EPM Community September Newsletter

EPM COMMUNITY NEWSLETTER

September 2019

A Note from Your Community Lead
Happy Fall EPM Community! For those who were not at ODTUG Kscope19 this year, my name is Jay, and I’m the new EPM community lead. A little about me: I’ve been in the EPM space for about 12 years, working primarily with Hyperion Planning and Financial Reporting within higher education. I made the jump to consulting about three years ago, and I am so glad I did because not only did it introduce me to ODTUG, it's also how I met a lot of great peers that I am happy to call friends today. My plan for the community is to keep people engaged and involved by offering informative webinars, providing opportunities for hosting and attending meetups, and providing volunteer opportunities within the community. The latter is important because we have to start brainstorming for our ODTUG Kscope20 Community night!!

I’m super excited about this quarter’s newsletter. First, we are adding a quarterly trivia question with questions straight from Oracle Product Managers! Let’s see who in the community can get them all right! We also have a great Product Manager Corner article from Mark Rinaldi. Next, we are continuing our Member Spotlight, where we highlight one ODTUG member each quarter. Finally, this quarter's feature article is one that focuses on the integration of ERP Cloud and Planning, something near and dear to my heart. 

Lastly, we welcome your feedback with the newsletter, meetups, and webinars. We value you staying connected to us, and I hope this is just another means for you to keep in touch with the latest EPM Community news. We acknowledge the time constraints and the many sources that vie for your attention. Feel free to reach out to me anytime with your comments and/or concerns.

Thank you for being a part of our great community, and your continued support of ODTUG!

Best,
Jay Chapman, Sierra-Cedar
 

EPM Product Management Corner

By Mark Rinaldi, Oracle Corporation

With Oracle’s new fiscal year well underway, our big announcement should have filtered through the community by now.  In case you (somehow) missed our announcement at ODTUG Kscope19 in June, we have simplified the Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) Cloud product and price offerings.  After plenty of initial questions and maybe a few concerns, the EPM community appears to be embracing the incredible value of the new EPM Enterprise Cloud and EPM Standard Cloud products.
Read the full article 

Member Spotlight
Henry Robin, Independent Consultant

Henry worked for ConocoPhillips for 33 years and as a consultant for two years (one with interRel and one as an independent) using Essbase. In January 2019, he began his current career as a grandfather (moving to be closer to the two older grandsons). In retirement, Henry spends most of his time traveling with his wife, playing bridge, volunteering as a Scout leader, and playing with his grandkids. Before you ask—yes, as everyone says, he is in fact busier now that he's retired than he was while working. 
Learn more about Henry!

Did you know…
Oracle EPM Cloud will move the Enhancement Request (ER) processes out of My Oracle Support and into the Idea Labs within Cloud Customer Connect.This move is part of Oracle’s ongoing initiative to continuously improve the customer experience and transparency of the enhancement request process and delivery.

The targeted date for this change is October 1, 2019. A Customer Connect session is scheduled on September 25 to address any questions you may have.

Financials Cloud for EPM folks - Value Sets
By, Omar Shubeilat, PrimeQ
We all have to work with ERP applications in our EPM implementations one way or another, and I always think its's beneficial to have some basic understanding and navigation skills in Financials Cloud. It helps when you're troubleshooting metadata issues or data reconciliation etc. So I'm going to start a lightweight series on Financials Cloud to cover topics I find helpful when I'm working on a Planning, Profitability, or Enterprise Reporting solution.

Read the full blog

EPM Meetup's Overview

Northeast EPM Meetup Recap
By, Neviana Zhgaba, GE Digital
On August 28, 2019, Neviana Zhgaba and Gary Crisci hosted the ODTUG Northeast Oracle EPM Meetup at the Oracle Burlington, MA offices! The event was sponsored by Oracle Corporation, Peloton Group, Wysent, and Alythia.

Director of Oracle EPM Product Manager, Mark Rinaldi, was the event’s keynote speaker. He gave a lengthy and detailed overview of the Oracle EPM Roadmap, AI,Groovy and other features.
Four additional ODTUG members presented as well: Michael McLaughlin on Driver-Based Planning with Dodeca; Kylie Moyer on performing allocations with PCMCS; Christopher Barbieri shared a 20/20 Guide to HFM; and Nick Boronski gave an overview of an ARCS business use case.

The Oracle WIT force was strong in this event! We also got together with a few representatives of our unofficial IOOM “International Order of Oracle Millennials” group, before wrapping up the event with a networking happy hour in the afternoon.

It’s always great to get ODTUG members together throughout the year to learn and network before ODTUG Kscope20 in Boston!

Silicon Valley Area EPM Meetup Recap
By Frank Chow, Tivo
The ODTUG community in the Silicon Valley area met on August 22, 2019, at the Intuit headquarters to network and discuss innovations in the EPM cloud space. With so many advancements in the past year and a new go-to market strategy, there was plenty to discuss.

Frank Chow conducted the lion's share of the heavy lifting on organizing and executing the event. This meetup served as a fantastic follow up to ODTUG Kscope19 in June, and the event refreshed attendees on key announcements held earlier in the summer. 

Gabby Rubin, Oracle VP Product Management - Analytics kicked things off with an overview of recent innovations in the Oracle Analytics Cloud. Advancements like AI and machine learning have impacted functionality like natural language processing and predictive analytics, enabling end users to easily create value from their data. 

Marc Seewald, Oracle VP Product Management - EPM Cloud followed suit by sharing the newly bundled EPM offerings: EPM Standard Edition and EPM Enterprise. Each of these bundles proactively addresses the needs of our customers as the most complete performance management and financial process optimization platform on the market today. 

We wrapped things up with a happy hour sponsored by Huron Consulting—nothing like some mini margherita pizzas and local IPAs to conclude a compelling afternoon of conversation.