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Hyperion Customers are at a Crossroads: Upgrade and Stagnate, or Convert and Lead at Speed

Peter Popalis and Colin Sawford • Jun 17, 2021

Oracle’s Hyperion has shown its hand. The Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) latest update, 11.2, is anything but an innovative move to modern standards and/or a true cloud experience for enterprises. While the update supports customers for another 10 years, there is no planned real innovation. It has become apparent that HFM clients have reached a crossroads and are facing an inflection point. A recent OneStream webinar discussed this very issue, and some of what follows highlights this discussion with Ascend’s additional comments.

Is Updating to HFM 11.2 Your Only Option?

Many enterprise clients are facing this decision and attempting to look at all options. For sure, not upgrading to 11.2 or having another solution in place is a risk for enterprises to continue without technical support on legacy HFM versions.

However, even upgrading to the new Fusion Edition could cause several issues to crop up for current Hyperion environments with any of the following use-cases, as they are no longer being supported.

Just a shortlist of those features being deprecated and not being supported even in 11.2

EPMA
Pre-built planning modules
Essbase analytic link
A portion of the ODI adaptors

Even with updating to 11.2, there are considerations enterprises are presented with requiring new configurations and implementation updates that do not necessarily make it just an easy program update. This is especially true for clients that are more than one version behind.

Lastly, even the language and communications coming from Oracle are that this is the last update on-prem for the HFM platform, essentially letting all their clients know that they have a finite time with HFM left.

So, is it better to make the jump to Oracle EPM Cloud, another solution earlier or continue in the potentially hobbled framework that HFM will undoubtedly become over the next decade?

Why is Oracle EPM Cloud Still Failing Clients?

For many HFM clients, it may seem like a no-brainer that with the deprecation of features in 11.2, now is the time to make the switch. Making that switch within a known environment may seem the wiser choice to clients that are already Oracle and HFM clients. However, there’s a reason why over 300 enterprises worldwide have changed platforms and made the switch to OneStream.

Any move to the cloud is a positive move from multiple viewpoints, including reducing your hardware footprint, data integration and availability, backups and data recovery are with the software provider, and even platform or software upgrades are easier in the cloud environment. For these reasons, many enterprise customers have a defined timeframe for moving to a cloud environment. However, moving from HFM on-prem to Oracle Cloud EPM may not be your optimal solution.

The single biggest reason that we see is still the fragmented nature of Oracle products. For clients coming from HFM, this fragmentation can be an even bigger shock. The Oracle EPM Cloud suite of products are entirely separate modules in the cloud environment. There are different products to cover the same aspects you have now in HFM. Consolidation and close, planning, profitability management, account reconciliation and others are all separate modules. Furthermore, each product requires different logic processes, data stores and even more data integration from your current GL or ERP.

Even worse, beside the disparate environment, your planning applications in Oracle Cloud do not inherently do intercompany matching and currency translations, among other standards. They have to be programmed to follow your actuals rules sets. Whereas with OneStream, these rules sets for your financial actuals carry across to planning and forecasting automatically.

However, there are other OneStream benefits over Oracle, such as upgrading your OneStream implementations on your schedule. For example, when OneStream releases a version update in a year, you can upgrade to that new version on your schedule. Oracle Cloud EPM forces companies to upgrade according to their schedule. This type of flexibility is built into OneStream throughout the platform, and this is just one example.

Ascend Partners’ Client Trends

With the latest release of HFM 11.2 and what it means for enterprise-level companies, there have been some significant concerns that we have heard and seen from our clients.

A positive testimonial for the strength of the OneStream platform is the movement of one of the world’s largest gold producers, to fully embrace OneStream and move all consolidation and close and forecasting and budgeting to OneStream, entirely exiting Oracle’s Hyperion platform altogether. Ascend has been critical to a successful rollout and conversion for this client.

However, other clients have expressed their frustration at having to switch platforms for a number of reasons, including being forced off the HFM platform for regulatory reasons. The HFM platform was not meeting the standards needed for this particular client, and they had to switch because of this failure.

Another client expressed concern over the end of life of HFM and their necessary switch of all their financial CPM software over to OneStream.

What are the Most Attractive OneStream Features?

In the recent webinar, the following aspects were named:

Unified platform that replaces multiple legacy applications, so it’s much easier to use, maintain and upgrade.
Advanced financial close, consolidation and planning and forecasting
Built-in financial data quality, not a separate product or license.
Extensive, built-in reporting and analysis capabilities providing a single version of the truth for actuals, budgets, plans and forecasts.
Extensible Dimensionality® that allows customers to support corporate standards but allows business units to extend the solution to support local reporting and planning requirements.
Relational Blending supports planning at a granular level, with cube-based reporting and analysis at a summary level.
Analytic Blend which enables customers to load large volumes of transactional data for reporting and analysis with high performance and responsiveness to end user queries.