Oracle BI and EPM are Converging - Are You Ready?

There's a new evolution happening right now at Oracle, and I'll bet you didn't even know about it. It's the convergence of Oracle BI and EPM.

While you might’ve missed the first two steps in this evolution, we sure didn’t.

The first is Oracle Business Intelligence Foundation Suite – you’ve now got the power of expanded business analytics available in better designed dashboards and mobile devices. The second is Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine – you can harness the speed of your system to analyze larger volumes of data faster than ever before.

This convergence, or integration, of several solutions removes any confusion you might have about which is the right solution for you. Everything is pulled together in one solution, one evolution that unlocks the potential previously hidden in individual systems and spreadsheets.

Unlock the benefits of this evolution and watch your business grow.

Expand your business analysis horizons

Because Oracle Business Intelligence Foundation Suite brings together your data in better designed dashboards, employees can visualize the information in new and more informative ways. The solution can recommend a visualization that guides them to a better view, based on the data and intent of analysis. They can arrange the data in performance tiles to highlight certain measures and call attention to trends. Comparisons across series and groups of data is easier using the different charting options.

Generate new ideas

Bringing together all of your data into one system has a wonderful benefit of allowing your employees to work together better. Your entire organization will make different connections to their data because they're finally seeing the full picture. It could be real-time analysis of key customer data and product profitability, or best-in-class reporting that delivers meaningful insights. Your employees will be working smarter, together.

Image source: Oracle/What’s New

Take your work with you

As technology moves toward cloud and mobile solutions, it only makes sense that the new BI/EPM solutions would reflect that. Work offline, use the Web-based interface, or even the mobile app to manage your data and processes in the office, on the road, at home, or wherever your work takes you. Oracle’s enhancements include more mobile friendly gestures, and enhanced capability for controlling and viewing BI content, right from your mobile device. You'll be able to confidently handle any situation your business throws at you because you're ready for it, with the support of your new integrated solution.

Crank up your analysis to warp speed

With Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine integrated into your Oracle system, you can harness its speed to analyze larger volumes of data faster than ever before. Faster, and more accurate too.

Centralize your analysis

That’s because all of your analysis functions are centralized in one tool. All of your employees will be using the same platform and data for the work they currently do: Financial consolidation and reporting; budgeting, planning, and forecasting; financial modelling; business queries and reporting; and more.

Leave your data where it is

Just because you’ve centralized your analysis doesn’t mean you have to do the same with your data. Your data sources can remain where they are right now, if that’s what you want. Oracle's shown us that they understand how to integrate their systems with multiple data sources and different kinds of data, so the time to implement this new solution should be much shorter.

Gain confidence in your work

This new evolution Oracle’s started will speed up your work and processes, without sacrificing data integrity and accuracy. That’s right, your analysis will still be accurate, you’ll just have it ready faster.

• Integration with newer database hardware and software solutions like Hadoop, Model Checker, and IBM WebSphere Application Server Support.
• Enhanced query functionality that eliminates data processing delays and returns data to you faster.
• Combined installers and security models across all modules of your Oracle solution.

That’s a lot of changes

Yes, even though we’ve only highlighted two of the first changes in this BI and EPM evolution, they’re pretty big ones. Are you excited to see what these changes can do for you and your business? Think you can handle:

• getting a higher return on your existing IT investments
• improving your resource planning and financial reporting
• making your business more predictable, thereby reducing your risk
• achieving a lower cost of ownership
• saving your business unit’s time and resources

Here’s how you get ready

You might think that jumping to warp speed is as simple as flipping a switch, however in reality, it’s a little more complex. But that doesn’t mean you should wait around for your Oracle partner to handle the transition for you. Here’s how you can prepare.

1. Align your Business Departments.  Many of them already use a lot of the same data in their work, so why not prepare by having them start sharing now? This makes the transition to the new Oracle solution easier to tolerate.

2. Revise any affected business processes. Reviewing and revising business processes often takes time, especially in a large enterprise organization. By starting now, you'll save time when the solution's ready. And your employees will already be used to the processes too.

3. Involve your support organization: This step isn’t always an obvious one, since we’ve mainly been talking about the users of this new Oracle solution. But remember, your IT department has to be ready to handle this evolution as well. They’ll need time to prepare too – They may need to hire new staff, realign their teams, take new training, prepare a data center, replace outdated hardware, and more.

4. Stockpile your patience. As with any new technology introduction, there are bound to be bumps in the road to production. So having a lot of patience with your partners and staff will help in the transition. Remember, the destination is definitely worth a bumpy road.

Need a Little Help?

If this seems like a lot of change to handle by yourselves, don’t worry, we understand. Many of these tasks are challenging ones to do on a large scale in a large organization. That’s why we’re here to help. Jade Global is an Oracle Platinum Partner with over a decade of experience helping our customers make the transition to efficiency with Oracle products. In fact, we're going through the same sort of alignment right now that I mentioned earlier, so we'll be able to advise you on the best way to handle it so you come out the other side ready to go.