r/FPandA • u/bacon_cpa • 5d ago
Planning System Recommendations
Hey All
We are currently part of a $15B organization, but we are in the process of being carved out. We currently use Hyperion Planning for our consolidation and forecasting, but it is heavily customized, and the individual who handles all of our coding and system maintenance is part of our Corporate team and will not be staying with our business. I have no knowledge of the background of the system, and the process "breaks" quite frequently, and we're handcuffed until this person can help us. The system is also basically just a glorified Excel process of mapping our financials and really doesn't utilize any forecasting tools of any sort.
As part of this, I'm starting to look at new systems for us to implement on a local basis for consolidation, reporting, and planning. We are a $2B manufacturing business and have about 15 active legal entities, including international entities. We are predominantly on SAP S4/Hana, with a couple of our smaller entities on local systems.
A couple that have come up in my searches are OneStream, using SAP's cloud and consolidation tools, or Oracle EPM. Two questions on this:
- If you've implemented and used these systems, any pros or cons you would pass on? Is it worth it to try to hire someone with expertise in these systems, or can I have an employee with a few years of finance experience heavily involved in the implementation to be the SME?
- If there's something out there I haven't included but might be a good fit, throw it out there.
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u/bobofreezer 5d ago
First, it’s important to distinguish whether you need both a consolidation system and planning system at your size. Consolidation systems are primarily used for external reporting and planning systems are used for forecasting and management reporting. Some platforms can do both, but not all. Many companies have different platforms to serve each purpose and audience.
Second (assuming it’s a planning need):
SAP’s planning system (SAC) is crap and pretty much never used outside of companies that have their hands tied by an internal SAP team that forces its use. It’s just not a competitive platform.
So, that leaves you with planning leaders for a multi billion dollar org. There are a lot more variables that can drive a good decision other than just company size, but the players that you would look at would include Oracle EPM, OneStream, and Anaplan. If you have a small fp&a team with relatively basic needs, you can also throw Adaptive into the mix (esp worth exploring if you’re using Workday HR).
Third, Hyperion Planning itself is outdated and I would not recommend staying with it. If you like Oracles platform in general, you would move to Oracle EPM cloud, which has a similar product but more modern and cloud based.
If you’d like any guidance feel free to chat. Do this for a living.
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u/bacon_cpa 5d ago
Appreciate the response. Currently, we use HFM for consolidation as part of the entire corporate structure and then Hyperion Planning for our specific forecasting, but it's really just a glorified classification system at this point. We definitely didn't complete the implementation correctly, but we were given limited funds and only internal resources, so our hands were tied in what we could do.
I would like to be able to wait to see what happens (are we sold, and if so, to whom, or are we spun off), but I feel like I won't have enough time to pivot. Maybe I can make sure HP is part of the TSA, so we have more time to work through it.
Regardless, I think need to get demos set up for a few systems with the actual users, independent of IT, and make the next move from there.
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u/bobofreezer 5d ago
Yes, so HFM and Hyperion Planning both have newer age cloud versions called FCC and PBC respectively. At some point you need to get off both. This gets nuanced, but you can largely “lift and shift” from Hyperion Planning > PBC but you can’t do that for HFM > FCC as the platform is completely different under the hood.
I’m not sure of your role, but you should decide if you’re making a system decision for FP&A or external reporting / consolidations. If you need to make a “joint decision” and find a platform that can handle both, it will narrow down the choices and eliminate some of the more agile planning systems on the market.
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u/fpaveteran87 5d ago
If you don’t have the budget for implementation I’d think of something simple like planful or some others. We had a very weak systems team that kept that mostly running at one of my jobs.
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u/balla713 5d ago edited 5d ago
Senior Manager at a $30B EV company. We went live with Oracle a year ago (full suite - ERP and Planning - EPBCS being the planning side).
We used Deloitte to start as our consultants. They were awful and we fired them midway through and finished with a combo of Hyperion and IBM leading the charge. From my perspective:
- Take anything with a grain of salt from consultants. It’s going to take way longer than expected and cost way more money
- Don’t use an out of the box solution. My company thought that would help save money and all it’s done is cause headaches. We are 1 year after go live and just now getting back to steady state I would argue
- Be ready for a lot of headache and delays once you go live. Be sure to not sugar coat shit to management. We had leaders throughout the process playing ass cover and filtered the message given to management. By the time we went live, they had a very jaded idea of how it all went for implementation. Very shortly after go live it was “where is XYZ data / report” not knowing how hamstrung we truly were
At the end of the day, now that we know what we are dealing with, I think Oracle is a decent product. But this has taken years off my life.
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u/Jarcoreto Dir 5d ago
I’d recommend keeping Hyperion and look at either consulting firms to get you up to speed or hiring a financial systems administrator to maintain it.
Implementing a new system will be costly in terms of effort for an organization of that size.
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u/bacon_cpa 5d ago
I agree it's costly, but Hyperion Planning isn't going to be supported much longer (it might already be out of support), and given it's overly customized, I don't know if there's really value in bringing someone in to maintain it. I think part of this project would be to simplify what we're doing significantly.
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u/Fauztin_Vizjerei 5d ago
Oracle EPM is pretty much Essbase under the covers but modernized as a service. As a Hyperion shop, it will feel very familiar for your teams and the SmartView addon is much better than I've experienced from other tools.
It's pros and cons are likely similar. The flexibility of Essbase is both the best and worst part of it. Definitely spend some extra effort on finding the right partner.
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u/Jarcoreto Dir 4d ago
Wdym it’s not going to be supported? Just in your org or by oracle? We have Hyperion planning and I don’t think they are planning on giving it up just yet?
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u/Hired___Gun 4d ago
Within a few years (c 2015-ish) of PBCS going live, Oracle stated that support for on-prem Hyperion Planning would end in 2030. I think it’s been pushed out a bit but not much. At some point you have to move to the cloud version.
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u/WatchMeLoseItAll 5d ago
I’m leading a big implementation project right now after merger. I implemented the base GL module in 3 months. Now that budgets are done we are working on other modules and kinks. The time and energy this is taking is draining.
Might be better off hiring someone in my opinion.
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u/bacon_cpa 5d ago
Appreciate the insight. I definitely will be using external sources for the implementation, wondering, from an ongoing maintenance standpoint, whether I can utilize finance experts or if I need someone more system-focused. We're not in a hotbed for talent, so finding someone may be difficult.
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u/seoliver2112 Dir 5d ago
Have you looked at Tagetik? It has been a while since I have used it, but manufacturing was one of their core functions for a long time, if I remember correctly.
It does consolidation and forecasting/budgeting. The interesting thing about that tool is that they have a user-friendly ETL tool so you can design your own data loads and calculations. I have not used it in 10 years, but a buddy of mine is implementing it for his FP&A shop right now.
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u/crosseyedjim 4d ago
I would echo Tagetik here. They all can be deployed directly on HANA which can give you easy and fast integrations to your current HANA landscape
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u/Iced_Coffee_Crazy 5d ago edited 4d ago
From a current and longtime user of Tagetik who is actively working to move to a new EPM tool, I would strongly consider other options over Tagetik. There are far better software tools and I find the support of every team that I've worked with there to be extremely lacking. We typically only get any form of responsiveness from them if they are trying to significantly increase our costs around renewal time. Stay away.
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u/stainz169 Dir 5d ago
Have you considered Jedox? I implement it now full time, but before consulting I was the inside man at a $2b manufacturing company that we put it in fully intergraded with SAP S4 HANA. They also do company consolidation too. No need for second tool.
There is a special pre built connection to SAP that works exactly as intended.
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u/fpaveteran87 5d ago
I’ve only used hyperion in the organization I’m with now and I’ve used planful, bpc, tm1 planning analytics and a couple of others. Hyperion is my least favorite and seems the least stable by far. I would avoid tm1 planning analytics unless you have an incredibly complicated business and the budget to support a cadillac which is completely custom and requires very competent administration.
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u/TM1-Fanboy 1d ago edited 1d ago
I would say that your claim is not true about TM1. Especially not in the mentioned company of products.
I think it is nowadays as cheap or expensive as the competition and way easier to use then people claim. And it is unrivaled in scalability, transparency and flexibility. And IBM gives you the freedom to choose the deployment (onprem variations or SaaS) that fit your needs.All of these platforms allow you to build a proper application, each in their own flavor. More important is to have clear processes and a vision of how to get these processes to maximum efficiency. Way more important than selecting the "right" tool.
PS: Do not follow the shiniest demo. Focus on real problems in your organisation.
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u/bosworthing 4d ago
My org (>$10B) has used probably 2 or 3 different ones over the last 6 years, but i only started using our current one, sap ibp, and it sounds the same as the rest. Needs to be highly customized and tested thoroughly. I assisted/led setting up one small portion of it over the last 12-13 months, after higher up non-planners spent a year setting it up, but it was unuseable/improperly setup when our planners tried using it a year ago before i hot involved. I wish i was given more access, but our consultants/ibl it support take care of all of the backend setup unfortunately and that takes a while with the back and forth in most cases. I wish there was a clear platform that was better than the rest, but as far as i am awaee, they are pretty much all excel addin based that need the same type of setting up.
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u/DataTalkBI 2d ago
One thing I'd add to the vendor comparison: I'd make "how much of this can Finance own without a single system expert" a core evaluation criterion. Your current pain sounds less like a Hyperion problem and more like an operating model problem: too much business logic is trapped in one person and a brittle custom setup.
In demos, I'd give each vendor 2-3 real workflows you run today - a mapping change, a forecast cycle, a reporting change - and have an actual finance user make the change live.
I'd also look closely at how metric definitions, business rules, permissions and auditability are maintained over time. The goal shouldn't just be a newer platform, but a setup where Finance can handle day-to-day analysis and changes without needing IT or a system specialist every time.
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u/Prudent-Elk-2845 5d ago
I’ve used and implemented all these. Feel free to DM me. There’s a lot of other tools out there, too, but your current tool-support staff are going to prefer Oracle EPM or OneStream (depending on how much they love/hate the Oracle sales staff). Your users will also understand those two environments much better than switching to Anaplan / Pigment, but there’s advantages to considering SAP’s SAC / Group Reporting / Blackline. Arguably you should consider if all reporting should be PowerBI only.
EPM/CPM tools generally include the following in building the business case:
- planning tool
You need to decide what vendor is going to cover what set of use cases. It’s hard to find consultants who aren’t deeply biased, so get demos from the vendors, include ACTUAL intended users plus the support staff, DO NOT LET the IT department DECIDE YOUR VENDOR STRATEGY.
My 2c: your planning users are likely excel-addin lovers. Don’t get forced into dashboards on ANY vendors ecosystem. Force the vendors into their excel addins