Oracle’s new “daunting” EPM Suite

After a two year wait, end-users are finally being treated to an updated Enterprise Performance Management suite with two major new features.

Oracle’s upgraded EPM is being branded by the company as the most comprehensive solution for financial transactions for publicly traded firms. Aimed at large enterprise customers, the new EPM 11.1.2 comes with a host of applications that tie in with the Fusion middleware platform, to help customers improve their strategic, financial and operational management processes.

The update includes certain aspects that have the software blogging community in a whirl. On MervAdrian, the suite’s Hyperion uplift is described as a “highlight” of the “daunting” new package. Merv goes on to point out that despite the new release’s modest name, it actually represents a “major thrust”, being available in 15 languages and with a new focus on role-based thinking.

The introduction of Hyperion Financial Close Management and Hyperion Disclosure Management has indeed been of particular note. The tools will help to improve timeliness and confidence in financial reporting.

Essentially, the financial close module speeds up the process of closing financial books att he end of the financial reporting cycle. Oracle’s vice president of EPM product management Hari Sankar told TechThrust: “In a large company, this process gets complicated and touches many systems. [The module] streamlines financial consolidation. You move away from e-mail tracking and to a set of dashboards and reports.”

Meanwhile, the disclosure management module prepares documents to be filed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which, according to Sankar, “helps system users in finance do the XBRL mapping and tagging,” reducing the need to outsource this work.