address specific legal, statutory and tax requirements. Varying and conflicting local and regional require- ments, like US GAAP, UK GAAP, FASB, IAS and HGB, add to that complexity, and accounting standards are constantly changing. As a result, very few companies are prepared for the changes let alone strategically positioned to react quickly.
The European Monetary Union (EMU) will be the world’s largest single market. Any company dealing with or operating in Europe will need to adjust to the currency change and manage multiple currencies during the transition period. Again, very few companies are ready to adjust to dramatic change or capitalize on significant opportunities generated by the new structure.
In terms of technology, many companies are still struggling to integrate ERP systems and leverage all their data sources. Once those issues are resolved, organizations need to go a step beyond ERP transaction processing and provide analysis capabilities to their users.
Advanced reporting, analysis, modeling and planning solutions link up these critical pieces of the enterprise and offer highly scalable performance and user access. Industry leaders are heading in this direction.
Factors external to the processes of financial consolidation, reporting and analysis are becoming increasingly important, as well. The Internet and electronic commerce have extended the limits and accelerated the pace of integration and globalization.
Common Consolidation Difficulties
In addition to the various paradigm shifts inherent to globalization, consolidation itself is prone to numerous inefficiencies. Many organizations have to work through countless hurdles in order to complete their financial consolidation and reporting processes. Typical difficulties:
•Many financial consolidation processes are manual and error-prone, requiring re-keying of data from multiple, differing financial systems with different charts of accounts into spreadsheets for consolidations.
•Companies are unable to manage multiple currencies, rates and conversions because they vary by scenario, country and account type (Balance Sheet vs.
Income Statement). The new EMU reporting requirements for the euro currency also pose a challenge.
•Users find it difficult to make top-level, auditable journal adjustments.
•Reconciling inter-company discrepancies and account balances is a tedious process.
•Many systems do not support management, tax and legal roll-up structures or statutory audit requirements.
•The processes don’t automatically adapt to changing business hierarchies for management reporting or adjust to the changes resulting from mergers, acquisitions, divestitures and joint ventures. Dynamic organization structures may also include minority ownerships, which most systems cannot handle.
•The processes provide limited ad hoc reporting on consolidated data and do not address new segment reporting requirements as outlined by the Federal Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) in FAS131/IAS14.
•Reporting needs may differ by group, with some users needing ad hoc access to live data, while others require highly formatted monthly briefing books.
Time spent consolidating and organizing reports takes away from time that could be spent on analysis and other strategic activities.
Hyperion Financial Consolidation 5
Flexible Financial Consolidation Solutions
As the leader in analytic application software, Hyperion offers financial consolidation solutions for varying needs. Our focus is on analytics and the solutions are open, cross- platform and enterprise class, making them ideal for customization, partner development and utility throughout the department and world. We partner with and develop solutions with industry-leading providers so that customers can choose from a wide range of application-specific, industry-specific and best-of-breed applications.
Hyperion offers the leading packaged financial consolidation, reporting, and analysis solutions for companies worldwide. Our packaged, analytic applications simplify complex processes, speed time to closing and greatly enhance financial analysis and planning capabilities. The applications meet and exceed management, legal, and statutory financial consolidation and reporting needs. All major global, local and regional accounting require- ments are designed into the products, including extensive support for managing the transition to the European Monetary Union (EMU).
Several enhanced features make Hyperion’s financial consolidation solutions especially useful to large, global companies. Those include support for:
•Complex currency conversions
•Complex inter-company eliminations
•Minority Ownership & Managing Mergers and Acquisitions
Hyperion’s financial consolidation solutions integrate with and complement all General Ledger and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, providing a flexible analysis environment with common views across multiple data sources. Deployment can be either centralized or distributed. Companies can pull data from multiple GLs with process-specific data load and specific links to SAP and J.D. Edwards ERP solutions. The solutions ensure a level of flexibility that meets any business need. With Web-based reporting and data entry, spreadsheet add-ins and the powerful Hyperion Reporting applications, Hyperion’s financial consolidation solutions support worldwide collaboration and immediate access.
With Hyperion’s financial consolidation solutions, companies can also build their own custom financial consolidation and reporting solutions. Customers that require simple, multiple-dimensional reporting from their general ledger or those that want to bring together multiple general ledgers can do so with Hyperion’s financial consolidation solutions. The ability to build specific business rules and roll-up and analyze different views of financial data helps companies get an enterprise perspective on their business.
Hyperion’s financial consolidation solutions provide calculation and modeling capabilities as a well as a highly scalable and cost-effective environment for delivering data to different classes of users via more than 50 different information access tools, from Hyperion and Hyperion Alliance Partners.
Saving Time and Money, Gaining Priceless Insight
Hyperion financial consolidation solutions greatly reduce the amount of time needed to complete the financial consolidation and reporting cycle. ERP, data warehouse, legacy, general ledger, spreadsheet and manually entered data (available via Web browser) can be quickly translated, consolidated, adjusted, finalized and then reported. Managers, end-users and analysts can then spend more time analyzing information rather than number crunching and preparing data. The whole enterprise benefits from more intelli- gent, informed and speedy business decisions.
Top Ranked by Customers and Industry Analysts
More than 6,000 customers and more than two million users worldwide in more than 100 countries use Hyperion solutions. Fifty percent of the Fortune 500, sixty percent of the Fortune 100 and over forty percent of the Financial Times European Top 100 use Hyperion’s Analysis Platform. The solutions are top ranked by analyst firms IDC, Gartner Group/Dataquest and META Group, Inc. Our more than 350 Hyperion Alliance Partners offer combined and enhanced solutions that cover the broad range of financial consoli- dation and analysis needs.
Hyperion Financial Consolidation 7
Real World Business Benefits
Hyperion Enterprise
“Basically, Hyperion enables us to access data more rapidly. The reports we create help executives spotlight business trends and perform analysis. Getting information in the hands of users faster is definitely a huge benefit.”
Terry Ruel
Corporate Manager of Financial Systems SBC Communications, Inc.
“With Hyperion, we use fewer resources to produce reports, and it takes less time. Hyperion helps us get more accurate information into the hands of our managers, enabling them to make more informed decisions.”
Rodney Dye
Assistant Vice President and Accounting Manager First Security Corporation
Hyperion Essbase
“We selected Hyperion Essbase OLAP Server because it allows our users to leverage a strategic OLAP platform to access and analyze financial data on our truck products easily and quickly… The ease of use and the ability to deploy Hyperion Essbase in a short timeframe were primary factors in our decision to implement Hyperion Essbase for our analysis applications.
Providing critical, timely, fact-based information to the organization is a key objective for our finance department, and in less than three months Hyperion Essbase has already assisted us in this endeavor.”
Jeff Medek
Director, Activity Based Management Navistar International Corp.
Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management 9
Complete Financial Management for Improved Business Agility
Hyperion’s consolidation solutions are part of a comprehensive financial management software suite. As a whole, Hyperion’s financial management suite provides comprehensive support for the reporting, analysis, modeling and planning (RAMP) needs of global finance organizations. With our financial consolidation and reporting solutions you can perform fast, accurate and efficient collection, consolidation and reporting of financial results to internal and external audiences. Finance staff, as well as line managers, can compare and analyze trends in order to better understand business performance. Profitability analysis lets users create, customize, document and execute sophisticated allocation models for product and customer profitability. Users can model powerful “what-if” scenarios which support reorganizations, mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, changes in economic conditions and competitive environments, and new product or service introductions. Our market- leading planning and budgeting solutions support both bottom-up as well as top-down planning and budgeting processes. They also support the incorporation of actual results into the planning process to allow frequent reforecasting of financial results.
Plan Report
Model Analyze
Strategy
Hyperion’s financial management solutions are designed by financial people, for financial end users. You can implement and support the system with little dependence on IT staff.
Our knowledge of the field is reflected in the depth of our products and the skills of our global consulting and support staff.
Hyperion’s financial management solutions are a great complement to existing ERP and general ledger systems. With powerful data and metadata integration capabilities, Hyperion provides a flexible financial reporting, analysis, modeling and planning environment that can leverage data being generated in your operational systems and allow you to use it to improve business performance.
Hyperion’s financial management solutions are supported by a global network of partners, from the big 5 consulting firms to specialist firms who can provide expertise and support for a variety of solutions.
Financial Management and Performance Management
Hyperion Financial Management provides the foundation for and initiates enterprise-wide performance management. Hyperion Performance Managementis a suite of solutions that facilitate benchmarking, strategic planning/EVA, activity based management (ABM) and performance measurement. These applications allow organizations to further extend their analysis capabilities. Results from the financial management process form a foundation for performance measurement so that all aspects of the management cycle (Reporting, Analysis, Modeling, Planning) can be thoroughly explored and acted upon.
Each time the financial consolidation process closes, all kinds of opportunities to measure business performance, manage activity, track productivity and measure profitability arise.
Integrated data and analysis software allow users worldwide to work more efficiently, define and communicate clear goals, measure key performance indicators, develop and execute competitive strategies, pinpoint successful products and services, and examine macro and micro views of progress.
<<graphic>>
FM PM
Hyperion Financial Consolidation 11
The Bigger Picture
Through the Hyperion Analysis Platform, customers can address a wide variety of analysis needs, from financial consolidation to Web site analysis. When Hyperion financial consolida- tion solutions are combined with more applications within the Hyperion Analysis Platform, like e-Business analysis, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Analysis, Human Resources Management (HRM) Analysis, Manufacturing Analysis, and Demand Management Analysis, companies get a higher return on their IT investment, retain more customers, increase shareholder value and capitalize on previously unknown opportunities.
Data and A
HyperionEssbaseand In
Data and A
HyperionEssbaseand In
hasePackaged plications
Spread Web Reportin I
n
teg
ra
ted S olu ti
ons F
rom
Hype
rio
24x7Help Desk, Training, Technica Comprehen
Hyperion Financial Consolidation 13 The Hyperion Analysis Platform, which includes the industry’s #1 financial consolidation
solution, the #1 OLAP solution and the #1 budgeting, planning and forecasting solution, allows organizations to leverage their ERP investment, with the ability to integrate and tie together multiple ERP systems.
gration
Application
ndustry Standard
RDBM S
gration
Application
ndustry Standard
RDBM S
Applica tio
ns Build
Cu sto
m dsheets
Tools g & Query
o
n andH
yper
io
nAl
li
an
ce P a
rtne
rs
al Support, Consulting, B
enchmarking sive Services
A Foundation for Opportunity and Competitive Edge
Hyperion solutions put the mechanisms in place to coordinate information, analyze trends, predict changes and create comprehensive strategies. Organizations can take bold steps based on precise information. Confidence in organizational knowledge systems removes informational risk, while accurate and rapid collaboration within the corporate ranks ensures that everyone is on the same page.
With Hyperion, companies have moved beyond the narrow scope of transactional processing software. Instead of merely capturing transactional data, Hyperion helps companies better understand and optimize their business through the implementation of business analysis software solutions. Their employees can model potential scenarios and choose optimal outcomes, understanding the future far ahead of the competition. Ultimately, the strategic, integrated nature of Hyperion’s solutions enable profound leaps in business performance.
To discover how Hyperion can help your organization dramatically improve
performance and capitalize on future opportunities, visit www.hyperion.com.
