August 22, 2019

What’s New in Oracle PBCS

Aug 2019

Steve Hitchman, Solution Director

Ahmed Hafez, Practice Manager

Steve Hitchman CIMA, Solution Director – Analytics, DXC Red Rock

• 15 years+ working with PBCS and Hyperion Planning / Essbase

• Finance background

Ahmed Hafez, Practice Manager – Analytics, DXC Red Rock

• Oracle ACE (EPM / Analytics)

• 13 years+ working with PBCS / Hyperion Planning / Essbase / OACS / BI

• Applications background

• Recently presented at the K-Scope 19 conference in Seattle

Presenters

August 22, 2019

Today’s Session

114 registrations from 58 different clients

Will be recorded

We have lots to cover

Mostly slides / some demo

We’ve included links to short videos

Ask questions via the questions box

August 22, 2019

Agenda

✓ Introduction

• What’s New

• Tips and Tricks

• What’s Coming

• Q&A

August 22, 2019 5

Oracle Continues to be the Leader

• Cloud Financial Planning and Analysis

Solutions Gartner Magic Quadrant

• Oracle has been the leader now for 10 years

straight

August 22, 2019 6

Monthly Patching Updates

• Commencing with the next update we’ll be sending all of our PBCS

Managed Services customers our summary of each months patch

update announcements

• We’re expecting some significant changes before the end of the year so

keep an eye out for our updates

• Separate to this Oracle have released a new web page that lists all the

patching related enhancements over time – link below

NEW!

https://apexapps.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p=30828:4:108115271651360

August 22, 2019 7

Online Help and Support

• Use the online help

• Videos

• Customer connect

– Product development live here

– Great option to get traction

https://www.youtube.com/embed/bGz1PH5NqUw?rel=0&autoplay=1

August 22, 2019

Agenda

• Introduction

✓ What’s New

• Tips and Tricks

• What’s Coming

• Q&A

August 22, 2019 9

Predictive Planning - Demo

• Has been available

for quite some time

• Adoption is low

• Some significant

enhancements

• And more to come

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vMBqxsMrt8

August 22, 2019 10

Smart View Update (v11.1.2.5.900)

1 2

31 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LTDfRbfx0&autoplay=0&html5=1&app=desktop

1POV bar no

more

2 Multiple

grids on one

excel sheet

3 New submit

options

4Test

carefully

August 22, 2019

What’s New in Oracle PBCS Planning

Aug 2019

Steve Hitchman, Solution Director

Ahmed Hafez, Practice Manager

August 22, 2019 12

August 22, 2019 13

August 22, 2019 14

Licensing Changes

FINANCIALS WORKFORCE

CAPITAL PROJECTSSTRAT. MODEL

PLANNING AND BUDGETING CLOUD SERVICE (PBCS)

ENT. PERF. REPORTING

FINANCIAL CONSOLIDATION

and CLOSE

TAX PROVISION and REPORTING

ACCOUNT RECONCILIATION

PROFITABILITY and COST MGMT

DIMENSION MANAGEMENT

EACH WAS REFERRED TO AS A

CLOUD SERVICE

Option 1 - Standard Business Processes Option 2 - Enterprise

Small to mid sized organisations

Focus on pre-built content

Some limitations apply

Planning

Everything is included

Unlimited environments

Financial Consolidation and Close

Account Reconciliation

Profitability and Cost Management

Tax Reporting

Narrative Reporting

Enterprise Data Management (DRM)

ENTERPRISE PLANNING AND BUDGETING CLOUD SERVICE (EPBCS)

TAX REPORTING NARRATIVE REPORTING

ENTERPRISE DATA MANAGEMENT

PLANNING PLANNING

NOW REFERRED

TO AS BUSINESS

PROCESSES

SCENARIOMODELLING

NEW NEW

August 22, 2019 15

Licensing and Product ChangesPBCS EPBCS

Cube Types Custom Custom

Pre Built Modules

Applications / Pods Included 1 1

Custom

Cubes

Available

BSO 3 3

ASO 4 4

Free Form Not available Not available

Hybrid Available No Yes

Groovy Available No Yes

Creating / Modifying Groovy No Yes

Standard Enterprise

Custom

Pre Built Modules

Custom

Pre Built Modules

Free Form

1 Unlimited

1 Options to

extend

6

1 6

Not available 1 (will increase)

Yes Yes

Yes as part of pre

configured

modules

Yes

No Yes

Stay here or convert

NEW

NEW

NEW

Existing Customers

New Customers Here only

August 22, 2019 16

Australia

NSW Vic WA

Perth

Bunbury

Capel

Cubes

Contain

Dimensions

Dimensions can

get big Collectively dimensions

define cubes

1. Complex calculations in a very carefully

controlled orderwhich is amazing at complex calculations

2. Aggregate the data in the hierarchies in real

time

which is amazing at adding up massive

data sets in real timeASO

BSO

We want these cubes to perform

two key capabilities

The cubes have historically been

available in two types

August 22, 2019 17

ASOBSO

HYBRID

Introducing Hybrid

At the base level the BSO

functionality is used to meet

complex logic

At the aggregated data level

the ASO / in memory capability

is used

August 22, 2019 18

Hybrid Case Study –

Query Time Seconds

Calc Time (Minutes)

Cube Size / Dense Restructure Timeframe (Hours)

- Large BSO Cube (293M+ Blocks) in need of better performance

- We started with: make everything dynamic at top levels

- Which seemed great but ….

- As with anything ‘new’ time is needed to optimize

Dimension Member Count L0 %

All L0

Account 1,398 370 27%

View 18 3 17%

Period 37 17 46%

Status 18 11 61%

BA_Number 510 510 100%

BA_Line 504 504 100%

Fund 404 282 70%

Task 3,487 3,486 100%

Project 23,417 11,328 48%

Version 3 3 100%

Year 21 19 90%

Scenario 114 50 44%

Level 0 constitutes

< 0.5% of this cube

Initial Test: Make all parents Dynamic

August 22, 2019 19

Hybrid Case Study –

Dimension Member Count L0 %

All L0

Account 1,398 370 27%

View 18 3 17%

Period 37 17 46%

Status 18 11 61%

BA_Number 510 510 100%

BA_Line 504 504 100%

Fund 404 282 70%

Task 3,487 3,486 100%

Project 23,417 11,328 48%

Version 3 3 100%

Year 21 19 90%

Scenario 114 50 44%

Query Time Seconds

Calc Time (Minutes)

Cube Size / Dense Restructure Timeframe (Hours)Level 0 constitutes

< 0.5% of this cube

Resulted in Reduction of number of blocks from ~293M to ~1.8M.

We found the sweet spot was to leave largest dimension (Project)

as stored and make the rest as dynamic at parent level.

August 22, 2019 20

Free Form Cubes

• A new cube type as part of the new Enterprise license

• Cubes in PBCS have historically required dimensions

– Account, Entity, Scenario, Version, Year & Period

– Whilst this is mostly good it can be limiting (eg. Year and Period in separate dimensions, Scenario and Version in

separate dimensions)

• Enter the new Free Form Cube format

• Available as either Hybrid/BSO or ASO

• Option to Import Essbase outlines

• Build models from excel templates is coming (Q3 CY 2019)

• 1 cube for now per App – more coming (Q4 CY 2019)

August 22, 2019 21

GroovyWhat is Groovy? “Apache Groovy is a powerful, optionally typed and dynamic language, with static-

typing and static compilation capabilities, for the Java platform aimed at improving

developer productivity thanks to a concise, familiar and easy to learn syntax. It

integrates smoothly with any Java program, and immediately delivers to your

application powerful features, including scripting capabilities, Domain-Specific

Language authoring, run-time and compile-time meta-programming and functional

programming.” –from Groovy website

Summary:

• Groovy can be viewed as simplified and improved Java

• Groovy promises to Simplify the way we code

• For example: Simplified method calling, variable & method definitions,

loops and no semicolon needed for each statement.

• Custom Java / Groovy programs can be created and used to trigger

REST API direct queries

• Additional scripting capability for Oracle Planning that extends what’s

possible

Use Cases Calculation Performance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_niSfmZUfiE

Data Entry Validation in PBCS

Source External Data from within PBCS

Custom Integration with PBCS Rest API

Licensing PBCS (NO), EPBCS (YES),

EPM Standard (YES), EPM Enterprise (YES))

August 22, 2019 22

Groovy – Build a Calc on the Fly

• All rows have

to be

calculated

irrespective of

update or not

• Calculate only the

rows updated

• In this example 2 of

12 rows updated –

calculation time with

groovy will be 6

times faster

August 22, 2019 23

• Check empty cells

• Negative salary

• Validate Data on

Entry

• Save time by

ensuring better

data quality

Groovy – Data Validation

August 22, 2019 24

Open Adapter to pull in FX rates

FX Public

WebServicePBCS Groovy

REST request

JSON

response

PBCS Groovy External Web Service Calls

Open Adapter to pull in data from Source Systems (recommended for small/specific data sets)

Example

ERP Cloud

WebService PBCS Groovy

REST request

JSON

response

August 22, 2019 25

Licensing and Product ChangesPBCS EPBCS

Cube Types Custom Custom

Pre Built Modules

Applications / Pods Included 1 1

Custom

Cubes

Available

BSO 3 3

ASO 4 4

Free Form Not available Not available

Hybrid Available No Yes

Groovy Available No Yes

Creating / Modifying Groovy No Yes

Standard Enterprise

Custom

Pre Built Modules

Custom

Pre Built Modules

Free Form

1 Unlimited

1 Options to

extend

6

1 6

Not available 1 (will increase)

Yes Yes

Yes as part of pre

configured

modules

Yes

No Yes

NEW

NEW

NEW

Stay here or convertExisting Customers

New Customers Here only

August 22, 2019 26

New EPM Automate Commands

1 exportAppAudit This command exports data audit records into a ZIP file, which you can download for local storage.

2 exportAppSecurity This command exports the date related to artifact-level access assignments (ACLs) to a ZIP file, which you can download for local storage.

3 mergeDataSlices This command merges all incremental data slices of an aggregate storage cube with a view to improve a cube’s performance and, optionally, removes

cells that have a value of zero.

4 restructureCube This command restructures a block storage cube to eliminate or reduce fragmentation. Restructuring also removes empty blocks, and will not push any

changes from the application to the cube.

5 ApplicationAdminMode This command places the application in administration mode so that access to the application is limited to Service Administrators only. This command

is useful to prevent users from working on the application when Service Administrators are performing administrative operations.

6 sortMember This command sorts members of Entity, Account, Scenario, and Versions dimensions and of custom dimensions. This command is useful for sorting

dimension members after loading members into Planning.

7 lagTime parameter for replay lagTime, an optional parameter, allows you to set the number of seconds that the replay command should wait between the execution of each HAR file

included in the replay file. Because user activities are not usually initiated simultaneously, setting this parameter helps to create a more realistic

simulation of load on an environment.

8 provisionReport The provisionreport command now, by default, generates the simplified version of the Provisioning Report identical to the report that is displayed on the

Provisioning Report tab of the Access Control screen. You can generate the classic version of the report, which lists the component roles that are

subsumed into the pre-defined roles to which users are assigned and the application roles assigned to the user (directly or through groups), by using

the format=classic parameter.

9 renameSnapshot Renames a snapshot available in an environment to prevent the maintenance process from overwriting it.

Customers who have small applications can use this command to archive snapshots in the environment subject to snapshot retention policies. See

Overview of the Maintenance Snapshot in Getting Started with Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud for Administrators.

New functions are added from time to time, recommend upgrade of EPM Automate every 6 months.

New feature coming to upgrade snapshots to latest version of EPM Cloud!

August 22, 2019 27

Admins - New ASO Functions

1 @ILSIBLINGS Returns the specified member and its left siblings.

2 @IRSIBLINGS Returns the specified member and its right siblings.

3 @LSIBLINGS Returns the left siblings of the specified member.

4 @RSIBLINGS Returns the right siblings of the specified member.

New functions are added from time to time in Calculation Manager, recent additions are very

relevant for those that utilise ASO Plan Types

August 22, 2019 28

Reminder - Adoption of the New Browser Dimension Editor

Latest advise is during 2019 with at least

2 months notice to be provided

August 22, 2019

Agenda

• Introduction

• What’s New

✓ Tips and Tricks

• What’s Coming

• Q&A

August 22, 2019 30

Top 10 Reporting

• Variances to Budget

• Products

• Customers

• Suppliers

NONEMPTYMEMBER [BPA_COUNT]

CASE WHEN

CONTAINS(

[Supplier].currentmember,

TOPCOUNT([All_Suppliers].levels(0).Members,20,[BPA_COUNT])

)

THEN [BPA_Count]

ELSE

MISSING

END

August 22, 2019 31

The challenge:

Attribute dimensions are excellent tools for establishing descriptive

capability of a dimension member and to then enable slice and dice

capability by this attribute.

For example, a project may have an attribute of a project manager as

you would typically only have one project manager per project.

The challenge results in the administration of this, as tends to be a

manual task using the dimension editor and power is taken from the

user to change/update this themselves and becomes an admin based

task.

• Why? Gives the control to users to easily view & update

• How? Our approach relies on automation using EPM

Automate (extract and import)

PBCS

UserSmart List

Assignment Metadata

Load

Smart List

Assignment

Sample Use CasesSmart List to Attribute Conversion

Challenge Accepted:

August 22, 2019 32

PBCS Automated Smart List to Attribute ConversionIn Action

Data Extract

Data File Extract

Convert Data File Extract to

Metadata Load File

Metadata File

Update To EPM

Cloud

Metadata Load

August 22, 2019 33

PBCS Automated Smart List to Attribute ConversionCode Sample

Extract Data

Mapping

Import Metadata

Error Handling

August 22, 2019

Agenda

• Introduction

• What’s New

• Tips and Tricks

✓ What’s Coming (Safe harbour)

• Q&A

August 22, 2019 35

August 22, 2019 36

New Browser User Interface

• Release has been delayed

• Expected before Christmas

• Refer to video below

https://www.youtube.com/embed/iBqlQ41usfc?rel=0&autoplay=1

August 22, 2019 37

Re Designed Forms

August 22, 2019 38

Re Designed Form Authoring / Edit

Cell specific

formatting

Cell specific

formatting

August 22, 2019 39

August 22, 2019 40

Reporting Update - Available Today

Current Adoption What’s Coming

Smartview High• Dashboards

• Navigation Flows

Dashboards Growing• Major enhancements coming

• Waterfall charts is the highlight

Infolets Very Low

Financial

ReportingLow

• Long Term Supported

• But effectively being ‘replaced’ by

Management Reporting

August 22, 2019 41

August 22, 2019 42

• Automates population of EPM

content

• Built in security and workflow

• Author, Review and sign off

phases linked to roles

• Integrated with office

• Cross cloud/multi-source

reporting

Introducing Narrative Reporting

A secure, collaborative and process driven solution for Authoring, reviewing and publishing report packs containing content from

Oracle EPM data sources and beyond including commentary. Both external and internal report packs / presentations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpYCbbTzUto

Current State for Most

• Smartview / excel led reporting

• Lots of manual checks /

validations

• Copy paste content into Word

and Powerpoint

• E mail and / or sharepoint

based collaboration in a word

document

• Efficient typically 2 out of 10

With Narrative Reporting

August 22, 2019 43

Introducing Management Reporting – New Reporting

• Has been part of Narrative Reporting since Dec 16

• Expected to be available for PBCS customers soon

• Long term ‘replacement’ for Financial Reporting / Migration

capability will exist

• As compared with Financial Reporting

• Equivalent tabular capability

• Enhanced charting

• Modernised interface

• Limited to data in the PBCS / Planning instance

• Some new features may have a lag time before appearing in

EPM cloud (will go to Narrative Reporting 1st)

• Where possible use Narrative Reporting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL4cB8FEpB0

August 22, 2019 44

What is Oracle Analytics Cloud (OACS)?Enterprise cloud based reporting platform able to deliver operational reporting, data discovery & visualisation, predictive & prescriptive

analytics (Machine Learning & AI) from any data source with controls for data governance and security. OACS enables an organization

to ask any question of any data in any environment on any device.

Enterprise licensing – no user

limits

Access any sources – whether in

the cloud or on-premise with true

end user data discovery capability

Built-in Integration capability

(Data flows, data profiling and

enrichment)

Mobile delivery

Advanced modeling via the

semantic layer for greater data

governance and control

Inbuilt and extendable Advanced

Analytics and Machine Learning

capability

August 22, 2019 45

Oracle Analytics Cloud (OACS)

Oracle Analytics

Named a Leader in

Forrester Wave

https://blogs.oracle.com/analyticscloud/oracle-analytics-

named-a-leader-in-forrester-wave

G2 Crowd

Reviewers:

Leader In Self-

Service BI

https://www.oracle.com/solutions/business-analytics/comparison-chart.html

Video Overview: https://youtu.be/kv3CB21Kelk

August 22, 2019 46

AI and Machine Learning

Artificial intelligence is a broader concept

than machine learning, which addresses the

use of computers to mimic the cognitive

functions of humans. When machines carry out

tasks based on algorithms in an “intelligent”

manner, that is AI.

Examples:

• AI can be a pile of if-then statements

• Expert Systems

• Tax Systems / Calculation

• Autopilot

Artificial Intelligence

Machine learning is a subset of AI and focuses

on the ability of machines to receive a set of

data and learn for themselves, changing

algorithms as they learn more about the

information they are processing.

Examples:

• Predicting Future Attrition based on

constant learning from historical data

• Predicting Movies / Music you may like

based on your history (Netflix / Spotify)

Machine Learning

AI and machine learning are often used interchangeably, but these aren’t the same thing…

Machine learning is a subset of AI. That is, all machine learning counts as AI, but not all AI counts as machine learning.

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Oracle’s ongoing investment into Planning (formerly PBCS) is vast

In Summary

Aim to send out the slides later today

For more information please reach out

Lots more to come

Ahmed’s blog – HyperionJedi.com

Q&A

August 22, 2019 56

connect.dxc.technology/RedRock-OptIn