IBM Planning Analytics vs. Oracle Hyperion (legacy)

For a CFO or a COO to do budgeting and planning, IBM Planning Analytics would be essential. It is a tool that can take in multiple data sources and showcase them in a multidimensional way. If you are looking just for a BI or reporting tool, Planning Analytics would be considered "overkill".

Well suited: For use in multiple offices around the world. I was able to obtain financial reporting data from 5 foreign offices and then consolidate their data with 3 domestic USA offices to prepare a consolidated financial statement. Less Appropriate: Translating the financial value for consulting services could be a bit challenging because that required human interaction and judgement. It would have been great to be able to set up some software to be able to interpret this and let it run for all future project work revenue projection.

Incentivized

• Handle very large data volumes.
• Scale to a large number of users.
• Not having to compromise on business complexity.
• It can be run by business users.
• Availability of highly qualified consultants to support businesses.
• REST API allows for an open eco system and a variety of solutions to extend the product.
• Vast integration possibilities.
• AI-infused engine with IBM Watson.

Incentivized

• HFM is very powerful for financial consolidations .
• Hyperion Planning is used to project accurate planning and thus provide the benefit to organization to do allocations and driver based planning so that it can justify the numbers based on headcount, number of stops & Revenue and thus provide valuable projections and thus help reduce the expenses.
• Essbase is powerful engine helps provide analytical adhoc reporting for financial users . Performance of reporting and ease of use helps excellent customers experience when doing adhoc analysis.

Incentivized

• sometimes it is hard to produce pixel perfect reports from the Web UI. I know it is not made for this, but still, it'll be great
• getting in e.g. an Excel file just by drag and drop, and the AI should "understand" what the data is all around

Incentivized

• Oracle Hyperion requires a lot of knowledge and expertise to be successful.
• The underlying infrastructure of Oracle Hyperion is complex and can be difficult to implement.
• Some of the Oracle Hyperion application servers only run on Windows. Windows can sometimes be unstable.
• Oracle Hyperion application server processes are dependent on each other and need to be started in a specific order. Therefore, if certain services die on one server, it could require all services/processes in the entire Hyperion landscape to be restarted in the correct order.

Incentivized

Since IBM Cognos Express is suitable only for medium data warehouse environment, we are not sure if this tool solves the long term need as the business keeps growing rapidly. So its a 50/50 ratio to renew Express license. But having said that, the components of IBM Cognos Express are also available in other Cognos BI suites like Cognos 10.x version. So we will probably upgrade our environment to IBM Cognos 10.x which comes with more new features.

We're in the middle of the road because we are not sure that other products on the market fit the bill for what we need yet. Hyperion is expensive and burdensome from an administrator and maintenance standpoint, but it still seems to be the best solution for what we need. Show us an equally capable SaaS consolidation product and we'll talk again.

IBM Planning Analytics is generally good in terms of functionalities. It can be used reduce time for budget planning, resource planning, demand forecasting, etc. The performance of IBM Planning Analytics is acceptable, but user interface can be improved. It would be good to see new features that allow users to customise the dashboard.

Incentivized

Although I find the IBM Planning analytics documentation quite time consuming, their support with email and call is something i can term as very considerate and patient, I have had few calls about the features and how i would want to implement them within my projects, and the teams have been super helpful to resolve my issues

Incentivized

The premium support team provides much needed dedicated customer service which we are after for what we have paid for this service. We are satisfied with the service and support and do not have any instance where there was an issue that requires escalation to get the right support team. Though the incidence of major issues that requires the premium support are less, we prefer to keep this as a safety net.

Incentivized

For strong technical teams and flexibility IBM Planning Analytics is the way to go. For quicker adoption and less technical teams Anaplan is the best option. If consolidation, financials, and moving from legacy tools are main focus than OneStream will be a really good choice. If deeply invested into SAP already than the SAP BPC will be the best fit to maintain the investment.

Incentivized

Hyperion is easy to implement and maintain, low cost of ownership is also a great reason to select this product. Oracle's investment to keep the product innovations and improvements over the years is well appreciated by the users. The ease of managing integration with different business systems is also considered while selecting this product.

Incentivized

• Much higher degree of accuracy in forecasting with the use of predictive analysis from historical data
• Dozens of man hours saved in routine processes that are now handled with minimal human interaction
• One system that holds the "source of truth," consolidating multiple systems together that were only accessible individually before

Incentivized

• We had to get the planning application designed correctly before we got a good ROI, but once we did it became well liked and highly utilized.
• It has had a very positive overall impact on increasing finance literacy across campus, allowing units a better insight into their revenues and expenses and the overall planning process.
• It has been an essential tool during a time where the campus needed to reduce it's budget by over 100 million dollars annually. Without this product, we would not have a way to identify, track and report on our progress reducing the budget.

Incentivized