Moving Data within a Planning Application at Avago Technologies

Audrey HolifieldProject Manager, FP&AAvago Technologies

Patrick LouieDirectorHackett Technology Solutions

Leading global manufacturer of optoelectronics and analog interface components

Former semiconductor business of Agilent Technologies

$1.6B in annual revenue

Primary Locations: California and Singapore

• Primary Finance Locations: California, Singapore and Malaysia

About Avago Technologies

Provide Professional Consulting Services for all of Oracle’s Hyperion suite of products

Publicly traded on the NASDAQ (symbol: ANSR)

Formerly known as Answerthink

#1 Hyperion Americas Reseller Award at Solutions 2006 and 2007

About Hackett Technology Solutions

Agenda Introduction Main Considerations for Design Issue 1 – Workforce Inputs Concerns Solution Issue 2 – Functional Reporting Concerns Solution Closing Q&A

Introduction

Avago Technologies decided to implement a Hyperion Planning application to enhance the efficiency of its budgeting, forecasting, and financial reporting cycles for both the Income Statement and Balance Sheet.

Three databases deployed at Avago:•Workforce (Employee level planning)

•FINSTMT (Annual Operating Plan at account, department and country level)

•FCST (Forecast and monthly reporting at summary level)

Main Considerations for Design

Performance

Simple for users

Supports user analysis and reporting needs

Issue 1: Workforce Inputs

Finance users making salary and benefits entries to the Workforce database

Need to see the effects on the Income Statement in the FINSTMT database

Waiting for scheduled batches to transfer data from Workforce to FINSTMT would slow down the planning process

Concerns

Scheduled batches would have to be broad in scope and would affect performance while the batch was in process

Run-time prompts could lead to human error

Users could forget to run scripts to transfer data, leading to expenses not populating in FINSTMT as expected

Solutions

Hyperion Business Rule that utilized the @XREF function to transfer data from Workforce to FINSTMT

Using Variables in the HBR that could take the POV from the form so that only the members that were being written to were transferred; the changes were then aggregated up in FINSTMT with the @ANCESTORS function

HBR was set to ‘run on save’ in the input form

Workforce Input form with Business Rules

Issue 2: Functional Reporting

Operating expense accounts jointly used by all functions at Avago (i.e. people and project expense account numbers)

Functions appear at in different sections of the Income Statement (i.e. R&D is function 2, Marketing is function 4)

Previous application used by Avago was set up for a unique account and function combinations, which created 5x number of expenses accounts (i.e. 800001 – FN1, 800001 – FN2, etc.)

Need an intuitive solution so users can easily enter expenses and have them appear in the correct section of the Income Statement without complicating the account structure

Function breakout on Income Statement

Concerns

Having same accounts appear at different points on an Income Statement hierarchy could create duplicate data

Relying on all users to use Account and Function combinations in reporting and analysis is cumbersome and risky

Need database to correctly calculate the various subtotal values of the Income Statement (i.e. Cost of Sales, R&D, Admin)

Solution

Create custom accounts dedicated to each function that could be placed at different points in the Income Statement hierarchy

• Create People Expenses, Project Expense and Absorption accounts specifically for each function

Custom Functional Accounts

Solution

Create custom accounts dedicated to each function that could be placed at different points in the Income Statement hierarchy

• Create People Expenses, Project Expense and Absorption accounts specifically for each function

Use member formulas to copy level 0 data for department and geography from each of the specific functions

Custom Functional Account Member Formulas

Solution

Create custom accounts dedicated to each function that could be placed at different points in the Income Statement hierarchy

• Create People Expenses, Project Expense and Absorption accounts specifically for each function

Use member formulas to copy level 0 data for department and geography from each of the specific functions

As a maintenance and scaling compromise, detailed analysis on those expense accounts would be done at an Account/Function level

Shared Accounts

Closing

Solutions were efficient to not slow down the planning process

Users were not required to use a complex process to enter data

Structure supports reporting requirements

Q&A