Oracle's EPM Suite Update Includes New Management Apps

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Oracle unveiled Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) 11.1.2, a suite of new applications integrated with its Fusion middleware platform to help large enterprise customers improve their strategic, financial and operational management processes.

Incorporating business intelligence (BI) and EPM functionality from its prior multibillion-dollar acquisitionsof Hyperion and Siebel Systems, Oracle ERP 11.1.2 promises much deeper integration with Microsoft Excel and Outlook to speed along the daunting task of consolidating financial reports and delivering accurate financial reports to regulatory agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

“There’s been a lot of integration between BI and EPM over the last few years,” Hari Sankar, vice president of Oracle’s EPM product management team, told InternetNews.com. “With this release, Oracle is delivering the most comprehensive offering in financial close and financial reporting processes for public companies.”

The update includes new capabilities to simplify and streamline enterprise planning and forecasting tasks. It features intelligent approval workflows that are data-driven and scenario specific to eliminate what Sankar called the typical quarter- or year-end “fire drill” that often becomes the singular preoccupation of CFOs and accounting departments at publicly traded companies.

Integrating with Oracle’s Fusion middleware

The new applications, Oracle Hyperion Disclosure Management, Oracle Hyperion Financial Close Management and Oracle Hyperion Public Sector Planning and Budgeting, all integrate with Oracle’s core Fusion middleware platform, giving users access to all their corporate data in a familiar and organized fashion.

Oracle Hyperion Disclosure Management, for example, lets companies gather financial information and create a report to SEC standards and requirements in eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) without outsourcing it to a third-party publisher.

Oracle officials said this latest release will be available in 15 languages and includes a new browser-based user-interface, role-based access and improved navigation as well as support for Unicode encoding.

“As a customer who’s deployed a number of Oracle Hyperion applications we are excited about the new applications,” Russ Bostick, Conseco’s executive vice president of technology and operations, said in a statement. “The new financial close management application will enable us to better coordinate our closing process across different departments, transactional systems and EPM applications.”

EPM 11.1.2 will also allow customers to leverage pre-built integration across applications to help simplify the licensing process and deploy specific apps for each customer’s business priorities.

Larry Barrett is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.