Successful strategy flows from accurate, timely and ... · Successful strategy flows from accurate, timely ... Hyperion’s financial consolidation solutions integrate with and complement

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.

Hyperion Financial Consolidation4

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.


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.


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 forImproved 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.

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The Bigger PictureThrough 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.


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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.

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A Foundation for Opportunity andCompetitive 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.

Hyperion Financial Consolidation Solutions

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Successful strategy flows from accurate, timely and ... · Successful strategy flows from accurate, timely ... Hyperion’s financial consolidation solutions integrate with and complement