About Hyperion Financial Management

Hyperion Financial Management is a centralized, scalable, financial management and reporting solution. With Hyperion Financial Management users can unify their financial information (actuals, budgets, forecasts, statistics) in a single Web-based application. Hyperion Financial Management contains packaged features to support these tasks and practices:

•	Managing compliance with global reporting standards, currency management, automating inter-company activities and producing auditable results.

•	Linking legal and management reporting with operating plans to achieve enterprisewide consistency and visibility.

•	Multidimensional, line-of-business analysis.

•	Improved collaboration through the Web.

•	The addition of key external industry metrics to the system to provide one central point of financial intelligence.

Designed for large-scale, centralized Web deployment, Hyperion Financial Management acts as a shared financial resource for thousands of users across the enterprise. It enables them to collaborate and cooperate in the day-to-day management of business. In the same application, they can product auditable reports and forecasts for external consumers, such as regulatory bodies, financial analysts, stakeholders and business partners.

Financial Management

Current Business Issues Most companies face the following issues with regard to their financial information: 1.  Increased accountability and financial integrity 2.  Higher public scrutiny 3.  Stricter legislation. Sarbanes-Oxley Act.  This act was introduced to enforce stricter accounting requirements on publicly traded corporations.  The area of focus of this act include: a.  Auditor independence. b.  Corporate responsibilities. c.  Financial reporting. As per the Sarbanes-Oxley act, Chieft Executive Officers (CEOs) and Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) are required to sign financial statements to attest their validity. The act requires a shorter reporting time for quarterly and annual financials.  The duration for filing 10Qs, which are quarterly financial statements, has been reduced from 45 to 35 days.  Similarly for 10Ks, which are annual financial statements, the duration has been reduced from 90 to 60 days.  This puts tremendous pressure on companies to reduce the consolidation process duration. 4.  Transforming roles and responsibilities 5.  Increased process efficiency 6.  Higher value put on foresight 7.  Increased competitive pressures and benchmarks

Hyperion Financial Management (HFM)

Hyperion System 9 Financial Management is a comprehensive, Web-based financial systems application.  It delivers global collection, reporting, and analysis in a single, highly scalable financial management solution. Over 900 companies, worldwide, use Financial Management to accelerate financial reporting cycles, and reduce costs of compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley act, International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), and other regulatory requirements. Key Features include: 1.  Complete audit trails, workflow, and security. 2.  Smart dimensionality, that is, the ability to define up to four custom dimensions per account for capturing operational and financial results. 3.  Flexible What-If scenario management. 4.  Extensive customization capabilities including powerful business rules language. 5.  Fully Web-architected as a centralized, scalable application that can be accessed by thousands of users through a Web browser. Key Benefits include: 1.  Improves the financial close and reporting process, and can help reduce internal control risk. 2.  Helps reduce the cost of compliance as stipulated by the Sarbanes-Oxley act, BASEL II, and other regulatory requirements in building a sustainable compliance framework. 3.  Enables users to spend less time on processing and more time on value-added analysis. 4.  Helps deliver a single version of the truth to support financial management and statutory reporting. 5.  Integrates not only with Hyperion products, but also with a company’s existing infrastructure. Chevron Case Study Financial Management helped Chevron face the following challenges: 1.  Meet Sarbanes-Oxley requirements 2.  Streamline the financial consolidation process 3.  Meet reporting needs of employees and managers The results of using Financial Management were as follows: 1.  Eliminated 12 pre-consolidation applications 2.  Consolidated 2,000 financial reports into 600 3.  Eliminated three Microsoft Access databases 4.  Extended ad hoc reporting tools to employees

FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT ADDITIONAL FEATURES

A. Epm Calculation Manager

1. Epm Calculation Manager Definition
   1. Is a graphical EPMA tool for designing, validating, and administering business rules for use in Financial Management and Planning applications.
   2. Sets up reusable components that can be shared in different applications
   3. Works with predefined templates to create rules
   4. Organizes business rules into Rule Sets
   5. Replaces the Rules Editor
2. EPMA Calculation Manager: Benefits
   1. Easy way to create complex financial calculations in Financial Management and Planning

i. Graphical flow provides a better understanding of calculation process.

ii. Reusable rules can be shared among applications.

iii. Existing templates can be used to build rules

1. 1. Central repository of all calculation objects

i. One place to maintain all calculation rules

ii. Organize business rules using folders and rule sets

1. EPMA Calculation Manager: Level of Objects

B. Financial Management Functional Enhancements

1. Equity Pickup

• Is an accounting technique that reevaluates the investments owned by a holding company.

• The technique adjusts the investments in the company’s balance sheet to reflect the current value of the corresponding share in the equity of the subsidiary.

2. Phase Submission Enhancements

• When configuring scenarios, users can enter the Process Management start year with phased submission (Process Management does not apply to years prior to the start year).

• In the Phases Submissions Setup window, users can enter “All” instead of an asterisk (*) to specify all submission groups.

3. Matching Tolerance as % of Transaction

• When specifying a matching tolerance for a period, a user can specify an amount, a percentage, or both for Transaction ID (TID) Tolerance.

• The percentage is applied to the smaller of the entity or partner transaction.

4. Formatting Reports with Oracle BI Publisher

• Oracle BI Publisher report templates enable users to format Financial Management system reports.

• The report templates offer new print options, including PDF, RTF, HTML, and XLS.

Hyperion Reporting analysis Architecture

FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT OVERVIEW:

Hyperion Financial Management is a centralized, scalable, financial management and reporting solution. With Hyperion Financial Management users can unify their financial information (actuals, budgets, forecasts, statistics) in a single Web-based application. Hyperion Financial Management contains packaged features to support these tasks and practices:

•	Managing compliance with global reporting standards, currency management, automating inter-company activities and producing auditable results.

•	Linking legal and management reporting with operating plans to achieve enterprisewide consistency and visibility.

•	Multidimensional, line-of-business analysis.

•	Improved collaboration through the Web.

•	The addition of key external industry metrics to the system to provide one central point of financial intelligence.

Designed for large-scale, centralized Web deployment, Hyperion Financial Management acts as a shared financial resource for thousands of users across the enterprise. It enables them to collaborate and cooperate in the day-to-day management of business. In the same application, they can product auditable reports and forecasts for external consumers, such as regulatory bodies, financial analysts, stakeholders and business partners.

Hyperion Financial Management Features

Hyperion Financial Management contains features to support:

•	A single, unified view of enterprise financial information consolidates key performance and operating metrics from global sources in a scalable, Web-based application.

•	“Virtual close” features trim days and weeks off your close cycle using Web-based intercompany reconciliations and a consistent set of data and business measures.

•	Powerful multidimensional analysis identifies and reports new sources of profitability and cash flow at corporate, cost center, product, brand, customer, and channel levels.

•	Flexible “what if” scenario management feature dynamically consolidates and reports all financial budgets, forecasts and plans, producing new statements as assumptions and facts change.

•	High-volume, preformatted reports deliver timely, accurate financial information for internal management as well as for external regulatory and government bodies, from the same application.

•	Prepackaged features are deployed out-of-the-box, quickly and cost- effectively, including features such as world-class allocations, multicurrency translations, and robust data integration with legacy applications, ERP, and CRM systems.

•	Customizable and extensible application solves your specific issues quickly and cost-effectively, using industry standard tools.

•	Architected for the Web so users can easily and securely access global financial information from any location, using a standard Web browser. Relational data storage ensures mission critical data is available to users 24x7x365.

FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT ARCHITECTURE:

Architecture

Hyperion Financial Management is designed to operate as a multi-tier system.

•	The client tier contains the user interface and the ability to communicate with the application tier. You can display data and metadata, enter data, and maintain metadata in this tier.

•	The Web server tier contains the Web server. You can access the Web-enabled portions of Hyperion Financial Management in this tier. The Hyperion Financial Management Web client contains all functionality available in the Windows client with the exception of security administration.

•	The middle tier contains the domain intelligence and connections to the relational database.

•	The data tier contains the relational database and all Hyperion Financial Management data and metadata.

The following figure shows the Hyperion Financial Management architecture.

High-Level View of Hyperion Financial Management Multi-tier Architecture

HFM Dimensions

Scenario Dimension

The Scenario dimension corresponds to a class of data, such as Budget, Actual, or Forecast. For example, the Actual scenario could contain data from a general ledger, reflecting past and current business operations. The Budget scenario could contain data reflecting the targeted business operations.The Forecast scenario would typically contain data corresponding to predictions for upcoming periods. A Legal scenario could contain data calculated according to legal GAAP format and rules.

You can define any number of scenarios for an application. You use the Manage Metadata module on the Desktop to define attributes for members of the Scenario dimension, such as the default frequency, the default view, and zero data settings. For more information on maintaining metadata, see the Hyperion Financial Management Administrator’s Guide.

You create the calendar that defines how weeks build into months, months into quarters, and so on, independently from the Scenario dimension when you define an application profile. For more information on defining application profiles,

Year Dimension

The Year dimension contains a list of years. You specify a year range when you create an application profile. You then select a year from the Year dimension to process data.

Period Dimension

The Period dimension contains both time periods and frequencies by displaying the time periods in a hierarchy. For example, if the Actual scenario maintains data on a monthly basis, generally 12 periods of data are available for this scenario in a year. You edit periods and frequencies in the application profile. For more information on the application profile,

Entity Dimension

The Entity dimension corresponds to the organizational structure of the company. Entities can represent divisions, subsidiaries, plants, regions, countries, legal entities, business units, departments, or any organizational unit. You can define any number of entities.

The Entity dimension is the consolidation dimension of the system. Hierarchies in the Entity dimension reflect various consolidated views of the data. Various hierarchies can correspond to geographic consolidation, legal consolidation, or consolidation by activity. All relationships among individual components of the members that exist in an organization are stored and maintained in this dimension. Entities in an organization are either dependent, base, or parent entities. Dependent entities are entities that are owned by other entities in the organization. Base entities are entities at the bottom of the organization structure that do not own other entities. Parent entities are entities that contain one or more dependents that report directly to them.

You use the Manage Metadata module on the Desktop to define attributes for members of the Entity dimension, such as the default currency and security class, and whether the entity allows adjustments and stores intercompany detail. For more information on maintaining metadata, see the Hyperion Financial Management Administrator’s Guide.

Value Dimension

The Value dimension contains the input currency, parent currency, adjustments, and consolidation detail. You can store consolidation detail such as proportion, elimination, and contribution detail.

Account Dimension

The Account dimension contains a hierarchy of natural accounts. Accounts store financial data for entities and scenarios in an application. Each account has a type that defines its accounting behavior (for example, Income, Expense, and so on).

You use the Manage Metadata module to define attributes for members of the Account dimension, such as the account type, the number of decimal places to display, and whether the account is a calculated, consolidated, or intercompany partner account. For more information on maintaining metadata, see the Hyperion Financial Management Administrator’s Guide.

Intercompany Dimension

The Intercompany dimension stores all intercompany balances that exist for an account. This is a reserved dimension that is used in combination with the Account dimension and any custom dimension. Hyperion Financial Management can track and eliminate intercompany transaction details across accounts and custom dimensions. You can also run intercompany matching reports to view intercompany transactions.

View Dimension

The View dimension contains various modes of calendar intelligence; for example, Periodic, Year-to-Date, Quarter-to-Date, and so on.

Custom Dimensions

Four custom dimensions are available for analysis of detailed data. You can use custom dimensions to store information such as products, markets, channels, balance sheet movement, or types of elimination. For example, custom dimensions could include Product Line, Region, Channel, or Customers. The Custom 1 through 4 dimensions are associated with accounts to determine the detailed information relevant for each account. Custom dimensions actually store account details.

Selecting Tasks

Data tasks include Process Management, Ownership Management, and Database Management tasks.

Journal tasks include processing journals, and managing journal templates, periods, and groups.

Load tasks include loading application files, such as security, metadata, member lists, rules, data, journal, and intercompany transaction files.

Extract tasks include extracting application files, such as security, metadata, member lists, rules, data, journal, and intercompany transaction files.

Creating a Workspace

You can create workspaces on the Web that contain tasks that you perform frequently as well as data entry forms, data grids, reports, links, and related content. For example, suppose you need to enter intercompany balances in Web data entry forms, review intercompany balances in reports, and translate parent entities in a data grid. Creating a workspace enables you to complete your workflow without navigating among forms, grids, and reports modules.

You can create a public workspace that can be shared with other users, or a private workspace that is not displayed to other users. After you create and save a workspace, the next time that you open an application, you can view and open existing workspaces from the Project View on the left navigation pane.

Setting the Point of View on the Web

The Point of View is a set of dimensions you define that determines the data that Hyperion Financial Management accesses for an application and is displayed in the data grid. The Point of View can contain folders as well as individual dimension members, which indicate that there are additional members for the dimension. You can expand the folders to show additional members in the hierarchy.

Hyperion Financial Management provides initial Point of View settings. When you change the settings, the Point of View is updated with your changes. This User Point of View is available throughout the application session. When you exit the application, the information is saved and can be used the next time that you open the application.

The list of dimensions in the Point of View indicates the dimension that you are selecting in the following ways:

•	The current dimension is represented by text, while the other dimensions are represented by links.

•	The current dimension is enclosed by small, triangular characters.